A forgotten anniversary
Today, as my car was sitting in a shop waiting to fail its state inspection, I walked over to Jollyville Java, a small new coffeeshop in a run down parking lot on the intersection of 183 and Spicewood Springs. (For reference, it's the parking lot with Big Lots store and Sambets Cajun deli.) I was moved by extreme, almost desperate, niceness and friendliness that the coffeeshop workers (who may also have been its owners) exhibited towards me and one other lone customer who came over during the entire hour I spent there.
The other customer said he would like a double-caf-double-something-else-multi-syllable-bla-bla-bla coffee beverage, but that he was also "on a budget". So the woman behind the counter offered to charge him only for the basic beverage and not for those multisyllabic extras. She kept chatting with him, drawing him out; he said he was the head of Austin electronic music association or some such and had a show tonight; the woman and the man behind the counter gushed about how interesting this must be; the woman said she'll let her 26-year-old daughter know about the show, and encourage her to go and bring her cute friends to provide some eye candy for the concert. And so on and so forth; they showed great interest in his life and sounded like they were ready to walk on their eyelashes for him.
As a quintessential Not A People Person, I shuddered to think of what it would be like to have a job where I would have to go to great lengths to act like a customer's best friend; and all for the sake of bringing in some measly business. And it is measly -- it's very obvious this coffeeshop isn't getting many visitors.
But maybe those people genuinely like chatting with every person who walks in. As unimaginable as it would be for me, who's to say?
It's sad, then, that despite all their effort this coffeeshop will fail, and probably soon. Some 90% of coffeeshops I've seen in my life closed after just 2-3 years of their valiant, but doomed existence. Even the stalwart Trianon on Braker, despite falling on the far end of coffeeshop survival curve, has closed recently. It seems inevitable when you learn about the economics of coffeeshop business, as in this Slate article.
And speaking of Slate... I was kind of stunned when I went to its home page today and saw this headline: Chaos in Lithuania.
Huh? It turns out they were commemorating the "chaos" of 15 years ago, when Soviet army troops "moved to suppress a growing independence movement in Lithuania's capital, Vilnius". That's an accurate description of what happened. On January 12-13, 1991, Soviet army troops invaded Vilnius. Well, actually, they were stationed there for many decades, so it wasn't exactly an invasion; it's just that the tanks came out of hiding and started driving along the streets. They surrounded the Television Tower (from where Lithuanian TV programs were being broadcast), with the intention to silence Lithuanian TV, as the main mass information media. And they did, but not before they shot and ran over (with tanks) 15 people. Those people were among several thousands of protesters who had surrounded the TV tower, thinking that the troops won't go against weaponless civilians. But the troops did exactly that. There was some shooting, there were tanks running people over. 15 died, ten times more were wounded. Compared to all the blood other nations had shed for their freedom, this was a very small sacrifice. But still, it was a scary time.
This was the night of January 12, 1991. After taking over the TV tower, on January 13 the troops moved towards the Parliament. Everybody thought they were going to invade the Parliament and kill or arrest the Lithuanian government officials, including the president. So, thousands of people gathered in the Parliament square to protect the Parliament with their bodies -- a tactics that did NOT work the night before at the TV tower, and they knew it. Still, they did it. They barricaded off the Parliament square with blocks of concrete, but I doubt it would have been much help against the tanks. If the tanks had really invaded it, it would have resulted in a massive massacre.
All day of the 13th, those thousands people waited in the Parliament square while the tanks drove up and down the streets. My mom and I went there for a few hours, to show our moral support. We didn't stay very long. I don't know about my mom, but I was too afraid and I didn't feel like my presence would change anything. The crowd kept speculating when will they attack. Many times reports of approaching tanks propagated through the crowd, and everyone wondered if this was going to be it. But it wasn't. They did not attack the parliament, after all.
Still, I never felt safe in Lithuania since then. For many months, even years, as I lay in bed at night, every distant rumble would make me wonder if it was a tank. It was one of the factors that made me want to leave the country, which I did eventually as I came to US.
Anyway, it's nice that Slate remembered this event, because, sad to say, I have not. Instead, I was preoccupied with the mundane. Taking a car to state inspection, where it met my expectations by failing it; scratching my head over Javascript DOM event models -- it's funny how my script works well in IE and Opera, but acts weird in Firefox! I will really have to hunker down and dig deep into DOM Level 2 event model specifications, to see if it may suggest a way to work around that weirdness. Which will make the script way more complicated than it has any right to be, for the function it performs is really not rocket science. It should be simple, dammit!
To soothe the disappointment of car failing the state inspection and learning that it would cost about a $1000 to fix it, I reacted with all the due irrationality and went shopping. After all, a day before I had fished out four -- yes, four -- Bed, Bath & Beyond coupons from a recycling bin next to my mailboxes. Apparently all the "or current residents" at our apartment complex had received BB&B coupons, except us. There were all those yummy coupons floating on top of the junk mail in the recycling box. It was a veritable banquet for me!
And of course, when you are faced with an unexpected $1000 bill, it becomes really, really important to shave a couple of dollars off your purchases. :-) But I do have a right to indulge my irrational side, dammit. Have to counterbalance all that logical thinking I must do in my line of work.
The other customer said he would like a double-caf-double-something-else-multi-syllable-bla-bla-bla coffee beverage, but that he was also "on a budget". So the woman behind the counter offered to charge him only for the basic beverage and not for those multisyllabic extras. She kept chatting with him, drawing him out; he said he was the head of Austin electronic music association or some such and had a show tonight; the woman and the man behind the counter gushed about how interesting this must be; the woman said she'll let her 26-year-old daughter know about the show, and encourage her to go and bring her cute friends to provide some eye candy for the concert. And so on and so forth; they showed great interest in his life and sounded like they were ready to walk on their eyelashes for him.
As a quintessential Not A People Person, I shuddered to think of what it would be like to have a job where I would have to go to great lengths to act like a customer's best friend; and all for the sake of bringing in some measly business. And it is measly -- it's very obvious this coffeeshop isn't getting many visitors.
But maybe those people genuinely like chatting with every person who walks in. As unimaginable as it would be for me, who's to say?
It's sad, then, that despite all their effort this coffeeshop will fail, and probably soon. Some 90% of coffeeshops I've seen in my life closed after just 2-3 years of their valiant, but doomed existence. Even the stalwart Trianon on Braker, despite falling on the far end of coffeeshop survival curve, has closed recently. It seems inevitable when you learn about the economics of coffeeshop business, as in this Slate article.
And speaking of Slate... I was kind of stunned when I went to its home page today and saw this headline: Chaos in Lithuania.
Huh? It turns out they were commemorating the "chaos" of 15 years ago, when Soviet army troops "moved to suppress a growing independence movement in Lithuania's capital, Vilnius". That's an accurate description of what happened. On January 12-13, 1991, Soviet army troops invaded Vilnius. Well, actually, they were stationed there for many decades, so it wasn't exactly an invasion; it's just that the tanks came out of hiding and started driving along the streets. They surrounded the Television Tower (from where Lithuanian TV programs were being broadcast), with the intention to silence Lithuanian TV, as the main mass information media. And they did, but not before they shot and ran over (with tanks) 15 people. Those people were among several thousands of protesters who had surrounded the TV tower, thinking that the troops won't go against weaponless civilians. But the troops did exactly that. There was some shooting, there were tanks running people over. 15 died, ten times more were wounded. Compared to all the blood other nations had shed for their freedom, this was a very small sacrifice. But still, it was a scary time.
This was the night of January 12, 1991. After taking over the TV tower, on January 13 the troops moved towards the Parliament. Everybody thought they were going to invade the Parliament and kill or arrest the Lithuanian government officials, including the president. So, thousands of people gathered in the Parliament square to protect the Parliament with their bodies -- a tactics that did NOT work the night before at the TV tower, and they knew it. Still, they did it. They barricaded off the Parliament square with blocks of concrete, but I doubt it would have been much help against the tanks. If the tanks had really invaded it, it would have resulted in a massive massacre.
All day of the 13th, those thousands people waited in the Parliament square while the tanks drove up and down the streets. My mom and I went there for a few hours, to show our moral support. We didn't stay very long. I don't know about my mom, but I was too afraid and I didn't feel like my presence would change anything. The crowd kept speculating when will they attack. Many times reports of approaching tanks propagated through the crowd, and everyone wondered if this was going to be it. But it wasn't. They did not attack the parliament, after all.
Still, I never felt safe in Lithuania since then. For many months, even years, as I lay in bed at night, every distant rumble would make me wonder if it was a tank. It was one of the factors that made me want to leave the country, which I did eventually as I came to US.
Anyway, it's nice that Slate remembered this event, because, sad to say, I have not. Instead, I was preoccupied with the mundane. Taking a car to state inspection, where it met my expectations by failing it; scratching my head over Javascript DOM event models -- it's funny how my script works well in IE and Opera, but acts weird in Firefox! I will really have to hunker down and dig deep into DOM Level 2 event model specifications, to see if it may suggest a way to work around that weirdness. Which will make the script way more complicated than it has any right to be, for the function it performs is really not rocket science. It should be simple, dammit!
To soothe the disappointment of car failing the state inspection and learning that it would cost about a $1000 to fix it, I reacted with all the due irrationality and went shopping. After all, a day before I had fished out four -- yes, four -- Bed, Bath & Beyond coupons from a recycling bin next to my mailboxes. Apparently all the "or current residents" at our apartment complex had received BB&B coupons, except us. There were all those yummy coupons floating on top of the junk mail in the recycling box. It was a veritable banquet for me!
And of course, when you are faced with an unexpected $1000 bill, it becomes really, really important to shave a couple of dollars off your purchases. :-) But I do have a right to indulge my irrational side, dammit. Have to counterbalance all that logical thinking I must do in my line of work.