Going over to the dark side

I don't go to Starbucks. I never have and although I went to Reed and have an obligation to hate them, my reason stems from their proliferation of bad coffee more than anything else. I prefer well roasted well brewed coffee that I find in Portland, but out of Portland I will choose a different bad coffee place over Starbucks, because, well, they are not setting the standard that makes people accept and even like bad, expensive coffee.

Then I came to Taiwan. All of Taiwan's coffee is pretty bad and most people when they offer you coffee are offering you nescafe with more sugar than a candy bar. There are coffeshops though, it's the new chic. Almost all of them are chains- Ikari, from Japan, Dante's, Barista, Detour and of course Starbucks. I went almost exclusively to the first two until I learned how to ask for non-fat milk. Given this linguistic freedom a whole new set of options was open to me, or so I thought. But then I started asking for my non-fat milk and discovered that it was a strange request. Not at Starbucks, however. They in the worldwide American corporation way are happy to provide me with my choice of milk. So for the fist time last week it happened. Colin asked "Where do you want to get coffee, Ikari or Dante's? and I said "How about Starbucks." So I've gone over to the dark side. And I must say it has it's perks- the milk of course, the all too familiar wavy curved design and the soft comfy chairs. Granted they are not as comfy as the torn up couches of my favorite places, but the tables aren't too high to comfortably write at either.

But don't worry, the tenure of my evilness will be short, I will move back to the states with an eye-opening stop in Italy or I will go broke.