People and coffee

I often like to meet for coffee with my friends. It can be anywhere, sometimes they come to my house or I go to one of them, or we meet in a quiet place where we can chat pleasantly.

Each one of them, just like me, has their own particular taste when it comes to drinking coffee, they may like it lukewarm, hot, black or with milk. Sometimes I like to observe them when they drink it and I think that our way of drinking coffee expresses a lot of our personality.

Carlos, for example, only likes to drink his coffee in the most traditional style. First he heats the water, pours several spoonfuls of ground coffee into the cloth strainer, and then when the water is almost at the point of boiling he slowly pours it in, while he watches the black liquid come out through the tip of the strainer. He does this process meticulously, slowly, without any kind of hurry and fully concentrated on what he is doing.

The way in which Carlos prepares his coffee has a lot to do with his personality. He is a very calm person, one of those who take things calmly, one of those who reflect all the time.

He is one of those who think that every event in life happens at the right time, neither before nor after, that is why he says that we should not hurry. According to him everything is written in some mysterious plan of the Creator, so nothing we do can make things happen ahead of schedule.

The truth is that every time I feel upset I go to Carlos, because I know that there my mood will change and I will feel much more relaxed. The problem is that to have a coffee with Carlos I have to go to his house because he doesn't like coffee prepared in any kind of machine. My friend can be very quiet but at the same time he is capricious. Nobody is perfect, everyone has their own quirks.

Laura is very different from Carlos. She is all nerves and energy. She is the kind of person with whom you enjoy drinking coffee in a café, but who must have an outdoor terrace where Laura's laughter doesn't disturb the others. Whenever I need a dose of joy I meet Laura, her cheerful temperament is contagious.

Laura always greets me with a big smile, even before we sit down at the table her good energy has already gotten inside me. She is a very expressive woman, while we talk her face has a thousand gestures and her hands never stop moving. While we drink coffee she is never quiet, not even when the waiter brings the cup. Even when the coffee is very hot she is always touching the cup, she picks it up and puts it back on the table, she makes it part of the conversation. I think anyone who sees her will immediately feel that she is a cheerful and energetic person.

These days I visited a coffee shop that caught my attention, it is a very nice place where they have books on the shelves.
The day I went there were about four people at the tables, but what made me curious was that they were all alone. Each one had their coffee with their book. I stayed for about twenty minutes and did the same as them, took a book and sat down with my coffee. But my intention was to see if they were waiting for someone. And no, in all that time no one arrived nor could I perceive in them the expectation of waiting. I got to thinking that this place is the café of the lonely...

As I write it is occurring to me that if we pay attention when we see someone drinking coffee we can draw accurate conclusions about some trait of their temperament and personality.

Thanks for your time.