Are my cruise buddies the best or what! This was the first time I was taking a cruise vacation and I didn't know anyone on board. The plan was to get to know a whole bunch of strangers and just disconnect from the rest of the world for the month long cruise!
And I couldn't have probably asked for a better bunch of strangers to share the cruise with - almost every single one of them were coffee lovers! Since day 1 we've been gulping down cups after cups of coffee for breakfast....for a late afternoon chat...even after dinner (this was strictly against my policy....but what the hell! I'm on vacation)! We were all having a blast - I mean, you can't go wrong with coffee conversations, eh!
But every good thing has its drawbacks and having such a bunch of easy going coffee lovers on board had too! The cruise was not loaded (with coffee of course, not gunpowder!) heavily enough for the amount of coffee we consumed on a daily basis! They had stocked up for "normal" people, we were extraordinary! And so, by day 15 of the tour we were told the cruise had run out of coffee and with our destination port still 13 more days away - we were in for a long, long coffee drought!
The outrage this created was alarming! Tables were thumped, chairs were upturned (I am pretty sure I saw a few huge ripples in the water that could be nothing but something heavy from the cruise's deck drowning), voices were raised, unspeakable words spoken...
As a medical doctor, it didn't take me long to realize that my "coffee buddies" were no ordinary coffee lovers. They were true "addicts!" And if something was not done soon to satiate their caffeine cravings, well....let's just say I didn't see us making it through the remaining 13 days unscathed.
I was pretty pissed myself at the thought of being without any coffee for the remaining days of the trip - just spoils the whole fun - but someone had to remain rational and find a way to navigate us through the crisis. I quickly slipped away from the raging crowd as the cruise crew attempted in vain to exert some form of control.
I quicky went up to the manager and introduced myself as a Doctor and informed him of the seriousness of the issue we had at hand.
He confided in me that he did have his own personal stack of coffee in his room, but there's no way there would be enough for everyone for the rest of the tour.
"Well, that's a start. We're not zeroed out!" I said to the manager.
"But what are we going to do, doc?"
I thought for a while and asked him, "Well, what about tea? Do we have that stocked?"
Turned out, because everyone was so much into coffee, the tea stock was almost untouched. We had at least a months' supply. But even suggesting the idea of Tea as a substitute to coffee would have my "buddies" demand my head on the table! But that wasn't really my plan.
I was going to present to them, a very bad coffee as an alternative to no coffee at all! And from experience, I could almost guarantee the manager that the people was going to accept this with open arms!
"But doc, won't they realize that this is just tea we're serving them?"
"Oh of course not. We won't really be serving them "JUST" tea now will we?!"
I explained to the manager that the plan was to mix 20% ground coffee beans with 80% tea. Coffee generally having a much stronger flavor than regular tea - the 20% would be enough to overpower the flavour of tea into something coffee-ish!
After a couple of hours of mixing and experimenting, we had prepared just the right blend and enough to suffice us for the rest of the trip.
As chaos reigned the deck, I called out for a bit of calm. The passengers seemed to be willing to listen to me more than they were to the crew - if anything, they'd tear the crew limb from limb if they were to have their way!
"Guys, I have some good news and some bad news!"
I waited for the deck to go silent. Then I continued,
"Well, the manager and I have been scouring the entire cruise for the last couple of hours to scrape out any possible coffee left over from previous trips. And luckily enough, we found a batch from quite some time ago!"
There was an uproar of delight and clapping. I raised my hand to quiet them down and continued,
"But the bad news is, because these coffee blend is from so long ago, it might actually taste like shit!"
I watched the delight quickly start to fade away from the faces in front of me and I hastily added,
"But hey, it's still coffee right? And even bad coffee is better than coffee!"
And then the crowd slowly started to murmur,
"...yeah, it's still coffee alright!"
"...bad coffee is still better than no coffee, yeah!"
The murmur gradually turned into chorus and there was delight again on the faces of the crowd!
The chaos on the deck quickly settled as a new chaos stirred in my mind - the chaos of violating some fresh coffee ground, with tea leaves.
