Sunday, September 6, 2009

Sophomore Slump or A New Perspective?

* This week's gonna be slightly different for us. A little busy, I think. But anyway, I really can't forecast which week's going to be busy, routine, or laid back. Working at a cafe or any food service establishment brings surprises every time. As for today, I don't have work in San Pablo so I'll be filling in for Neil's barista duties. He said he has a field trip that he just can't miss. Good luck with that. But it's a good thing that he told me ahead of time.

* I really don't like being on duty on late notice. That's because for me, being a barista for a day needs a lot of psyching up before game time. Right now, although I'm a bit queasy from watching Gossip Girl all day yesterday (then realizing halfway that I've already watched Season 2 before, badtrip!), I can say that I'm pretty psyched up. I was up very early today, turned on the radio for my daily dose of Good Times at Magic, sipped Nesvita and coffee (mixed!), took a bath, made do lists and sub-do lists, then drove off to do, I mean, PERFORM errands. I like that PERFORM errands, haha! Blogging is an errand, a weekly Monday errand. Along with laundry, picking up groceries at Joyce's place, plus other stuff I do to make me look busy.

* I was forced to eat pancakes at McDonald's this morning. I needed the extra energy. It's part of the psyching up thing.

* Back to the main topic, we're busy this week because...

* I have this interview at 4 pm with a student. She's (are you a she?) doing a study about coffee shops in Elbi. Well, that's been a hot topic lately. Hehe. Suddenly everybody loves coffee; are we the new coffee capital?! Who knows, who knows...

* Then we have this OJT person who will be hanging out with us for a while. She'll be starting today. Just trying to help her out for her TESDA exam. Glad we can help. We hope your experience with us will be fruitful! Add us up on Facebook (www.facebook.com/cafeantonioelbi).

* Then on Friday, I'll be the one gone for the day so Neil will be taking over Showtime Friday this week. It's been quite some time now since Neil's taken over a Friday. I'll be attending this Go Negosyo event at the SM Mall of Asia. They've got a bunch of free seminars that looks interesting. It's an all-day event and I'm very excited. My friend Jenni Sumagui will be accompanying me to the event. Al Labadan was supposed to go with me but backed out, so sayang dude. Joyce has work so she can't come too. I hope we can get fresh insights from the event... yeah, certainly we will.

* Gigs... I'm still waiting for the go-signal from Meliora. I was asking them if they can do an acoustic gig at the cafe. And my band, actually it's just me and Bessy collectively known as The Bookshelf Cassette (because I used to store my cassette tape collection on a bookshelf), haven't practiced yet. Hey if you guys out there have any original material and/or play indie covers you can do a gig at the cafe. But no, we can't pay you, you'll be playing just for the heck of playing and letting others hear your stuff. The message: YOU HAVE A VENUE.

* Cafe news. Got a lot of customers last week, around 400 plus paying customers, we only count those who order food and/or drinks. So that's a lot for our cafe. Thanks to all of you! We really want to be the best in what we do. You've probably read my barista speeches on my blog, and you probably know by now that making coffee for us is rocket science. I'm glad that I've passed on the obsession for clean filter baskets to my baristas. We pull shots until we get it right. We don't care about the wasted coffee (apologies to our bosses in Dumaguete), it's not actually wasted, it's disposed because it's being tested for quality.

* I'm really happy that our espresso orders are picking up, take note, espresso only, who orders that right? It's really the heart of everything good. Bitter to some, but sometimes bitter is better. Thank you!!!

* Ahhh... the pressure to do good, and do even better the next time, it's the formula for breakdown. Are we having a sophomore slump? Uh, I don't think so. It's a new year, a new album, a different project, a new perspective (haha, PATD!). We'll see, it's hard to live up to the hype sometimes. Especially when you've gone full-throttle on your first year.

* I'm amazed that despite the obvious changes at the cafe, we still get new customers and maintain old ones. Special shout out to the Sherwin-Aldo-Candy trio, they've been with us since day one. Sometimes I think Sherwin is my boss, haha!

* So please pray for us and continue to support us. We're very happy that our hometown's here for us because we love Elbi right back.




No comments:

Post a Comment