#1 Cafe Another
This is the first assignment of ‘Don’t Break the Chain’ — a writing class by master copywriter Cole Schafer. Each day, I receive a new assignment in my inbox.
The practice: To set the timer for 45 minutes, write on the prompt given, then set the timer for 10 minutes of editing. Within an hour, I will have written something and published it.
Today’s assignment — Describe the place I am sitting in.
Sitting in a café called ‘Café Another’, brightly lit, my computer on a smooth plastic alabaster table, I sit in the one green chair. My other table companions — me, myself, and I — sit in the remaining chairs, that all happen to want to be white and are instead several steps closer to the color of my milk tea than to the color of the table. Myself and I sit on the other side of the social distancing plexiglass containing the other two of us between it and the dark gray cement wall.
A tacky bronze gold circle platform with a single centered pole supports the table, table 16 according to the sticker placed on the edge facing me with the left side curling. The table sits on a tiled floor with small maroon square tiles you can call diamonds because of their orientation at the union of four wannabe white tiles that would be squares but are now octagons because of the small maroon tiles wedging them apart at the corners.
The vertical inch-wide accordion rafters on the walls make them look like immobilized folding doors. The ceilings rise one body height above the waitresses.
Was this place supposed to be a restaurant? With these floors, these walls, these lights, and this furniture, it could be a plebian spa — practical, unromantic.
To my left, two men sit diagonally from each other at two tables parked together to form a table for four. The one facing my left side has a mustache that naturally looks like it has been snowed on. His crew-cut hair somewhat matches. He sits on the green leather-like bench fixed to the wall spanning six such pairs of tables.
His companion sits in a wannabe white chair wearing a wannabe white shirt with a matching collar trimmed with a thin orange line. His spine naturally curving forward away from me, a streak of light shines off each bare ear.
I look straight ahead as the two schoolgirls sitting at the next table have left, giving my eyes open air to the opposite wall with no one populating the seven tables between us. A poster in a black frame faces me. Perhaps it is a trick photograph — tiny gold tendrils all curved U-like, their ends at the top of the poster dispersing then facing into the black background of the poster popping out of the white ribbed wall that resembles a folding door.
This panel has a partner, opposite the opening from a bronze-colored metallic wall with men’s and women’s bathroom doors facing each other. In the opposite corner, a group of eight men and one woman have been shooting the breeze since I walked in half an hour ago and they show no signs of leaving soon, laughing, joking, picking on each other. One of them has recently received a beer — you can order beer in this place?
Wow, twenty-eight minutes left in this exercise, twenty-eight out of forty-five, less than halfway there.
A man in a lime-green kaleidoscope patterned jacket returns from the bathroom to sit on the almost monotone lime-green pleather bench meters away on the same structure as the gentleman near to me with the snowy mustache. Like a green garden snake across flat green leaves, his jacket almost camouflages him, and he has no idea.
Given the nature of Hong Kong now, some of these table companions begin to wear surgical masks. Three of them blue masks, one of them white, one of them black. The lady wears a different style, one that looks more like half of a Wiffle ball with tabs customized for her nose and cheekbones, loops well-tensed for her ears only. I see her lean forward as if her body joins the laughter from the men at the table, yet with her mask on and no sound I can’t be sure if she’s laughing, oh there she goes, her shoulders shake a little bit.
Looking ahead, I see seven tables in front of me, each separated from the next with a sheet of plexiglass facing me and a LeaveHomeSafe sticker at the top and center, the black and white QR code in the middle of a teal green square topped with the slogan ‘Together, we fight the virus.’ At the bottom of the sticker, tiny black symbols indicate you can download the app at the Android Store, Google Play, or the App Library.
Below the LeaveHomeSafe sticker and less well-centered hangs a laminated ‘limited offer’ menu displaying three plates, each holding a set of four fried oblong objects, two sets accompanied by deep brown Japanese curry sauce and one sitting next to a white ramekin of pink tartar sauce.
Thirty minutes in out of forty-five, I want to quit after 800 words. I’ve added the bit at the top about the assignment I am doing here. With 13 minutes left of the 45, I’m going to move to the 10 minutes of editing. Let’s see how this morphs while ceramic dishes clang behind me as the staff stir them around in a bin. Meanwhile, busses rumble by the door facing the street and muffled CantoPop songs wheeze out of the gray-screened rectangular corner-mounted speakers.
A few more minutes have passed. Now I’ll be starting the editing timer only 10 minutes earlier than mandated.
