a lot of people pick and choose when things are “African” and it usually only shows up in respectability politics. when we start talking about wearing traditional attire or natural hair in the workplace, African spirituality and our ancestors, they go quiet.
Bro I’m not taking anything like 2-1 or shit like that
This should be easy, no mercy. They want to roll with the big boys then let’s show them how the big boys move
5-0 OR NOTHING!
If he was better than Madueke I promise you he would be playing over him, you guys don’t see the very clear flaws in his game because he’s a Hale end graduate, he hasn’t developed enough the past 12-18 months to justify minutes and it better for his career to go elsewhere.
The woman in front of me at Starbucks ordered a drink that took forty-one words.
I counted.
"Grande half-caf oat milk two-pump sugar-free vanilla no-foam extra-hot one seventy-five degree latte with light cinnamon on top not stirred in with a splash of cold brew on the side, in a ceramic mug, please."
The barista did not flinch. She did not smile. She did not slow down. She typed for eleven seconds without looking at the screen. She said "cool" once, softly, at some interior punctuation of the order that only she and the woman had heard.
The woman paid. The woman moved to the pickup counter.
My turn.
I said, "Coffee."
The barista's fingers hung over the screen.
She said, "What size?"
"Medium."
"Hot or iced?"
"Hot."
"Any milk?"
"No."
"Any sugar?"
"No."
She stopped. She looked at me the way one looks at a museum piece that has just spoken.
She said, "So, like, a hot medium black coffee?"
"Yes."
She typed for less than one second. She said, "That'll be two seventy-five."
I paid. I stood at the pickup counter next to the forty-one word woman.
Her drink took four minutes. The barista assembled it like a chemist. Three separate machines were involved. She checked a small thermometer, twice. She placed the cinnamon on top with a small spoon, not a shaker, so that the cinnamon would not, as instructed, be stirred in.
My coffee took eleven seconds. It appeared in a paper cup on the counter, in silence, without ceremony. Nobody called my name because I had not, apparently, needed to give one.
The forty-one word woman took her ceramic mug with both hands. She smelled it. She closed her eyes. She said, to nobody, "Perfect."
She had ordered it correctly. She had received exactly what she wanted. She had, in some way I do not yet understand, won.
I drank my coffee. It was fine. It was coffee.
I have been to that Starbucks nineteen times this year. Each time I have ordered a hot medium black coffee. Each time the same barista has looked at me with a small, growing curiosity, as if I am a variable her equation cannot resolve.
Yesterday she asked me, quietly, if I would like to try just a little oat milk.
I said no.
She nodded slowly. She said, "Respect."
I do not think she meant it as respect. I think she meant it as concern. But I took it.
Somewhere in America, at this moment, a woman is composing a drink order of fifty-two words, and a barista is preparing to receive it without judgment, and a man behind her, ordering coffee, is about to be looked at like a museum piece.
I will be him again tomorrow.
I have decided this is my role.
@Arsenal Gyokeres and Jesus on the bench? Superb! Hicanpie got the nod ahead of Mosquera ? Hmmm interesting
Martinelli to score
Chelsea will taste defeat today.