An Interesting Fellow in the Cafe

Yesterday was my first official day without coffee and where did I find myself? In the local Starbucks, of course! I had to get out of my house. I don’t care if I’m still a little sick, I refuse to sit home all break. And, a café is a great place to go when you want to be alone with your thoughts. But I just wasn’t in the mood for tea and with coffee not being an option, my choices were limited. I ended up getting a Chai Latte out of a lack of any better options. It made me think- a cup of black coffee, at least calorie-wise, isn’t as bad as a big cup of sugary whole milk. It’s better for my blood sugar and cholesterol, too. I’m tempted to change my “no coffee” pledge to “no coffee at home or work.” That way, if I really want a cup, I’ve got to get up and get out of my house and walk a bit, which is actually pretty good. It’s a motivation to get myself going.

As often happens, I just rambled on for an entire paragraph about something that I had no intention of writing. The real purpose was to tell about a really interesting guy I met while I was sitting in the café. Contrary to my most recent post, I found myself sitting at a table next to a Korean man, who was also by himself. He was reading. I was deep in thought, listening to Bob Marley and writing in my journal on the topic of “What is love?”

After we’d been there a half hour or more he politely said, “Excuse me.” I heard him after the second time, maybe third and took of my headphones. I smiled, “Yes?”

“What are you writing about?” he asked in fairly good English. I sighed. Despite his seemingly decent English, I’ve found that sometimes difficult or abstract topics like love can sometimes be very difficult to discuss with my Korean friends, because of the language barrier. Even if that proved not to be a problem, did I really want to discuss love with a perfect stranger? But, I didn’t want to be rude and here was the opportunity to have a potentially interesting conversation with a Korean. Isn’t that the reason I travel? After a long pause, I cautiously told him, “Love.”

“What about love?” he asked.

Here was an opportunity to get an outside perspective on love, from someone who doesn’t know me or my situation, from someone who is part of a totally different culture than my own.

“What about love?” I asked back. “That is the question isn’t it? What is love? What does it mean to you? How would you define it?”

Now it was his turn to pause. He sat back in his chair and put his hand to his chin, really thinking about it for a moment. Then he leaned forward again and said, “That’s a very difficult question.”

“Yes, it is,” I replied and we shared a smile. It was only the beginning of what turned out to be nearly a two hour conversation about love, philosophy, journalism, and travel. Now, you might be inclined, after hearing the topics, to think that I dominated the conversation, but it turns out that my new friend, Jung Eun is a broadcast journalist for a Korean broadcast station. (It’s little coincidences like this- call them signs- that make me think that going to back to school for journalism might be the right track.) Also, he’d live in New York for a while. So, we had much to talk about. He’d been a musician in New York and didn’t make it, but he still loved to play. He told me journalism is a tough field, but not as tough as music. We talked about the challenges and pleasures of living in a new culture and day-dreamed about places we’d like to visit.

He paid me compliments. “You are the most interesting person I’ve met.” How can you not get along with someone who will stroke your ego like that?

After a long while, he had to go, but we exchanged numbers and I hope that we will get together and talk again soon. Maybe I’ll invite him to my dinner party on Sunday. It’s so interesting to get to know so many different kinds of people in my travels. It’s where my passion for traveling stems. I’m never going to stop!