What nots of a former coffee house guy

Welcome to random bon mots from a guy that used to own the best darn coffee house in Union City, CA

Friday, May 27, 2011

Health and Wellness meet

As mentioned in one of the earlier posts, we are organising a Health and Wellness meeting for the community, every 2nd Thursday of the month. Our first speaker is Marian Inciong. She and her family will be talking about her battles with breast cancer and how the family is coping now.

This is a great opportunity for the community members to interact and learn from within the community.

Start Up Tech Hub meet

There are quite a few tech start ups that use Paddy's as a location for coding, meetings and general what have you. And being the inquisitive soul that we are, we query them on their product etc. And to help some of them out, we have implemented their products at Paddy's.

It is with an intent to bring together all these like minded people, we are organising a StartUp Tech Hub meet every 3rd Saturday of the month from 2 to 4 pm. June 18th will be our first meet. Our goal is to introduce the startups to other techies, marketing folks, city and financial folks, all in all making it a perfect networking opportunity. We are planning on guest speakers from next month, so stay tuned.

Tales from the Vault

This was post the Bin Laden killing in Pakistan. Early in the morning, customer walks in, orders his drink. This being early in the morning, no other customers around. The conversation initiated by him as follows

Customer : Your country must be in mourning now
Me : Why
Customer : They killed Osama in your country
Me : No sir, that was in Pakistan, I am from India
Customer : Well, it is all the same
Me : (injecting levity and finding the conversation surreal), No sir, it is like we say, all Asians look alike
Customer : hey, those countries do not cause problems, your countries do
Me : That's not true sir. I think you are being misinformed and are being judgmental.
Customer : Well, whatever dude, just be glad we did not nuke your region out.
Me : Here is your drink Sir, have a nice day.

Needless to say, it was very disturbing and unnerving that such perceptions exist and countenance to that is met with stoic indifference. The irony of course, customer was young white male, driving a pickup truck. Now am I being stereotyping ?

Friday, May 6, 2011

Health and Wellness discussions

We are an integral part of the community and as such, we like to involve the community in various issues. One of the topics that we have contemplated for a while is having a talk by the community members of the various health issues within the community.

We will be doing this every 2nd Thursday of the month from 7 to 8 pm. We start of the series with a discussion on Breast Cancer. One of our customers who underwent breast cancer treatment will be talking and sharing her stories on Thursday June 9th, from 7 to 8 pm.

Please help us spread the word.