"One Café Frappe for me… with ice cream please” has been my record over all of this week… repeated atleast 3-4 times everyday, what with my recurring visits to CCD… Having come back to Mumbai after a long time (4 weeks I mean!!!), had to catch up with quite a few friends and colleagues over chats, conversations, gossips and much more… So every time I wanted to have a longish conversation with someone, it started with “how about a coffee?”, "lets catch up over a coffee"… and then CCD happens to be a native choice (with one in the same building as IBM… and another opposite to office building and yet another a few blocks down the road)… IBM having started charging we employees for every cup of machine coffee… through some smart card concept (yet to figure out whats smart about the smart card or even the smart planet!!! ridiculous I find these)… only helps make the choice easier…

Over the years, these ‘official’ discussions normally happened over a cutting chai… they still do… Didn’t realize how and when this graduation from ‘a cutting chai’ to ‘a café frappe’ happened to me really… given that I am neither a tea nor a coffee person… these are only means of ‘networking’ and ‘socializing’ during office hours (so what if my weight gets heavier and others’ pockets get lighter!!)… Nevertheless, the form or brand of drink doesn’t really matter as long as it eases your nerves and alleviates you to a settled state of mind… Have heard beer and the likes do the trick better, but having them during office hours could be violation of one or more of the countless ‘conduct guidelines’ that we have… and hence graduation for now has been restrained only till a café frappe…

This week has been good… many interesting deliberations over coffee and calories!! And promises of many more on my return to Mumbai… looking forward to all such uplifting discussions… and along with graduating to café frappes, looking to also graduate some networks to good friendships…