Ok since I don't have much time, I'm not going to finish the Cool stuff since it takes a while to find those links. In fact I woke up really late (at 7 AM) today so I really don't have much time for any sort of real rant. So I've chosen something from my long list of things to rant about (yes I have a list... it used to be in my head but sleep is such a good amnesiac (thanks, Jim).. so writing it down is the only option.)

Anyway, today's rant: Starbucks. And the fact that they're everywhere. Now, I may be old, close onto 20, but I remember when I left the US at age 12, that there weren't that many Starbucks. No siree, the local coffeeshop was still the place to go... and a coffee and donuts was very much the norm in the mornings (not for me of course). When I left HK, five years later, the first maybe 5 Starbucks had just opened there and Starbucks still couldn't compete with the Pacific Coffee Company, the local equivalent. Now, there are about a million Starbucks here (so it seems)... pretty much like any American street. Now it rivals McDonald's. Now, as a sidenote, the mad expansion of McD's makes sense in HK, whereas that of Starbucks is still a mystery. For McD's, Hong Kong has one of the cheapest McDonalds in the world (The Economist publishes an annual Big-Mac index so I know). Anyway, the point is, a big mac here costs less (in US dollars) than it does in the US but the average income is about the same (if not higher) here. So McD's are popular. Compare that to Starbucks which costs the same (pretty much) in both places.
But I'm not complaining about Starbucks, I like it... It offers a good place to sit down and meet up with friends (because goodness knows I hate the movies) and to talk. And I do that talk thing really really well. In fact I never stop. (You might have noticed.). I just want to know what makes them so successful. Is it their coffee.... really?. Or, the choice... the fact that you can have coffee like you can have a car, with all the right options, power windows, CD changer, sun roof ... just the way you like it. Or the fact that its NOT a drive through... so you still have to get out of your car and make the walk from your parking spot to the corner Starbucks and back to the office... a time to prep yourself for the day... Or is it a carry over from the dot-com craze ... when that's where rich, young execs would conduct million-dollar business transactions. I don't know but it's a phenomenon worth investigating, in my opinion.

OK... got to run...

--C.