Where did everybody go?

I'm not saying that Vancouver is now a ghost town - although, with Halloween approaching it would be topical - but where did everybody go?

I was in my local coffee shop enjoying coffee yesterday, and I almost had the whole place to myself! Other than a couple at a table over there, and a woman and her dog at a table out there, about 3 people who came in and got their coffee to go, and 3 people who worked there... the place was empty. How very odd.

The streets aren't exactly bustling either. I was off doing errands before I stopped for coffee, and I ran into very few people (and bounced off most of them knuck, knuck, knuck... tee, yes I know that's a bad joke, humour me, I need more people about for something more stimulating).

I'm sure during the Olympics this will all change for a few weeks, but Vancouver in the winter is really quite empty. Without the tourists it's very quiet, you can just hear the rain coming down...

Would you like a pack of cards?

While sitting in a coffee shop recently I witnessed 2 very different groups of people.

One group was a couple. She had a little lap top open and was busy doing something with it. He had a cell phone or blackberry, and was busy texting on it. They both looked like they were in their 30s. They were at the same table but, other than a quick "thank you" for getting the coffee, they weren't talking.

The other group had 3 people in it, a couple of men and one woman. They were playing cards. Yes, cards, the pieces of paper with numbers and either hearts, diamonds, clubs or spades on them. How old-fashioned! And they were all likely in their 20s - not old codgers! They were having a great time talking and laughing with each other.

One group busy communicating with people they weren't physically with, the other communicating with people they were right next to. One group with no apparent emotional excitement, the other having a great time.

We could go into a whole discussion about technology making the world a cold, impersonal place... or... would you like a pack of cards?

Is that rude, or just end-of-term staring into the distance?

I was on the UBC campus yesterday on my way to an appointment when I stopped to have some coffee and lunch. (oooh, she stopped for coffee, that's unusual - I think she may have an addiction going here...) And I was wondering if a woman in the cafe was being rude, or just trying to avoid doing the term paper she was working on.

The front of the cafe had windows that could be fully opened up, and since it was such a gorgeous day they were wide open, so I sat at a table facing outside for the view. There were a few other occupied tables, most with a single person facing outside as well, but there was one woman at a single table who was facing inside.

And she was staring at all the people who were facing the other way. Or was she?

She had a very thick book with her - Don Quixote - and a lot of paper with hand written notes and a computer. Aha! I recognize that, it's a term paper in it's primeval form, on it's way to becoming an end-of-term must... finish... this... damned...paper assignment. I remember those!

So she probably wasn't staring at other people to be rude, she was just desperately trying to avoid the term paper!

I remember being a student. It was great to be able to reduce the world into something to stare at when trying to avoid term papers. But, when you leave school, you have to avoid staring at strangers in case they get upset and think it's a challenge they have to respond to... similar to why you don't stare into the eyes of predatory animals unless you want to be attacked by them.

But for now, in a cafe on campus (right beside a great pub... I love that campus, it would have been so much fun to study there) a student can get away with end-of-term staring into the distance, and at other people.

Life will get more complicated later, so she should enjoy it now! I envy the place she is at in life right now.

Isn't that called "loitering"?

So I was in a coffee shop this morning having a cup of coffee (yes, I do a lot of that), and there was a young Asian couple sitting beside me. The were talking and ... not having coffee. They were also ... not drinking anything else. They were also ... not eating anything. They were just sitting and talking.

So, is it just me, or isn't that called "loitering"?

This couple were there before I got there. I sat down and drank my coffee and read my magazine and got increasingly curious about when they were going to leave.

I remember working with people who couldn't even think about sitting down and enjoying their coffee, it was always something they grabbed and ran with. They were exhausting people who spent much of their lives convincing the world that they were desperately important and needed to run about and stick their noses into everything or nothing would ever get done. As if.

There was a lull in the couple's conversation. It was not in English, so I have no idea what they were talking about. I figured they were about to leave. They stayed sitting and apparently thought of something else to talk about.

I've worked with people who figured all the coffee shop was a stage, and they were on fire with their animated conversation. Entertaining, but spillage can be a problem here.

The couple's conversation was not very animated. I'm sure he was considering leaving, but she didn't seem to have any desire to go.

From what I could tell, everyone else in the coffee shop who had sat down before me was gone now, and I had just finished my coffee, so I got up to leave. But, really, I was still curious about the couple, so I hit the washroom before leaving. On my way out ... they were still there.

There are a lot of homeless people in downtown Vancouver. This couple was obviously not among them. The homeless people would probably love to have a comfy warm chair to sit in for hours and just talk without having to purchase coffee for the privilege. They would undoubtably be thrown out of the coffee shop for illegal loitering if they tried this. So why didn't this couple get thrown out? I'm not about to jump on a soap box and rail at social injustices, but shouldn't that couple have at least considered that what they were doing was not socially acceptable, if not a wee bit illegal?

So where am I now?

This is the question I asked myself several times today as I wandered through the SFU Burnaby campus. I think I went through several buildings, but the all looked the same. They WERE all the same. They were all the same 1960s, Cold War, we're expecting a nuclear bomb to explode overhead at any time now, concrete bomb-shelter bunkers.

Someone kindly pointed out a triangle on the wall inside one building that specified N. There are apparently also E, S, and W. Compass points! I thought it was a warning of some chemicals being stored, although I couldn't remember which chemical N was.

And all of the floor tiles were coming loose. And all the displayed art was monochromatic. And I only saw 2 places to get coffee, and they were from the same company (not Starbucks, oddly).

And the millions of stairs!! This campus is openly hostile to people with handicaps who can't do stairs.

Oh how I longed for my old UofA campus. Where you could give people directions by saying “It's the red brick building” or “It's the building with the ornate pillars” or “It's the building that looks like a turtle” or “It's the big yellow building”. You didn't get lost in a sea of gray concrete and stairs at the UofA, every building has it's own character and charm. (And it helps if you're stumbling home after a few drinks to know where you are by the different buildings. Yep, my place is just a few more steps, around the corner from the blue building... so much easier.)

The SFU Burnaby campus is used by a lot of science fiction TV and Movie shows. Those futuristic places where everyone wears gray, no one wears any colour, and even the most far flung places in the universe have millions of damned STAIRS!

I've heard people will either love or hate the SFU Burnaby campus, no neutral positions are taken. I will go with the latter position.

Wouldn't a map of coffee shops on the SFU campus make sense?

I'm studying a map of the SFU Burnaby map because I will be at a conference there next week – yep, on top of a mountain in the middle of... air, lots of air... we wouldn't want to be distracted by anything interesting now would we?

So I'm looking for a place on campus to sit and have some coffee.

I will be doing a trial run of the route tomorrow morning and, after a long bus ride, I'm going to want some coffee. So I'm looking at various maps from the SFU website – mostly pretty maps, not much useful detail here. I have one map up that has icons for all of the... phones... on campus. Uhuh, I can see students needing phones, those students who don't have cell phones anyway... all 2 of them.

So a useful place on all University campuses to sit and consume coffee while taking in the view is the Student's Union Building (SUB). From a quick search on “Students Union Building” on the SFU website... they don't have one.?!? They are debating whether they need one. Answer: Yes, you do, build one now, join all the other Universities, be normal! So I have to look elsewhere for coffee.

In – or near – a city like Vancouver, wouldn't it make sense to have a map of campus with all of the coffee shops on it? Yes, I am assuming there are such things on the SFU campus. I can't imagine getting a degree without coffee for fuel, I drank mountains of it when I was getting my degree at the UofA.

Instead of the little phone icons, couldn't they replace them with coffee bean icons for all the coffee shops? Wouldn't that be useful?

So I will cross my fingers and go up the mountain tomorrow to see if they have any coffee. Not an expedition I expected to make...