So we’ve been living in Dauphin for nearly a week now, and while I noticed this in Dauphin, this is not a statement about Dauphin. It is a statement about the North American obsession with mediocrity.
Sarah and I spent a week in Como, Italy where I attended XP 2007, a software conference. Part of the Italy experience was the beautiful coffee, notably espresso and cappuccino. If you’ve never had the European coffee experience, I will say that it is marked by one major philosophical difference from my everyday experience at home: quality over quantity. Specifically, an Italian cappuccino is perhaps 20% the size of what Starbucks sells, and there is almost literally no way to compare the flavor. The closest I can get is the difference between coffee from a standard drip coffeemaker and coffee from the Aeropress. You simply have to experience it to relate.
So I was walking past 7/11 here in Dauphin and saw a sign for the “SLURPuccino… where the SLURPEE meets cappuccino.” I nearly fell over. This is what’s wrong with my fellow North Americans: they’d rather have a lot of a mediocre experience than a small amount of a superior one. That’s not original; I read it somewhere on the web, but can’t remember where and am too lazy to find it. Some blog somewhere. It’s true.
I’d rather have a small amount of a superior experience, thanks. No SLURPuccino for me.
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