How Life Became Grande

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I just flew Singapore to Washington via Tokyo, and I’ve managed to pass 7 airport Starbucks cafés. Washington has 5.

I’ve probably mentioned before that I don’t find Starbucks coffee all that stunning. It’s not terrible, and it does the job, but I grew up in a city of great Italian coffee joints, and my preference is for a brew that knows how to assert its personality.

It’s part of the homogenisation and standardisation of our experiences, of course. The Starbucks in Singapore, Narita and Washington looked the same. They had the same menu, the same muffins, the same staff uniforms and the same coffee. There was nothing at all that was remarkable about the experience, which is exactly their intention. It would seen that we’ve been weaned off extraordinary or exceptional experiences, taught to fear the unknown. We’ve traded adventure for certainty.

This trip, we’re staying in private homes that we’ve located through a private BnB site called AirBnB. We’ve just had our first night in a gorgeous room in the 1904 house of Don and Nancy.

Nancy’s work focuses on positive psychology and coaching and Don retired a few years ago and now organises groups of volunteers to go to central American countries to work in communities making life better. His work is focused on how small actions can make big differences and he’s off to El Salvador on Thursday for 6 weeks with 15 others to do just that.

So, here we are in a loving, beautiful home, with two amazing people who radiate warmth, openness and goodness.

It was only a couple of months ago we were in Brunei, staying at the Sheraton. That experience was so sanitised that at one stage I came out of the bathroom, swearing to Yang that we’d had exactly the same bathroom at a different time in a different country. Same tiles, same fittings, right down to the placement of the toiletries.

I already know what’s going to happen to my memory of Brunei. It’s going to fade fast to a vague recollection that I’ve been in the country. I might remember the mosque, or the amazing water village, but I won’t remember anyone there or anything about the room I slept in.

I’ve only been here for a day, so I’ll have to tell you what impression this trip left on me in a few weeks when it’s had time to settle. But already I know that it’s not going to be the forgettable experience that Brunei was.

Which makes me wonder what we’ve traded, in our new desire for predictability and certainty. Sure, we’ve exchanged quirky flavours that we might or might not like, the chance that our mattress will be too soft or the room we sleep in hasn’t been through a 17 point quality control checklist before we arrived, but have we also traded-in some chunk of our future memories?

pic by creativespark

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Tags: airbnb, franchises, homogenisation, Memory, positive psychotherapy, starbucks, washington