IkoStar

There was this one time I was in a shopping mall just outside Rio…. not sure how I got there, or what I was doing there, and at a bit of a loose end generally so I decided I’d better get coffee etc.

So I go to the coffee making place and say to the coffee chick, “Bonjour. Avez vous une latte si vous plais?”. “It’s ok, I’m not from Australia”.

She said something I couldn’t quite make out and looked at her friend. I said “Un latte. Il est un cup du drinky stuff”

She seem to take that on board, so I went and got a seat etc. A bit later she brought out this tiny thimble sized thing of milk, placed it in front of me and left without saying a word. It was like one of those taking-the-piss hobbit sized ones that they have on airoplanes sometimes. WTF?

Now ordinarily I would have said “Mais, Non… il ne pas un latte, il est un little thimbly thing du lait. Je wantez un coffee avec a load of lait in it… Vous comprende, un latte”

Trouble is, all the Brazillian coffee chicks look a bit like this:

Especially this one (this being an actual photo of her which I later randomly found on the internet etc), and this can complicate the coffee purchasing-process. All sorts of other variables are introduced which can cause the whole thing to become unbalanced and spin out of control.

So I smiled and sat there drinking this tiny pot of milk, pretending that’s what I wanted all the time. When I left I left a tip with money I didn’t entirely understand, but have now know to be in the region of about £300, which wasn’t entirely what I had in mind either, but there you go. What’s done is done.

I wonder if she’s still there? She was quite good looking in retrospect. The milk thing is a bit of a show-stopper though. I wonder if she was taking the piss? It’s hard to tell with some people.