Stir, stir, stir

I come from a strong culture of slackers and I am not ashamed of it. I think my whole country has a slacker gene or bug in every resident (watch that I did not say citizen because you can easily "catch" this slacker-thingamajig once you're there). We're easy-going and even our Type As are not anal like Donald Trump.

As with the practice of slacking, we have a strong affinity for all the wonderful hedonistic aspects of life especially the culinary sort. The best thing about home is that good food and drinks do not cost an arm and a leg -- the best ones are usually found in open-air food courts and on the mobile carts of hawker stalls. Gastronomy is a national past time and Anthony Bourdain has visited our cities in pursuit of our wonderful food -- we sent him away a very happy man.

To pay tribute to the frequent visits to the mamak restaurants of my youth, my friends and I now overpay our way through cups of coffee at Starbucks and Seattle's Best Coffee, both owned by Howard Schultz and gang. Coffee places don't beat the mamak but since the labour laws here are so stringent and everything closes right about when you get out of the office, the only place open to hang out in is a Starbucks (wait, I feel a Lewis Black joke coming).

Anyway, the typical stirrer found at most coffee places are thin strips of bleached out, rounded tip wood sticks. I guess those are more recyclable since they are wood (composite?). However, I was at the Starbucks on Main Street in Ann Arbor yesterday afternoon and they had the prettiest stirring sticks given out at the store. It had a tapered stem with a balled tip and the Melusine figure stamped into the hilt. It was all plastic.

If Starbucks has been closing stores and cutting jobs so aggressively, why are they giving out plastic, non-recyclable stirring sticks?

The old Englishman’s voice in my head says, “Clearly so that you may blog about it, my dear.”