Coffee Alamid-Rarest Coffee in the World

Coffee Alamid-Rarest Coffee in the World
Originally uploaded by Gryphon Hall
found in a coffee shop in West Fairview, Quezon City

My Mother-in-law, her two sisters and I were talking about our experiences with coffee and tea. During the course of our discussions, Ærynn's Mom tried very hard to remember one particular variety of coffee, which she said was supposed to be the most expensive coffee variety in the world.

Well, of course, I was intrigued and (I must admit) a bit doubtful. I knew certain types of coffee varieties can be expensive; but I didn't know that there would be one special variety of coffee that would be much more expensive than the ones I purchase at Starbucks. Well, she said, that's because the beans are first eaten by some type of wild cat, then it passes out whole in their droppings, farmers gather them, and roast them. That's what makes them the most expensive coffee in the world. In fact, she challenged me to find out about it and I promised to do so.

Well, the most logical first place to look should have been the internet, right? Just Google it and I should have found out quickly. As it is, I actually found out about the most expensive coffee from a Philippine coffee shop; I also found out why they were so darn expensive—the Civet cat that eats the coffee cherries are endangered. For a small jar of coffee just slightly larger than an ink well, one has to fork out PhP300, that's roughly US$6.00 for what is essentially just one or two mugs of coffee. Still, it seems that even that is cheap compared to what the British have to pay for when they import the Indonesian version of Coffee Alamid, which is called Kopi Luwak. One unfortunate Britisher couldn't see the difference between normal coffee and Kopi Luwak, as he describes in his blog.

I wanted to purchase some... but as I had quit my inhuman call centre job just recently, this particular luxury is one that I find I cannot afford all of a sudden. Well... that is another story. I'm actually playing around with the idea of applying for a coffee barista job in the local coffee shop; it's lower pay, but I don't have to have recurring nightmares about Remedy, Help Desk and Avaya conking out.

Oh, and finally, I've begun to lose weight again...

Anti-illiteracy in the Philippines

I have been a teacher for less than three years, intermittently. In spite of all the feel good movies out there about how wonderful the teaching profession is, I haven't found it to be so. Take note, I said the teaching profession isn't wonderful, not teaching itself.

One of the reasons why I found that I cannot stay in the Philippine teaching profession is the "hakot" mentality in the country's literacy programs. Simply put, they don't bother so much about quality in education as long as as many children as possible are in school. Again take note, the programs are merely trying to get children into school, but that's about it. And about as many children as they can cram into classrooms and assigning them to a ridiculous teacher-to-student ratio, frequently 50 students to a teacher. Well... not quite. Actually, it's more like a hundred or more to a teacher, since we used to be given a ridiculous number of "preparations," that is, we don't just prepare for just one subject with a class of 50 students.

I have, of course, naively discussed this with my principal and my coordinator before—we need more teachers. The answer is, well, ridiculously simple: not enough funds. Of course! Why didn't I think of that? The traditional models of supply and demand is overturned. We have here a clear case of demand and with little supply (yes, believe it or not; inspite of all the Educ graduates the colleges and universities churn out each year), one would think that teachers would be paid more. The fact is that since teachers traditionally have low salaries, even thinking that teachers should be paid a lot is totally alien.

Well, some bloke from down under thinks that a profit can be made for teaching-for-profit, and he isn't talking about just money.

Believe it or not, I hate being right.jpg

Believe it or not, I hate being right.jpg
Originally uploaded by Gryphon Hall

Moblog: One of the most annoying things for me is being right. Well, of course one wants to be right; what irritates me is being right after being told repeatedly that I was actually wrong. It may be over some bit of trivia (where the annoyance is only slight), then there are those occasional times where the disagreement is about something like policy or professional know-how (where the annoyance is not only great but stressful).

However, there are those rare times that, even after I've been proven right, it is insisted that I'm still wrong, like this current situation I find myself in with an ignorant Hun.

Does God ever feel this way? He's been proven right so very often yet humans by and large still insist that their wisdom and justice is greater and better than God's-this annoys me. But what annoys me more are Christians who pervert how God really is like, making Him seem harsher and more unjust than He actually is, or worse, as one who sells prosperity and health.