In the INTERMISSION blog, I said that my young friend asked me if he could (build a cafe) too. I didn’t want to say to the youngster, “you have to kill yourself..”, but a higher age audience, such as Cafe WIM true and honourable Guests in the 80s and 90s, may be amused to hear a list on “how to kill yourself.” A few items that made the short list,
Reality Check:
— operating capital that has to be repaid with interest;
— reserve sq ft to buy or rent;
— furniture, equipment, tools, decorative ambience-setting interior decorating, tables, chairs. More or less things you’d like for your own house, but you sleep on a rice-mat;
— your own house has no t.v., saving 7 – 800.00 per year, or more;
— you have no car; saving $ 5.000.00 or more per year. Food is brought-in by bicycle with big rear-wheel carrier and side bags;
— you drink water; using a diet that centers on carrots and sole fish;
— you avoid the opposite sex. You want to proceed but take no risk;
— you shave with a ‘One-Time-Only” razor-blade for a year;
— you will write calming, soothing, accommodating letters to your next-door neighbour who hassles refined, elegant, glamorous working Staff and in fits of jalousy threatens a hostile take-over;
— you will deal with Inspectors, and spend time on up-dating courses of sorts;
— you will play chess that you know litle about so Guests win by default and feel good;
— you will arrange that Guests are entertained with (expensive)fashion shows, poetry-readings, mimes, travelling troubadour musicians, and permanent (wall-)art shows;
— you will keep an eye on walk-outs and a way to safeguard Guests payments;
— you will, I am quite sure you do far, far more than that and when you think it kills you, you begin to make money after about 7 years.
— you discover that THE WORLD tippy-ioes in: officers in Afganistan drug rings, shadows on the run for the FBI, post-graduate purpe haired hippies next to high government dignitaries, people who come-in on a whim (h ? ), but then decidedly on purpose (Joseph Maingot LLD.)
— you will find yourself, shortly after you thought this would kill you, mentioned in The New York Times, Telegraaf International, Michelin Guid, get recognized outside Canada, even a lady in the Secretariat of the Cathedral, shouting, “oh,the bikini shows, delightful.”
You see your future spead-out if you have the advantage of being a Dutchman and mold all this to fit “a touch-of-Dutch.” Succulent details of cafe ownership that is guided by distant parents who added from birth a touch of Manners Power, will come-out in book-form in October 1916.
Try to sleep well.