Happy Holidays from Chicago Coffee!

Best White Elephant Gift

I may be slightly biased but I never seen a white elephant gift as great as this one.

The creator of this excellent gift spent hours modeling a poem after Martin Luther King Jr.'s " I have a Dream" speech about Chicago Coffee and it's "American Boss"entitling it "I Have a Cup of Coffee."

New Years Eve Party & Chicago Coffee 2nd Anniversary

Click Image for Event Details!

Chicago Coffee Holiday Events and Store Hours

December 25th

Closed for Christmas Day

December 31st

New Years Eve

&

Chicago Coffee's 2nd Anniversary Party

(6pm to midnight)

January 1st

Special store hours

(noon- 9 pm)

Starting for 2010

New Store Hours

Mon- Sat 9am-9pm

Sun 12pm- 9pm

Holiday Gift Ideas

1 lb of Holiday Blend Coffee

&

any size Chicago Coffee Mug

¥100

Chicago Gift Cards

Buy 4 Get 1 Free

Any Denomination- min ¥50

Traveling Salesman- Rekindled love for fireplaces

3 cities in 2 days and all I can think about are fireplaces. Everbody has fireplaces up here but nobody is using them.


Traveling on a budget certaintly has it's frosty points. No heat when it dips down into the low 30's at night or showers where the water hovers just above freezing. You will never see me move as quickly as I do running to throw on clothes after a shower when those two things combine for a blizzard-like effect.

These are all the more reason for the use of perfectly good fireplaces. Most shop owners say the season for it hasn't arrived yet. But if freezing isn't rationale to start using a wood burning fire then I am afraid that season will never come.

Give me a latte, a good book, and a wood burning fireplace and I will brave as many cold showers as you like.

- Posted via iPhone

Traveling Salesman- the Good Idea

Once in a while an idea comes along that grabs your attention and won't let go. It's the kind of idea that keeps your brain churning late at night despite your body's plea to just go to sleep. For a traveling salesman maybe the idea can simply simmer on the back-burner but for a traveling entrepenuer this kind of idea is what makes all the other failed ideas fade into oblivion. It makes you feel like even for a few fleeting moments that this is the idea that simply can't fail. It's 2 am and my only canvas is the darkened ceiling of my hotel room. Welcome to my life.


- Posted via iPhone

Traveling Salesman- Day 2

Day 2

6:03 am - Struggling to get out of bed because it dipped into the 20's last night and there is no heat where I'm staying.

6:57 am - Ready to go early today since our bus leaves at 8 am for Lugu lake. My derriere still hasn't recovered from yesterday but no time for resting. I did have time to enjoy a little Monday Night Football and a french presses Mt Kilimanjaro Blend (which I had to backtrack 30 minutes yesterday because I forgot to grab it on the way out. Why backtrack for a bag of coffee? You may asking. Well I at a point in my life where I can't possibly leave my coffee needs up to random chance and the hope that someone is serving something fresh or real). I am definitely thankful for the little things though. Like being able to watch American Football live despite being thousands of miles from the actualy game. In fact is there someone watching it further away than I am?


7:35 am - Out the door and off to find the bus. The trek through the mountains will take anywhere from 7 hours to 11 hours depending on fallen rocks and/or other acts of nature.

10:45 am - A few hours out and making good progress. Not sure it will really take even 7 hours as I keep checking in on the map on my iphone and it doesn't look that far. The picture below is from the side of the road at a "rest stop." A "rest stop" here is simply a Chinese outhouse and few local sellers offering some fruits and vegetables from the trip. If you look carefully you can see the winding road. I know my Mom would not have been able to make this trip with me. Way too many mountain passes.

1:30 pm - Lunch break for the driver. I hope I am wrong but I have a bad feeling that the driver may have had a beer at lunch as his personality has completely changed and the last 30 minutes of the trip made me feel like he all of sudden decided to get there as fast as possible.

3:02 pm - The secret is out. As we stop for a 1 hour break to rent canoes on the lake, I realized that the trip only takes 6 hours but the driver gets some kickbacks from these types of places for making planned stops.

3:35 pm- After asking our business acquaintances to come pick us up at the canoe rental place we have finally made it to Lugu Lake. Absolutely beautiful. Crystal clear water completely surrounded by mountains on all sides. Lugu lake is home to one of the last untouched and unpolluted resources in China and also to a matriarchal society. The women of the Mosuo people are in charge of all production and management and marriage is non-existentent as men float from woman to woman until the woman tires of them or as long as the woman likes.

- Posted via iPhone

Gotta Love the Chinese Media

You can't go wrong with a re-enactment of the Tiger Woods incident. You just can't.

Life of the traveling salesman

Tripping out to Lugu lake this week to explore the possibility of bringing my roasted coffee to the far stretches of Yunnan province. Although I'm not really a traveling salesman but I thought to blog about this experience might be interesting. Besides, something crazy always happens to me.


Day one entails a 7 hour drive to Lijiang, a city north of Kunming, and half-way to Lugu lake.


- Posted via iPhone