you not only have to love what you're doing, you have to love what you have infront of you. you've got to love your equipment. a blender's broken, you've gotta feel a little something. your jigger's missing? miss it! got to love the drinks. yeah, some drinks suck. like they really suck. but you've gotta love what you're doing. there are ways to make it better. though i was trained to be a robot, by doing drinks by the bible, occasionally i found time to do something creative. by mixing 'expired' ingredients to form a sensational concoction or to 'modify' certain drinks. of course, it was considered 'illegal', but of course by now you know that words in apostrophes are not what they really are. you've got to love the ingredients. take a spoon. taste everything. you'll then know what gives the drink that flavor. it also gives you a good idea of what can go together and what can't. and then you've got to love your mis-en-place. your mis-en-place is everything. it shows how ready you are for a war that might begin. every chef has his mis-en-place, stocked up to his preference and arranged to his comfort. it's the same when you're a barista, cause you know that without it, you're a headless chicken. you're mis-en-place should be right infront of you, fresh, stocked, and should give you a certain soothing orgasmic feeling whenever you look at it. i remember always having my mis-en-place ready. and i always remember getting a headache when someone re-arranged the mis-en-place. damn, even the word mis-en-place sounds nostalgic.

there were times when i had to drop the milk jug and pass it to someone else and offer my assistance in orientating him or her around the bar. and more often than not has it burned and crashed. and by that i am referring to the hopes of the barista in training. it was terrible. it's not easy to actually teach someone. especially if you've got no patience. i didn't have much of patience at that time and i would just be lashing out at the poor souls. it was good and i loved it. i wasn't the greatest but at least you knew something. and a little knowledge over something can sometimes make you ignorant over other stuff. i saw all kinds of weird, funny and sometimes just plain dumb things over my years of watching new baristas train. yoghurts got all icy and over produced as it was confused with the tea freezes. countless amounts of milk got spilt over the bar. a blender top even got into the blender - while blending!! milk got burnt. sometimes you'll witness the occasional milk 'explosion' from the milk jug, when the steam wand wasn't placed properly. glasses, sometimes filled with drinks, falling into the ice bin. once someone actually added hot water to the wasabi mix and that caused the entire bar area to stink. and it was really unbearable. people mixing up the espresso beans with the premium coffee beans. preparing iced coffee base with the wrong beans. i could go on. but when all of these is happening, and you're the one looking over, it just keeps working on your nerves. and then eventually you find yourself blowing up. and then they start crying. many people cry. stress. some can't handle memorising all the drinks recipes. some can't handle the number of drinks coming out. some can't handle the pressure of being the one responsible for the purchased products by the customers. and some just can't handle it. period.

you learn new things everyday. you're constantly developing your skills. how much faster can you get a drink out while making it a better cup than the previous one. your cloth always in hand to wipe the cups. your attention to detail on the garnish. the ability to give the drink that extra oomph. that extra attention. just that small bit is able to do a little more. the more you are behind the bar, the more you put yourself at this drive to do it even better, than there's never a more beautiful sight. a barista becoming an artist, with the way of making every drink something beautiful. a work of pure art. i remember my first time at attempting latte art. it looked horrible. the heart at which i was aiming for looked like a retarded cherry. but it was a step. the first step. a barista also will look more graceful. a new barista will always look clumsy, ridiculously spinning around in circles, looking for something he might actually not need in the first place. but the more you actually stay behind the bar, you look more professional. you shuffle, slide or reach out to get what you need. no need to spin around, you know where everything is and you know what you need. i remember i was reasonably good, quickly getting out the drinks, trying to put a little finesse in everything i did and every move i made. i saw how the other baristas did it, and some of them looked so graceful, so flexible, it was practically watching poetry in motion. no sense of panic in their face. no sense of worry. and stuff always came out fast and beautiful. even faster than the guy in the other bar panicking and rushing, worrying about what the customer will do if he doesn't send out that drink. there is a certain magic in barista-ing. and once you've got it, you've got it.