cream of thoughts

The Indonesian island of Java has long been synonymous with coffee. But it’s only in the past decade or so that Indonesians have begun to wake up and smell the coffee — their own, that is.

Big changes are brewing in the country’s coffee industry, as demand from a rising middle class fuels entrepreneurship and connoisseurship.

The trend is clear at places like the Anomali Coffee shop in South Jakarta. It roasts its coffee just inside the entrance on the ground floor.

If you walk into the roasting room at just the right moment, as the heat caramelizes the sugars in the coffee beans, it smells like someone is baking cookies.

Get close to the roasting machine, and you can hear the beans snap and pop. “It is the bean expanding because of the heat of the core,” explains Anomali’s founder Irvan Helmi.

Indonesia Wakes And Up And Smells Its Own Coffee — Then Drinks It

“isn’t the feeling of being in love just beautiful? it all started out as hey i think she’s kinda cute but now it’s all like i would give up my whole life just to make her happy”

My newest 8tracks playlist: Love, and that’s all

Lover, Please Stay Nothing but Thieves

High Hopes Kodaline

Sleep On The Floor The Lumineers

Love Lana Del Rey

Just Once Shura

Someone To Stay  Vancouver Sleep Clinic

Something Just Like This The Chainsmokers & Coldplay

Let Me In Grouplove

Seeing Stars BØRNS

I must admit, this question tickled me so much I couldn’t wait to answer it.

It has rung in my head so many times; a persistent nag that drove me mad in my early teens, easing now to an occassional whisper.

It seems to presume that there is a strict dichotomy between what your head tells you to do, and what your heart demands: that often they go at odds with one another. While the head is characterized as “rational”, the heart represents “instinct” and “emotion”.

In universal terms, I will never be able to choose one to apply in unconditional precedence. Simply because, I don’t find either one superior to the other. Not every rational decision is compassionate or natural. And likewise, not everything wild and exciting is practical. This I’ve learned from my past tumbles.

Similarly, nor do I think that in a case-by-case basis, we necessarily have to choose to follow one and not the other. I think that this is a matter of blurring the lines of this so called ‘heart-head dichotomy": in other words, the rational-instinctive distinction. I argue that it is possible to rationalise an action as something that ‘your heart wants’. An action initiatied by the heart does not imply irrationality. Choosing to follow your heart can be a rational act, as long as you’ve weighed up every option equally.

So my answer to this question is twofold. If the head and heart are assumed to be mutually exclusive, I would choose neither. But neither am I dissolving the two as one and disregarding the different decision-making forces they symbolize. I am simply pondering on the fact that the answer to the question is far from straightforward.

Apologies for not having a clear-cut answer. The philosopher in me just won’t let me.