{"id":69,"date":"2003-08-12T03:40:00","date_gmt":"2003-08-12T09:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/?p=69"},"modified":"2003-08-12T03:40:00","modified_gmt":"2003-08-12T09:40:00","slug":"nescafe-cafe-melrose-arch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/nescafe-cafe-melrose-arch\/","title":{"rendered":"Nescafe Cafe, Melrose Arch"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 class=\"date-header\">Tuesday, August 12, 2003<\/h2>\n<p><i>Service: * * *<br \/>\n<br \/>Food: * * *<br \/>\n<br \/>Ambience: * *<br \/>\n<br \/>Babe Count: * * * *        *<\/i>       <\/p>\n<p>Jacqui and I have just spent an hour or so at Foo Moon, and the smell of smoke is heavy in our clothes. Hans, a colleague of hers, has just announced his engagement to Cheryl, and we&#8217;ve eaten free sushi, and we&#8217;ve smoked other peoples&#8217; cigarettes involuntarily, and now we&#8217;re spending a tiny bit of love time together. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m showing her my devious spreadsheet.       <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve just come from Linden, where I put in an offer on a flat. I&#8217;ve decided to go the property-mogul route for now. So I&#8217;m looking for investment flats. The one I&#8217;m after is near Red Pepper, and I want to let it out to someone in the movie, advertising or tv industries. <\/p>\n<p>My spreadsheet allows me to make an unemotional decision about how much my offer price can be in order for the loan to be self-amortizing. I don&#8217;t want to spend any of my own money on the place. It must work for its living, and yield me lots and lots of hassle-free wealth. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Your decaff coffee,&#8221; I say to the waiter, &#8220;is it filter coffee, or is        it instant Nescafe from a jar?&#8221;       <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No!&#8221; he says. &#8220;It&#8217;s real filter coffee.&#8221;       <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Are you sure?&#8221; I say. &#8220;Cos this IS the Nescafe Cafe, and I&#8217;m going to        send it back if it comes from the jar.&#8221;       <\/p>\n<p>Jacqui also opts for the decaff, seeing as the waiter is adamant that        it&#8217;s real coffee.       <\/p>\n<p>He brings us our order. I&#8217;m having the fruit cheesecake. Jacqui&#8217;s going for the bran muffin. Not bad stuff. Delicious, actually. And the coffee arrives. And it&#8217;s darn good! Definitely not from a jar. Recommendable. <\/p>\n<p>So, anyway, the poor old woman who owns the flat I&#8217;m keen on, the one who&#8217;s asking R195 000, the poor old woman with burst varicose veins and two crutches, the one who has to move in with her daughter cos she can&#8217;t cope on her own anymore, the one who almost offered me a cup of tea when I visited the flat to examine it but didn&#8217;t cos the milk was off and she couldn&#8217;t afford to buy more, the very same old woman is facing my extremely generous offer of R107 000. And I say it&#8217;s generous because it&#8217;s a good R50 higher per square metre than the average price in the neighbourhood. <\/p>\n<p>Shame. Poor her. She has to consider my offer and either turn it down or accept it. I&#8217;ll know on Friday at noon. And if you know anyone who wants to rent in Linden, let me know. I&#8217;ll give them a good price. <\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\">Roy Blumenthal is a writer, director, artist, and <a href=\"http:\/\/snipurl.com\/visualfacilitator\">visual facilitator<\/a>. Hire him to make pictures of your meetings or workshops.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tuesday, August 12, 2003 Service: * * * Food: * * * Ambience: * * Babe Count: * * * * * Jacqui and I have just spent an hour or so at Foo Moon, and the smell of smoke &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/nescafe-cafe-melrose-arch\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Nescafe Cafe, Melrose Arch<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p521FP-17","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}