Hi My Name is Sean, and I'm an addict...

What's that old saying?

"Monkey see, monkey do", right?

A couple of years ago, when I was at a different job I had the opportunity to go to California for a training class. I was stoked because I had never been to California prior, and thought it would be a cool place to visit. Besides, at the time it was maybe Feb/March so escaping the Detroit weather for a couple of days sounded like a pretty sweet deal.

Originally I was supposed to be going with my team lead at the time, but a prior engagement would delay him, and so he wouldn't be arriving until the next day.

It was a bit awkward for me at first as I had never really spent significant time one on one with my team lead before. In fact when I was hired for the position I was living in Chatham, Ontario at the time working as a co-op student for Siemens VDO and so when I had my interview, it was all done over the phone. I never at all had any face to face interviews with anyone, which I imagine is quite unheard of for anyone right out of University. Anyways, over the next day or two I was witness to something truly remarkable. My team lead would consume espresso by the bunches, I'm talking like 4 shots at a time and it wasn't even mixed in anything. This was 4 shots of espresso straight up. I had never seen anything like this before, it always seemed like when he had it in his system he was just switched on intellectually. I remember going to Starbucks after one of the classes and listening to him just go off on what he's done with SNMP and how cool it really was. If I wouldn't have known that it was the espresso talking, I would have been fully convinced that he had some sort of attention deficit disorder.

That night we ended up going out for dinner at Red Robin (which was another first for me...it's quite good by the way), it was also quite convenient as it was right near the hotel we were staying at. So anyways, after dinner we had a drink, and then that turned into another drink and then eventually I found myself face to face with an old friend...Wild Turkey. I hadn't seen the 'turkeler' for a few years and was surprised that he actually found it there. Anyways that night was honestly one of the best night's I've had and still is. I wasn't drunk, but I was definitely feeling very talkative and very open. It was great because I had some of the best conversation that one could have. We talked about everything really, from work to some very deep personal conversation. I'm convinced that night we went into Red Robin as colleagues and left as good friends. The only problem with it, was the next day our flight was to leave LAX at like 7am. Not knowing what the traffic would be like going into LA the next day, we decided it would be best to leave for the airport at like 4:30am or something crazy like that.

When we finally got to our gate and had about an hour or so to spare, I decided that I was going to try my hand at Starbucks for the first time in my life. My first drink ever was a Cinnamon Dolce Latte, I don't know if I could pick a fancier drink if I tried. Anyways the one shot of espresso that was in there, got me going pretty good. It was like a second wind, I remember getting all sort of different ideas that related to work and was pretty impressed with this drink had given me. Since that day, it's as if I am popeye and espresso is my spinach...I went from 1 shot drinks, to 2 shot drinks and now have settled on a triple long espresso con panna. In fact the title of this blog stems from my love of Starbucks, as on the sides of each cup there is a "The Way I See it" quote.

So this habit that I have is definitely one I am glad I picked up. My only regret is that I didn't discover it sooner as I am quite sure it would have been a big help those days that I used to spend studying in the library at university for 12-16 hours a day (what can I say, I'm a perfectionist).