The dregs.

The Java ghost haunts me still.

Back at my old office, I had a coworker whom I absolutely despised. You know that saying that your biggest opp is always some 56-year old woman in accounting? Yup, that was my life. For the sake of this story, let’s call her Ms. Vicks.

Despite our massive differences, Ms. Vicks and I did have one thing in common: we both liked coffee.

Now, saying that you like coffee suggests a wide range of meanings. To some people, coffee is a salted caramel frappuccino at Starbucks which probably has more sugar than espresso. To others, it’s the familiar, thick scent of 3-in-1 that always smells better than it tastes. To me and Ms. Vicks, coffee was the office’s single pourover device stacked on top of an old mug, filled with grounds of questionable origin.

Like this, but uglier. And just one.

In this pourover, we would find solidarity amidst the bickering of how and why things should be done. In this singular drip coffee sometime between 10AM-12NN, we would achieve inter-collegiate peace.

However, unlike me, Ms. Vicks was unwilling to buy her own grounds. I had a steady stream from gifts of Christmases gone by, its staleness overlooked by the fact that it was free, so I always had my own stockpile in the office. She, however, did not seem to think coffee grounds a necessary expense, leading to the question that would greet me whenever I ran through the motions of heating water in the electric kettle. The signal that it was time for a cuppa.

“Sa akin nalang yung latak?” (Can I have the dregs?)

Yes, Ms. Vicks was essentially asking for the last bits of extracted coffee after I’d poured my own cup. … Well.

Who was I to deny her this? It’s not like I’d use it for myself anyway. Thus, obedient servant am I, I’d take another cup and dutifully transfer the drip. I’d pour water down the filter. I’d bring already-dead beans back to life with water alone.

The “coffee” that would drip down from it would predictably be light brown, not unlike the feebleness of a new branch. The cup would sit beside my own, darkened by its own depth. Looking back on it, I wonder what joy she derived from the dregs. Whether it pumped her mornings clean of any leftover sleepiness. Whether it was just the zing of the bitter aftertaste. Whether it was about the routine more so than the function.

Despite our differences, I wouldn’t withhold a new cup for her if she asked. I’d replace the filter, pour out grounds from my stockpile, and give her a properly made drip coffee, but she always insisted on the copy. The mirage. The suggestion of coffee.

It felt like settling, but she always seemed happy to have it. Perhaps there’s something to be said here about seizing whatever opportunities come your way, but I’d like to think of it more as a story about age. About how memories are sticky and demand to be remembered. About how cups of coffee are routines passed on by parents, and grandparents, and great-grandparents gone by. About how these things live on in us, even in shadows, even in muted delights.

I’m too much of a coffee snob to ever ask for the dregs, but the life I build sometimes feels like a copy of the life I used to have. Even after moving to Singapore, I find myself running through the same routines. I buy the same chips, I have the same hobbies, I pull the same kinds of friends I did back home. The loves that you’ve lost always come back to you, I guess.

It’s here where I think about Ms. Vicks’ cup, the one that I’d filled with the latak of my own. Light enough to catch the hostile office lighting in its centre, dyeing white into an unflattering piss-yellow. Too dark to be tea, too light to be coffee. Some Goldilocks monstrosity of “just right”. Just enough grounds to be a java ghost.

Maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself, but I think Ms. Vicks was onto something. To her, that cup was just as good as the real thing. The dregs of coffee. The dregs of life.

Hm. Same same, but different, no?