one of my favorite things to do of all time, as I'm sure others can attest as well, is to people watch. Perhaps because it distracts me from what I should actually be doing at the moment, like reading a sociology textbook that I have yet to open. But needless to say, there is something overwhelmingly satisfying about watching others go about their day. At the moment I am sitting in a coffee shop with many others who I know nothing about. Yet, for some reason we were all brought to this very place at this exact moment. Its funny how we can know absolutely nothing about each other but somehow something can connect us, in some way. In this case, a cup of coffee, or a cup of tea, but when I look around there seems to be more conversation going on then actual coffee/tea drinking. I took a sociology class a couple semesters ago that studied the concept of popular culture. Through the course we studied the concept of "going out for coffee" and what it actually means. When discussing, we concluded that going out for coffee isn't so much about the subject of coffee anymore but rather the subject of company and conversation. In conjunction, being a popular culture class and all, we also discussed how coffe itself has been completely transformed into a commodity and how it has been branded to negotiate and re-negotiate meaning through the different settings it situates. Take Tim Hortons and Starbucks for example. The two companies both acquire most of their capital dollars on selling the steaming black liquid that we all stand far too long in line for. However, the feeling you get when you step into the two places is completely different. If you walk into a Tim Hortons you are provided with an image of employees in beige khaki uniforms, brown and white painted walls and the smell of comfort baked cooking. Time Hortons embodies the comforts of home - a feeling of warmth and a place where you always know what you are going to get when you order it. It provides a traditional, simple menu and easy decision process for the customer. Starbucks on the other hand is very much the opposite of all Tim Hortons embodies. Starbucks offers th consumer an upscale, trendy environment with more choices on the menu than one should have. It has turned coffee into what seems to be, an individualistic experience where consumers can customize and create their own drinks, original to their own tastes - non fat, fat, soy, skim, sugar free, half foam, no foam... and the list goes on. Both Tim Hortons and Starbucks have successfully created two seperate environments for their consumers to sip their steaming cups in whichever environment they choose and both have branded cofee in two seperate and distinctful ways. Whichever place the consumer chooses to fill his/her cup is up to them, but what is important to keep in mind in all of this is that we shouldn't be blinded by the label of the coffee we are drinking. We should take into consideration where the coffee itself actually comes from. I am not going to get into a "drink fair trade" coffee lecture here, even though I feel it is extremely important to do so wen you can, but we should just know that there is a far greater story behind the cup of coffee we are drinking rather than just the label. This relates to my favorite part, of what I said at the beginning before I went of on this random tangent, of people watching which is that behind everyone's outer shell there is a past, a history, an experience and a story that I know aboslutely nothing about. We all share a common characteristic in that we all have a past , we all have a story and while each of our stories are different, they are extremely important to who we are. I feel, this is why we should never judge each other because we never truly know where anyone came from and what is defined in their past. All we can do is wonder where they are headed after they walk away from the moment that brought us together.