I visit my local cafe regularly. For the purposes of this post I shall call it Cafe Proximity . This place is ridiculously near by. How close is it? I occasionally think of walking to the slightly more distant cafe to give my pedometer something to do. But I don't. The nearer java-slinger plays a steady stream of Generation X hits like Spandau Ballet's "True" and (perhaps as a result) it is less busy and more in need of my custom.  The farther joint, which I will now dub Espresso Hipster , is going gangbusters. It is populated by young mums who have just fast-walked the entire suburb and parked their strollers three deep on the footpath outside. I can't be dealing with their kind of vigorous energy on a Sunday morning, nor do I wish to be the only person on the premises not wearing yoga pants. So I slump in a Cafe Proximity plastic chair and listen to the likes of Cold Chisel and Carly Simon whilst waiting for a small latte that will be delivered with a comp...

Zeitgeisters, As you know, we are nothing if not deep at Mr Trivia’s tract. When I am not pretending to be Barry Bostwick or playing Cat Stevens' hit Father and Son on my work computer to impress people with my sensitivity, I am making up lists of my favourite things. Currently, these are my few of my Favourite Things… 1.Coffee 2.The Internet 3.My iPod 4.My digital camera 5.Democracy Co-incidentally this turns out to be the same list as controversial ex-Western Australian Premier and lobbyist Brian Burke . Okay, democracy wasn’t on his list and his Motorola* phone was, but apart from that, the similarity is striking and merely fictional. What, friend, would currently make it on your favourite things list? Elevate The Insignificant Mr Trivia * Who knows what Burkie’s actual mobi of choice is?

Hello Zeitgeisters, If you’re an urban poseur like me, then you spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about, searching for and drinking coffee. You might even be a café habitué with your own dark corner of a local coffee house. Here in the glittering berg of Perth, Western Australia, we are blessed with some halfway decent caffeine and for that I believe we must thank the Post-World War 2 wave of European migration to Australia. See, sometimes the movement of entire populations owing to industrial-scale violence is good, because it improves the menu somewhere else in the world. Starbucks haven’t moved in here yet. Although my conspiracy theorist chums like to insist that they have, by telling me that Starbucks already own ‘Dome’ or ‘Gloria Jeans’ , but I am too damn lazy to research the truth of this statement. My point is this. Yesterday, I was at a seminar for work in the city. I was gabbing with some colleagues and in swift succession I did this: grabbed a ‘styr...