Have you ever bought something for a song, and then been led to pay for an entire opera?
It happened to me, and I’m sure you’ve experienced something similar.
A friend was moving far away, and everything in her house was for sale. Including her state-of-the-art coffee maker. Literally going for a song.
Now, if you are a connoisseur of good coffee, you’d jump at this chance. It was not the kind of machine where you buy pods or sachets, but the real thing, the one that grinds roasted beans, pushes it through a filter, and finally, what you get is a rich, dark brew whose aroma permeates the walls of your house and can be sniffed by your jealous neighbour.
Now, this particular machine was a few years old, and the friend had lost the ‘How to’ manual that comes with all things electronic. ‘Not to worry,’ she said breezily, and made me go through a quick hands-on tutorial: press this, do that, stick the mug here.
Queen of the kitchen
I lugged the thing back home, (it was not exactly light), and realised it needed a table of its own. Now a state-of-the-art machine requires a similar stand, and after many man-hours, and many more dirhams, the elegant contraption found its place on a stand befitting its status as queen of the kitchen.
Now, if you are like me, not a very ‘mechanical-minded’ person, you’d know what I mean when I say all the instructions I’d so painstakingly listened to went straight out of my head. The friend had also left by then, so there was no one I could turn to except an online manual.
After finding the model number (which was written in microscopic letters at the back) and locating the online manual, I finally learnt where to load the beans, how to fill the water compartment and switch on the machine.
On it came and then the command: CLEAN ALL PARTS AND FILTERS. I looked up the procedure, and found you needed a whole array of cleaning products specially formulated for the machine. I was not to be deterred. Sites like Amazon existed for people like me. So, after shelling out another small fortune in cleaning products, I began the onerous task.
Dear reader, let me tell you, cleaning any machine is not for the faint hearted. It looks so simple on a YouTube video or in a diagram, but it isn’t. It requires a basic engineering degree to take it apart, locate the said parts, and squirt the products into the right recesses. Reassembling the parts is another topic altogether.
After shedding copious quantities of sweat and tears, I managed to get the thing clean and ready.
The slog continued
Now for the beans.
Oh no! I’d forgotten to buy the very stuff of existence, the blood and bones needed for the machine. The next problem. What kind of beans?
Remember the story of Goldilocks and the porridge? Too hot, too cold, too sweet? Well, there are coffee beans, and there are coffee beans, and the most expensive need not necessarily mean the flavour you like the most. Another couple of days went by in trying out different kinds of beans, our humble abode smelling like an illicit coffee-house, until I hit upon the right combination.
Aha! At last, I could get that perfect cup of coffee. I pressed the right buttons, and a rich, aromatic brew came out. Perfect in every way — except it was not hot enough! By now, I was in no frame of mind to once again follow directions on ‘How to increase the water temperature’ that was given in the manual. I decided to call it a day.
‘C’mon,’ I told my bemused better half, ‘I desperately need a coffee. Let’s go to the mall.’
Padmini Sarkar is a freelance writer and author. Twitter: @paddersatdubai
