A foreign encounter
It's 10:30 pm, Saturday night, and the coffee shop is packed. Two tables away, girls in college uniforms are giggling, disrupting what should otherwise be a quiet evening. I wish I could shut them up—their high-pitched voices restrict the flow of information to my brain—but social grace tells me to leave them alone. To my right, a Caucasian man looks amused as he reads through his book, oblivious to the noise. All over the place, students bury their heads in books, plug white earphones into their external auditory canals, fixate their eyes onto their laptop monitors—and these they do for hours, only to be interrupted by occasional sips of Php 150 worth of coffee. Kids these days hardly apply for library permits; they just pop into the nearest Starbucks to prepare for their tests. As I'm engrossed in coloring my photocopied references with green highlights, a man who unmistakably looks Japanese comes near and stares at the notes sprawled on my table. I desperately hope h