Some people are ashamed to beg.  Under the right circumstances, using pretty strict parameters, I am NOT one of those people.

My number one criteria for determining when it is (or is not) appropriate to beg:

Is coffee at stake?

If the answer to that all-important question is YES (or MAYBE), then I feel that pride must be sacrificed for the greater caffeine good.  After reading that last sentence, you’re probably mumbling to yourself:  This guy needs to get some professional help for his degrading and self-abasing addiction. 

My response:  You’re absolutely right.

It’s sad what I’ve been reduced to.  But seeing that the school semester is almost underway, I don’t think it would be prudent at this time to enroll in a rehab program.  I don’t even think our college has started a Java Drinkers Anonymous group yet…

So what am I left with?  I am left with this destructive vice which pushes me to beg, borrow, and… well, probably not, steal… for it.

What’s really bad about my specific propensity towards the evils of roasted beans is that I am only into the designer drugs: Starbucks, Seattle’s Best, Tully’s, etc.  If you offered me a pound of your best Folgers or Millstone, I’d probably turn my nose up at it like a wino that you’ve just given a sandwich to instead of your spare change.

In defense of my position I’d like to say I would have "taken care of business" myself.  I could have smuggled back a few pounds of the magical black powder from the United States or Thailand, except for the fact that I was already loaded down with an abundance of toys, clothes, scooters, stuffed animals, and other heavy-weight paraphernalia for the girls (which we incidentally had to pay excess baggage fees for!)  So no coffee came into the very-deprived country using that route.

I used to have quite a few dealers out there keeping me fixed, but the supplies they sent have slowly trickled through the filter, into the pot, past the gums, down the throat, and into the bloodstream.  O, the life of a junkie.

But no one likes an over-talkative beggar.  Just had to make my humble request known.  If I thought it would work, I’d scribble the following message on a cardboard sign and pace the streets of Xining:

Will mispronounce words for Starbucks

But something tells me that wouldn’t work too well (especially if I wrote the sign in English).  In the words of Princess Leia in an equally dire predicament, "You’re our only hope…"

And I’m not ashamed to beg.