Hello Asean Hive Community
I have been tagging my fellow Indonesian-Asean Hive Community @arveno and @viviehardika recently and I have received some response from them. It's about their dining out habit and having coffee they like. It is not about right or wrong, and I think I need to state it early so people don't get it wrong.
I wonder how much cost we should spend for our coffee, but in detail maybe that will be some other day post here..
I used to work remotely during weekend so I have quite a good experienced in picking the spot to do it. I know which café I should pick, which coffee shop which are good and which aren't.
Anyway for you who haven't known, Café and Coffee Shop are actually the same in general, the difference is their focus. Coffee Shop focus on their coffee products, and café is more general especially they have a wide variation of dishes to dine in.
This month I have met a girl who has a habit of NGAFE. Ngafe means hang out in Café, that's how people here call it. Every week she could go to café more than twice, exclude her working activities. In several occasions, we went to café and work together there. She worked her office jobs, I wrote some Hive posts lol.
So how this would relate to my frugal living? I know that frugal means differently for people. Some people think that if they can save up their expenditure, by getting things cheaper, its frugal. Some see they have more spare money to save at the end of the month, they manage to be frugal. Some see that if they live with lower cost than their peer, they are frugal.
I can not expect people to be as stingy frugal as me, nor expect them to see me as normal because some see me as super stingy. Stingy and frugal are different. For me frugal living is like cutting off as many as you can for unnecessary cost, especially the value added cost.
This girl I have met, she had higher lifestyle than me. She believed she was frugal, and I believed she was too. She prefered to walk long distance over taking a grab or taxi. She was very practical, many of her activities are actually cost her a lot lower than me.
Her lifetyle was higher because of her Café habits.
How Much Is a Decent Café Cost?
Well there is no real standard for this one, everyone has their own. From the picture above, I paid around 8 USD for the drinks. So let see another case here.
First, I tend to find a coffee shop or café which serves good coffee. I like milk coffee or latte, so if I can not feel happy with their latte, I won't come back to that spot.
Second the price must be reasonable with what they offer. Some place are a bit pricy because they offer many value added, but too much value added won't fit my frugal living preference.
This place is actually not a genuine café. By happens, they are steak house who serve quite good coffee with reasonable price. I like this place because it looks good during sun set and it is rarely crowded. Maybe people do not like the idea having a café or steak house on the roof top, they think it is expensive.
Here I give hint about the place name. I think it is quite popular here, or maybe it was popular years ago. I always order a shared side dish if I am not a lone, so atleast we have a snack together, not only drinking.
Anyway back to that day, sometime I wondered if she had too many works to do, or maybe she wanted to ignore me due to having her to some lousy place.
The side dish had cool name, Nori and Salmon Mentai. However I felt that I got scammed here. I felt like I was having a Tao Kae Noi with some small cut salmon with mentai sauce above. If you do not know what Tao Kae Noi, it is a nori snack product from Thailand.
Here was the bill. That scammy Tao Kae Noi costed me almost $4. I should get a club sandwich set there. In every cafe and restaurant, there always be atleast one scammy menu that gives them the biggest margin
Anyway the price in USD... was $7.88. I always get the same cost, around $8. That number goes the same when I visit Starbuck too. So I can say that anything breach $10 for a couple hangout drink should be considered expensive.
My standard for me alone should be less than $2, but her standard is around $4, I do not know maybe her real standard can be $6 per person but she pretends to be frugal in front of me lol.
So I wonder, if this price is considered low or not. Maybe @viviehardika and @gibic could give me some feedback, regarding both of them live in the same city with me.
Anyway that's for today post. It's full of question and you might ask me anything or suggest me anything too in the comment below.
see you next time!
Thank you for coming and reading my post. I live in Jakarta, Ex-Capital City of Indonesia. I used to live by making money online, that's why I like being here, on HIVE, and in #PIMP - (Paper In My Pocket) community.
