This was originally going to be a café series post.

I had made plans with Jessen to go to the last hipster coffee shop in Waterloo before I had to leave. The shop is just uptown, called Seven Shores. I decided against making a café series post for a simple reason: Seven Shores is not a coffee shop.

And that’s fine.

 

It should be called some sort of bistro, because they seem to serve all sorts of omelettes, toast and sandwiches that seemed very delicious. But I probably will not be visiting again, especially after having their coffee.

This is the first time I’ve returned the cup while it still had coffee leftover – about 4/5 of a cup.

I continued my traditions of ordering an americano, and I had high hopes coming into this place considering its 4.5 rating on Yelp, as well as their friendly atmosphere. But the air indoors smelled greasy and smokey due to their open concept kitchen, and their coffee menu lackluster. Jessen got himself a macchiato, not knowing what he was getting himself into.

Everything just boils down to the terrible espresso.

Let’s face it, the beans weren’t great. The ground seemed wrong because the americano I got barely has any espresso taste, and the whole thing tasted sour. Not just my coffee, Jessen’s macchiato also tasted sour. There really isn’t anything else to say about it, I returned the cups, and I took Jessen somewhere else where I can apologize for the horror I had brought onto him, DVLB.

And everything was right again.

I never knew how talented this guy was.

Jessen’s been playing the violin since 3 years old, and the sounds that he’s able to make with the violin is just brilliant, no clunkiness. Despite him saying that he haven’t played in a few months, the tones that he creates sounds so wholesome, confident, and exuberant. I almost forgot how good can violins sound ever since the departure of Richard Su, a childhood friend who’d been studying the violin for 13 years, since he was 4 years old.

Since I was in a music shop, I had to go pick up something and try it: a baby Martin.

Ever since I had met the baby Taylor that my first girlfriend had, I had wanted to buy something like it. The price tags were always in my way, however, until I found the baby Martin. I played it a while, sang a couple of songs, while Jessen just casually strung along with tunes on his violin (I still don’t know how he’s able to pick up melodies so quickly after hearing them only once).

After the shop, we went for a walk and found a caboose, and I just had to have him pose on it.

Let’s face it, Jessen is a pretty good looking dude.

The rugged background of the train-cab really contrasts nicely with his preppy attire. The Fuji X-Pro is just icing on the cake. Post processing on this shot was a little bit complicated; it had been a while since I actually properly color graded in Lightroom with tonal curves and luminance for a shot, so it took a bit to get what I wanted.

When I had finished, I realized the same can probably be achieved in VSCO just under 5 minutes.

Sigh.

At least I’ll always have my Kodak-Gold 100 +++ emulations… oh wait, those are VSCO too.

SIGH.

Kawaii-kun is mad that I stole the bill.

To Kawaii-kun: It’s not a competition, you’ll have plenty of chances to buy me food. So chill, but I win, hehe.

-Tao