Word: cafés
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...baby boom is certainly having an impact on local business. In my street alone, with exception of the Kaya Foundation store for marijuana paraphernalia and the Soap and Cosmetics Caf?, every store and boutique seems targeted at the city's littlest consumers. There's the Finnish Fashion for Children boutique, the Kronjuwel (Crown Jewel) boutique for designer baby clothes and the Captivation Photography studio showcase plastered with pictures of bulging moms-to-be, dads with kids, grandmas with kids, kids with kids...
...Around the corner is the caf? Alois S., whose owner, a balding 48-year-old named Lothar Heer clad in a Grateful Dead t-shirt, says his original plan was to build a tapas bar. That was 2001, when his establishment stood alongside a playground bearing the scars of communist neglect. After fighting with sluggish city bureaucrats for a couple of years, Heer got permission to break open the walls and open a terrace out onto the playground. Then, he and some local parents formed a citizens group and applied for and were actually awarded some 20,000 euros...
...While we waited, Danielo and I settled into a nearby caf? to watch Sao Tome life go by. There was an endless stream of happy schoolchildren, looking overjoyed to be young and in school. There were smiling couples on motorcycles, apparently delighted to be young, in love and on a motorbike. There was the occasional mildly serious-looking man on a motorbike - later, when I watched the local news (lead national news item: a new footbridge) I realized we'd been buzzed by the Foreign Minister, the Minister of Regional Zones and the director of the Sao Tome-Portugal Business...
...three days on Sao Tome were punctuated by a series of happy, soporific encounters. The man sitting next to me at the only Internet caf? in town turned out to be the son of a famous dissident. At an excellent Portuguese seafood restaurant, I met Alecio Costa, a former mercenary who'd staged a coup in 2003 and held power for a week before, you know, realizing he really couldn't be bothered to exercise it, and giving it back. I roused the head of the National Petroleum Agency from his siesta and interviewed him as he sat bare-chested...
...Friday night, and the back-alley Hanoi Internet caf? is buzzing with video-game warriors noisily slaying dragons. But Trung, a 26-year-old engineer, is there to make a killing of a different kind. Logging onto an Internet chat room dedicated to stock trading, he joins about 1,000 other Vietnamese with aliases like "warrenbuffet74" and "wallstreethanoi" who are in search of the day's hot deals. "I'm selling 13,000 shares of CavicoE," reads one message. "Price is 31,000 dong per share. Contact Manh." The next message reads: "Oh, what a pity. I just bought...