Date:31/10/21	Dream State:SD
Title: Getting nowhere and receiving no service
Summary: This is a dream that seemed quite long and continued despite waking up a couple of times in the middle. I am in Buenos Aires and for some reason I decide to pop into to the university I worked at for some years. Some of the staff are still there and we chat a bit.  Continuing on my way I see not far down the avenue a Café Martinez. And I head there to have a coffee.  I realized I have missed my appointment with Mariana and whatsapp an apology.  The roads are lined with police because the motorcade of the visiting US President is passing this way.  Strange as this is not a glamorous part of the city.  I reach the café.  Service is slow and and they have part which is a self-service. I discover that people come in and pick up a small cake to reserve their place in the line then either look at the food displays elsewhere in the room or go outside and then come back to take up their place just before their turn comes up.  Consequently, I never seem to get closer to the cash desk. The staff there are incompetent and keep changing and each is the same or worse. I decide to cut my losses and go further down the avenue to find another placev but after tramping a few blocks realise that nothing else decent is open so I return to the Café. The customers are mostly the same but the whole staff has changed again!  I ask for the official complaints book but a customer says she’s tried using it and nobody pays any heed to it.  When I finally reach the cash register and make my order and payment the attendant walks away. The scene jumps to being seated at a table near the cash desk – somehow I have my coffee and snack, when suddenly a woman waiting in the queue falls on top of me. People around think I deserve it for my complaints and verbalizing my discontent but it turns out the woman was stretching to catch a wedding bouquet and overbalances on to me complete with bouquet.  I laugh at all the inconvenience and carry on with my coffee,
Feelings afterwards? Frustration with all the time and energy at getting the coffee, the incompetent staff and awkward system.  And with my own returning and staying instead of giving up.
Connections, associations, then and now.  Biden at G-20 in Italy. Motorcades.  None of the buildings and streets are familiar to me. Café M exists and has many branches and I often go to them.  Service is usually better but not always, though the dream scene was a hyper exaggeration.  Tricks to save places in the queue exist but not in these places. Mariana is a zoom friend and classmate. Service is quite inefficient these days in many shops, etc.   Could any of this play out? I have no intention to revisit my university.
What would I like to know? Is it a metaphor for life in Argentina?  And my life?  The next day I had a couple of bad experiences in shops. The falling woman and the wedding bouquet?
Input from others Mariana suggested that there was a message about patience and waiting and insistence in which you get what you came for, but it is not the coffee and cake but the bouquet.  Something falling suddenly into your lap.  The bouquet is a special prize.  I needed to go through all the hassle of getting the coffee to get the prize.
Action plan: Write a short story
Themes and symbols: Wedding bouquet, queues, poor service, café, surprise, frustration, insistence
Bumper sticker: Being in the right place at the right time and u don’t know it.