Wifi and ca phe sua da in Garland
Trying to get some schoolwork done during spring break, I have left the kids with their grandparents for the day and holed myself up in a wireless hotspot in beautiful Garland, Texas.
Apparently libraries in this part of the world don't provide wireless. At least the Garland and Dallas libraries don't -- I hear rumors that the ones in techier and better-heeled Richardson and Plano might.
I tried the Free Texas wi-fi hotspot list and learned (no surprise) that it's slightly out of date. For the benefit of Googlers, here's an update:
- Main Street Coffee Haus in Garland is now closed.
- QQ Cafe (3575 W. Walnut St. at Jupiter Road, 972-205-9889) is alive and well and I recommend it highly. Besides free wifi they have café sua dá, bubble tea, rice bowls, online gaming and loud pop music in Vietnamese and three or four other languages (something treacly just came on in Spanish, followed by of all things a Guy Forsyth track!). It's a family place with one generation in the kitchen, another running the LAN room in the back and the youngest, a four-year-old dancer, providing the entertainment out front. The people behind the counter took a personal interest in my order and supplemented it with free samples of things they thought I'd like.
A very nice alternative to the suburban Fauxbucks I was expecting.
Lest there be any doubt, Vietnamese coffee (scroll down) packs one hell of a kick. Now to see whether I can stop shaking and get this paper written...
- The third place on the Garland list, Java & Boba (3112 N. Jupiter Rd. at Belt Line, Suite 311, 972-530-5007), is a bare-bones coffee and bubble tea shop dominated by a big TV hooked up to an Xbox. The shooter games at Java & Boba are a bigger distraction than the music at QQ; Ramones and Le Tigre through a pair of earbuds helps a bit.