The cafe that you have opened, how is the business now?
I’ve had one customer this morning.
The plan is…Because I'm a little bit out of the way of the city. I’m about 1 kilometer from the busy area. So it's not an ideal spot for a cafe. But the homestay, the rooms are available now. So when people come and stay at the homestay, they drop the cafe. But my plan is just to open the cafe. It's a bar as well actually. I plan to open the cafe from 7:30 to 9:30 in the morning. Then the English club from 9:30 to 11:30, and then close, and then open again. Then I have the afternoon off for cycling, walking. Then English club 7:30 to 9:30.
But I won’t establish a lot of staff, to sort of run the cafe. I'm not gonna pay for that until we got a little bit busy and sort of do things myself. And my wife works in the city. So she only comes at the weekend, so it's not so easy to sort of do everything on your own in a place. And plus I have no experience of running the cafe. I have some experience running a bar, but the bar is a game that's more for the homesick customers and maybe your friends or whatever, maybe open just till 10:30 pm.So finish the English club at 9:30pm hopefully the cafe and the bar will be open with staff. And then I last an hour in the bar, last thing in the evening and then close at 11:00 pm.
I know a lot of people, especially young people, they would like to open cafes or you know, like a bookstore with cafes, something like that. And idealistically that would be like a dream come true. It would be so tranquil a place for the cafe owner and also a beautiful spot for customers.
When it comes to idealism, idealism is not working with an income for me. Because I work so hard, all my life and I have been to so many different jobs. It's such a competitive place. So to get the business, we had to keep the prices down. And there's still a lot to do, basically.
What made you have the idea of opening a cafe?
I think the main idea was more of a language center. That was the main aim. But to open a language center needs a lot of investment. Now, here, the cost of the rental, just for me to live here was, let's say, $400. Yeah, so for me to pay a bit more, they may be double and I can have a business as well. It's like multi-purpose objectives, multifaceted objectives. You have a nicer place to live, a bigger place to live.
I’ve always believed in backup plans, multiple sources of income, rather than one. There is a phrase in English, never have all your eggs in one basket. Practically all my life, I’ve always had alternative means of income. And I got such a broad span of work. I worked in the medical area, financial area, I worked on ships in the Indian Ocean, I worked in security, I traveled all of the world, I already sort of have no great desire to do any more traveling. Just settle.
And I was thinking this morning, it's quite idle, even if I don't have any customers, I can just go and sit down at my coffee in the morning, and that's what I like to do anyway. If I get some customers, that's a bonus.
But as you said, the income was not as expected. So how do you deal with that?
If you got, like, I’ve got potential income for the rooms. We've already got four bookings already, and they’re gonna be here in a couple of weeks. We've got bookings for February during the holiday period already, about three or four bookings. And we’ve only just started it. So I anticipate, I think we'll get busier, as we get more professional and more organized, plus we could do the restaurant. This is a big realm. This is the realm I‘m gonna use initially, so I’ve got these tables put in so you can get maybe four or five people around each table. And if it's not gonna work, then you can try the restaurants, but I'm not a chef.
The cafe serves as an English study center as well as a cafe.
The outside, that’s more of a cafe area.
Nobody's gonna come until we've got the signage (标识) and we've got to made the Facebook thing set up and the website set up and the marketing begins. Once we have this big sign put outside, something like this, right? Near the roof near the top floor, a very bright sign. Once people see that they'll be curious and they’ll come and have a look. So maybe they’ll come in, and if they come in, maybe they’ll buy a coffee.
Apparently, you make the coffee yourself.
Yeah, but just some basics. Just some basic kind myself at the moment, soft drinks and stuff. I'm thinking about the pricing. So they'll be likable to pay for 2 hours to join in in those time periods. Very cheap. Or they can pay a monthly membership and that’s up to 60 hours of tuition per month. That's my plan. If it works, then I’ll be achieving a higher level of happiness.
So talking about happiness, what do you think can make you happy the most in your life?
The main thing, which is being up and down all my life is maintaining a good level of physical fitness.
Because I’ve been so busy in this room, there’s hole of leakage. So the renovating contains to just proof the place. Rather than pay somebody to do it, I wasn't sure how I wanted it to be done, I thought I did a little step-by-step. And did it by myself. So all week every day I was working. And I think I lost a bit of weight by just doing the physical work. I made the shelves myself in the bar. And I created, see the white paneled wall here. That's just to stop the dirt from coming in, because it's quite breezy here. And a lot of dirt floating.
