Monday, February 8th, 2021

I have to tap in a lot of data to use the cafe’s app for the first time. I started to do so last night, but I was too tired and hungry. I just went home. Tonight, I have more energy. I give it another shot. I sit down at the other end of the city square and take out my phone. First, I have to select my home branch. Fortunately, it’s the nearest one. I then select what I want to eat from the menu. It’s smaller than their usual menu, without some of the items I’d hoped they’d have. I go for the vegetarian Mexican Bowl. This branch has no meat dishes. One that’s done, I have to register as a user. They need my first and last name, phone number, email, birthdate, and a password, twice. Then I log my credit card. I take it out of my wallet to enter the data: government ID number, card number, that three-digit thing on the back, and its expiration date. They send a code to the phone so I can confirm that it’s me. I don’t entirely trust the code. I suppose that one out of every ten thousand people might get “9999”, but I wonder if it’s a glitch. I enter it anyway. I have to click to agree to several things I vaguely understand. I look across the square at the cafe. I know the worker at the window from before. She speaks English, but is grumpy. I just click “agree” on everything. I finish the order and walk to the window. I ask the worker if I would pick the order up there or in back, as we did during the lockdown. She is confused. No app orders have come in. I start to worry. A device on the counter buzzes and prints the order. I got to the cafe faster than it did. I’m to wait at the window. I handle almost all of the conversation in Hebrew. I get stuck on one word, when she asks me if I want cutlery. I had been told the word several years ago. I remembered that it was an acronym, but had forgotten the word itself, since I hadn’t used it. I get my order fairly quickly. I start to head home but double back after half a block and return to the city square. I get a soda at a shop there and sit down at a chess table to eat. A cat jumps on the table and sniffs at the bowl. It jumps back down. I guess it doesn’t like vegetables. I eat the Mexican bowl as I watch people pass. It’s pretty good. But it would be better in Texas.