16/06/2026
What bad English coffee taught me about flawless excellence (sorry Brits!)…
I really love a good latte, and whenever I am out and about, I drink matcha if possible.
Sounds pretty silly, right?
Let me explain, and dear Brits, please don’t be offended.
No tutting, ok?
In England, it’s so hard to get good coffee.
So in my head, I linked coffee to ‘meh, not great’.
With matcha, as long as you get good-quality matcha, you can’t do much wrong.
Even if you don’t mix it well, you leave some lumps at the bottom of the cup – which is a shame and a waste of good matcha – and I don’t really mind that.
So I kept drinking matcha.
Until I had a really good latte a while back and realised it's not the latte I don’t like – it's the badly made coffee.
I love it when people put effort, care and attention into what they are doing.
The Hawaiians have a word for it: Kīnā‘ole.
The initial translation is ‘flawless’, ‘perfect’.
The longer one is "doing the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, in the right place, for the right person, with the right feeling—the first time”.
So it doesn’t have to be perfect, but it requires that you do it to the best of your abilities.
Not only the first time.
But every time.
Where do you appreciate people practising Kīnā‘ole?
