NPV, discount rates, coopetition. Study study. No time for lunch. Here's a good para by James Gleick in his book, Faster:

We are in a rush. We are making haste. A compression of time characterises the life of the century now closing. Airport gates are minor intensifiers of the lose-not-a-minute anguish of our age. There are other intensifiers – places and objects that signify impatience. Certain notorious intersections and tollbooths. Doctors' anterooms ("waiting" rooms). The DOOR CLOSE button in elevators, so often a placebo, with no function to distract for a moment those riders to whom ten seconds seems an eternity. Speed-dial buttons on telephones: do you invest minutes in programming them and reap your rewards in tenths of a second? Remote controls: their very existence, in the hands of a quick-reflexed, multitasking, channel-flipping, fast-forwarding citizenry, has caused an acceleration in the pace of films and television commercials.

I concur. I see this 'time-compression' in me.

That's why I was mad I brought neither a book nor my notebook plugs in my bag during one of the massive jams in KL last week (my colleague told me she needed FOUR hours to get from Jalan Ampang to Jalan Klang Lama - go figure!). I eventually turned off Jalan Duta and parked somewhere behind Wisma Sime Darby (at the risk of getting mugged).

I then walked the length of Jalan Raja Laut until I dined (alone - only people with serious streaks of melancholism - or spiritual solitude, call it what you want, *smile* - can do this, eh?) in the half-century old Coliseum Cafe (where they just turn the table-cloths over for the next guest).

So I stepped into the colonial period. Felt like a Wong Kar Wai backdrop. The high ceilings, the widely spaced tables, the grinding 30-year-old(?) air-conditioning, the white waiter-suits, the white table cloths, the aura of time stood ramrod still. Heck, even the doors are probably as old as Gandhi.

Like London's Wong Kei, the waiters in Coliseum don't pretend they enjoy serving you. They seem disinterested in the 21st century. And they don't give two jars of rat pee about "customer experience management". The old guy who saw me walked in immediately pulled out the chair of the empty table he was tidying up, basically telling me to sit where he's indicated - I didn't want to argue.

Maybe it's the culture that makes the whole time-machine gig feel authentic. These guys aren't faking it. They really DON'T care about the fast-paced world outside its walls and they DON'T care about how 'behind time' the place is. They DON'T care about speed-dialing, remote controls or wall-mounted MTV.

Very different from what you get in places like TGIF, American Chilli's, where they're trying to teleport you into Western, hip, glamour-chic culture and it usually ends up just a tad superficial, don't it?

Timeless touches you truer than Timely does.