May 11, 2009

Amnesiac Weekends

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My throat has devel­oped some­thing of a raspy tinge from talk­ing all week­end. I’ve never had par­tic­u­larly strong vocal chords. I told myself I’d speak as lit­tle as pos­si­ble today; we’ll see how long that lasts. Maybe I can drink some honey tea instead.

It wasn’t so much that I over­booked myself as plans going on for much longer than expected. Which pretty much means I didn’t get any work done, so I won’t be going to Toronto next week­end so I can catch up. Not that I really want to any­more, as the last two days have left me feel­ing over­stim­u­lated and sat­is­fied. Anyway, Dan took a quick look at my chart for this month (on his own ini­tia­tive) and told me not to do any­thing big on the 15th and 16th because it’s “risky”. I never let my horo­scope deter­mine what I do, but maybe this is the way the uni­verse tells me to stay home.

I didn’t even have time to do my weekly gro­cery shop­ping. I’m eat­ing stale bread and canned soups today.

The best part of the week­end was hav­ing an excuse to use the Numi Dancing Leaves teabuds and teapot that Louise bought me last Christmas, some­thing I’d been sav­ing for spe­cial occa­sions. Amazingly, I got three full steeps — which trans­lates into six cups — out of one Golden Jasmine bud.

Those things I had been try­ing to for­get got lost some­where in the before I even real­ized it. Isn’t that what for­get­ting is about?

Sometimes I need these week­ends. They recharge me, they give me hope, when hope is so fleeting.

I’m try­ing to ride that feel­ing, and let it carry me forward.

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July 1, 2007

A Staple In My Tea

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I just found a sta­ple — a used, bent sta­ple — in my loose leaf Mao Feng tea from Nihao Tea House. I don’t know if I can trust Nihao any­more, which is unfor­tu­nate, as it’s the only tea house in the vicinity.

The girl who works there is some­what of an anom­aly; a Canadian-born Chinese, I’d say only a few years younger than me, wear­ing a Mickey Mouse shirt. My gen­er­a­tion of CBCs usu­ally adapt to the Canadian way of life, eschew­ing the cutesy cul­ture of Hello Kitty, designer sta­tion­ary, and stuffed car orna­ments. An impos­tor, by banana1 stan­dards, like a rogue sta­ple among some tea leaves.

  1. yel­low on the out­side, hol­low on the inside [↑]
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May 30, 2007

A Weekend with Darren

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I had Darren over from Toronto for the week­end. We were going to do a movie marathon at the the­atre — three in a day — but the movies all sucked. Disturbia? Georgia Rule? Please. Instead, I bought the first sea­son of Six Feet Under, and we fin­ished the roughly 11 hour sea­son over two days. Now I can re-watch it with Bronwen and lend it to Pat. To be hon­est, I’d seen up to the sec­ond sea­son before, but I was too stoned to remem­ber most of it.

Thumbnail: Air-tight tea container

Thumbnail: Chai tea

Darren also gave me a nice tea con­tainer. It’s rather large, since I buy my tea 50mg at a time, but bet­ter too big than too small. He also got me some chai tea, con­sid­ered a well­ness blend. When I asked him what for, he couldn’t give me a rea­son. I love gifts for no reason.

We shared our tat­too ideas, and his was the Chinese char­ac­ter for love on his back. Darren and Bronwen are the some of the few peo­ple I can talk openly with about love. We’re such hope­less roman­tics. We tell each other that we’ll never be mar­ried, not to be self-depracating, but to be hon­est with our­selves. We have our ideals, and we’ll never set­tle for any­thing less. It’s com­fort­ing to know that we’re not alone in our quixotic beliefs.

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February 12, 2007

A Change Of Tea

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So I wasn’t being com­pletely hon­est when I said no more tea. I’d sim­ply switched from black to orange tea. Even that didn’t work though, and a mild panic attack had me down to even lighter, Chinese tea.

A warm, relax­ing mug can be rather addicting.

Thumbnail: Green tea
Thumbnail: Longjing
Thumbnail: Rose green tea
Thumbnail: Green tea mug
Thumbnail: Leaves macro

The great thing about tea is that it doesn’t just taste good, it serves a pur­pose. Cleanses the palette. Aids diges­tion. Combats the Yang of greasy foods with Yin. Green tea in the morn­ing serves to awaken the senses. Longjing calms the mind at night.

[kml_flashembed movie=”/videos/tea_leaves.swf” width=“480” height=“335” wmode=“transparent”/]

The steep­ing process is beau­ti­ful. Green tea is espe­cially prone to scorch­ing, so the water can’t be too hot, or the tea will turn bit­ter. Not hot enough, and the leaves won’t fully release their flavour.

Note: Each frame of the video is a dif­fer­ent pho­to­graph, taken five sec­onds apart. About thirty min­utes in total.

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September 9, 2006

To Steep

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Thumbnail: Bacon grease

Thumbnail: Breakfast

Thumbnail: Dolly's milk treat

All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a lit­tle stronger with each year that passes.

—George Orwell

On Saturday morn­ings I wake up a lit­tle past seven, no mat­ter how late I was up on Friday. Get dressed, check the mail, read the news, go upstairs to cook break­fast in a pan of grease. Everything is timed per­fectly. The toast is started two min­utes before the eggs are bro­ken into the pan, but only after the bacon is done. The tea starts steep­ing two min­utes before that. Everything is ready and warm within 25 minutes.

Dolly gets a treat on the week­end morn­ings: a bit of Fancy Feast, or half-and-half mixed with water. Cats are lac­tose intol­er­ant, so they can’t drink straight milk, but they’re drawn the fat that their noses can smell.

Bacon, bread, egg, bacon, bread, egg. I eat my break­fast in order, going clock­wise around the plate, but I always save a few sips of tea for the end. Even though I’ve given up the Hong Kong style milk tea, Orange Pekeoe is an appro­pri­ate black leaf sub­sti­tute, round­ing out the meal.

It’s a lit­tle rit­ual that keeps me sane. At the end of break­fast, sat­is­fied and full, I can reflect and recharge, down to the dregs.

Every year, as I grow older, I find that I let my tea steep a lit­tle longer. Maybe life has got­ten a lit­tle too com­pli­cated, and I need the tea as a dis­trac­tion, or per­haps life has become too sim­ple, and I need the com­pan­ion­ship of a rich mug to stim­u­late me.

Strange how a teapot can rep­re­sent at the same time the com­forts of soli­tude and the plea­sures of company.

And I’ve never needed this more than I do now.

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April 22, 2006

No More Tea

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Thumbnail: Hong Kong milk tea with menu

Walking in, the first thing to notice is the aro­matic smell of freshly brewed tea that per­me­ates the air.

They wait on us using Cantonese with var­i­ous accents, an assort­ment of dialects from minor provinces. They rudely throw the dishes on the table, and tell me that I can’t take pic­tures of the menu. My par­ents com­plain to me about the ser­vice, about their main­land man­ners, and say that they’ll never come here again.

I slowly sip my tea, and leave before it’s half fin­ished. Even on a full stom­ach, I can feel myself get­ting uneasy.

The caf­feine is mak­ing me anx­ious, a sub­tle reminder of the panic attack I suf­fered last year.

It’s been six months since I’ve had a glass of authen­tic Hong Kong style milk tea. No more, I’ve decided.

Saturday morn­ings won’t be the same.

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April 8, 2003

Graphics Presentation, Powermate, Etc.

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So…

I just fin­ished my graph­ics pre­sen­ta­tion. I pre­sented to a group of nosy peo­ple in the class, instead of only my prof and TA’s. The peo­ple who watched were quite amazed, it seemed, at what I was able to accom­plish on my own. It made my proud that I was able to write the code from scratch in two days. I admit that I had one of the more inter­est­ing ideas out of the class, being dynamic as well as math­e­mat­i­cally stim­u­lat­ing, as opposed to some of the sta­tic ani­ma­tions or cheap games that other projects con­sisted of. I think I had one of the lesser ambi­tious ideas though, since mak­ing a game look nice would be much harder than a sim­ple sim­u­la­tion such as the game of life. The TA’s con­grat­u­lated me after­wards, and the prof, who’s infa­mous for being so soft-spoken that peo­ple mis­take him as com­ing out of a funeral, actu­ally clapped at the end. It made me fairly proud of my pre­sen­ta­tion, although the praise of Charity, the res­i­dent CS eye candy in a fac­ulty of the aes­thet­i­cally chal­lenged, made me even more con­tent. It’s as if phys­i­cal attrac­tive­ness gives some­ones opin­ion even more weight. What can I say, I’m a sucker for a pretty face.

A Griffin Powermate is glow­ing seduc­tively next to my key­board, a pur­chase I made over the week­end. I’m cur­rently using it as a vol­ume knob, and I have yet to set it as a zoom func­tion for Photoshop, Acrobat, Word, or Ghostscript viewer. It’s so sexy that I almost put it down my pants.

After hav­ing one of the best brands of Hong Kong milk tea for a few months, I’ve switched back to the leaves pro­vided to me by the med­i­cine shop in Chinatown. I can taste a very dis­tinct dif­fer­ence now; the lat­ter seems to have a more fruity, earthy taste to it, and a weaker body.

I believe that I have a place for the next year. Nick and I went to look at the apart­ment com­plex across from mine, and we were extremely impressed. It’s 200 square feet big­ger than the one I’m cur­rently in, yet $50 cheaper. I will even have my own bath­room. It lacks a bal­cony, but a bal­cony is some­thing I’m will­ing to sac­ri­fice for a larger liv­ing room. We have the arrange­ments made, and we will try to sign some­thing on Wednesday, to reserve an apart­ment on the pent­house for July. I’m a lit­tle wor­ried that there may be some prob­lems that only pop up after inhab­it­ing the same liv­ing space, but I’m sure that it will be noth­ing I can’t deal with. I can’t even imag­ine leav­ing this city now, because of all the great friends I have here.

I should be receiv­ing a $1500 tax return with the next two weeks. No plans have been made yet.

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October 15, 2002

Big News In Between Small News

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Fucking right. I’m hav­ing another mug of savory Hong Kong style milk tea. I wish they just made this stuff in cans, instead of hav­ing to go to make it every time. Of course, I bet that too much of this would be dele­te­ri­ous in some way or another.

John broke up with Julia today. Quite the big news. The inci­dent clos­est to this in scale within the last year for both of us would have to be him win­ning in the SAC elec­tions. At one point, Julia actu­ally called me, and wanted to know what I knew. It felt a lit­tle awk­ward. Omertà.

I’ve been neglect­ing Moby Dick lately, and I always feel guilty about neglect­ing my lit­er­a­ture. Sometimes I feel like it’s the only pro­duc­tive thing that I can do with my life, since it’s one of the only things that I actively do to improve myself. It’s some­thing that I just for­get about some­times, when I’m caught in the midst of mid-terms and assignments.

I’ve even been neglect­ing a lot of games. I haven’t played any Supermario Sunshine, Eternal Darkness, or even Neverwinter Nights lately. The most game time I’ve been get­ting has been in class with my GBA. I’ve lost touch with my gam­ing roots. It’s like I need a new gate­way game to suck me right back in again. I really enjoy SMS and Warcraft 3, to be sure, but noth­ing that really cap­tures my atten­tion for more than an hour at a time.

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