Posts tagged with "tea"

No More Tea

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.

Graphics Presentation, Powermate, Etc.

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.