Let me preface this post by saying that I'm not a tea person. I've always thought of myself as more of a coffee person. (I mean, I surely love the taste of coffee much better than tea.) Years of drinking too much coffee have finally taken its toll on me, however, so now I can only drink one cup of coffee a day. (And even that is a bit of a treat. Well, I used to drink four to five tumblers--tall Starbucks tumbler size--of black coffee every day for years, so I suppose I've just about drunk up all the caffeine my body could take.) But as I still need to keep myself awake most days (the energizing effect of caffeine is obviously not as long term as its effect on one's stomach lining), I've turned to tea.
And because tea is not exactly my cup of ...gasp...tea (goes to show how writing has been a major pain for me for some time now), I'm always on the lookout for tea that I'll actually like. Almost always, when I go to the supermarket, I'll spend some time checking out the tea section. So last night, I found myself in the tea section of the supermarket again. I wasn't just checking it out for some new tea though. I was buying, because I just ran out of my favorite mandarin orange green tea, which, I could get only in Manila.
The usual brands were there, but there were also a couple of new ones. I picked up one of the new ones, but put it down when on the carton, it said that I should use a teapot and china because they'd really set off the rich infusions of this particular tea. (I sort of understand why, but I don't have a teapot and definitely no china.)
So I picked up this other one. I thought the packaging looked good, and it didn't require special pots and cups, but it was pretty expensive for me at 10.65sgd. My usual box of tea cost between 4 to 6sgd. I put it down and thought of just going back to this tea I'd tried before and sort of liked. For some reason though, I went back and picked up that 'expensive' tea again.
Going over the box again, I read something I didn't realize was there earlier. Here's what it says:
Did you know?
A single cup of [this tea] has been known to have the same effect as sitting for 45 minutes in a mountain meadow on a sunny day with your shoes off.
I suppose you could guess what happened after. On the bus home, I was smiling stupidly, anticipating 45 minutes of sunshine and mountain meadows and shoes off.
And yeah, I know it's been ages since I last posted anything here, so this is also me letting you know I'm still here--alive but barely. Writing (that other kind of writing I pretend I can do) is really kicking my butt very hard these days. And that's why copies like the ones above totally suck me in.
UPDATE: I suppose there's still some truth in advertising sometimes. That tea really was 45 minutes of sitting in a mountain meadow on a sunny day with my shoes off. I'm so happy to have found it. :)
