Tea - My Muse

Chinese connoisseurs use tea leaves again and again, until only the faintest flavour remains, an echo of taste receding, like something barely recalled from a dream.

- Twisted Tree by Kent Meyers -

I don't call myself a connoisseur of tea, but it has became an instinct for me to boil the tea leaves again and again. As a Chinese descendant, it is as if almost certain that I prefer tea than other beverages. I need tea when I do revision, I need tea to finish up my reports, I need tea to write this blog, etc.. Then again I need tea after revision done, the reports done, and blog done, as if to celebrate those little successes in my life. Basically, tea kinda helps me the way coffee helps many other people. 

In the matter of fact, coffee might as well be the main cause of the Enlightenment. Before the Enlightenment, the Europeans tended to drink gins and wines more than water. After the introduction of coffee into Europe, people then preferred coffee, changing from depressant to stimulant.  

Through my experience, I think everyone must have their own favorite drink. A person who drinks only wine and no water? That for me was outrageous and exaggerated. However I know exactly a person who did that. The funny thing is, his wife can't live a day without Coca Cola and cigarettes. And one of my friends used to be obsessed with Sprites.

If coffee helps the Enlightenment, absinthe certainly is the source of inspiration of many great writers. Among many, there are Emile Zola, Arthur Rimbaud, van Gogh, Picasso and Ernest Hemingway, who were known to be absinthe drinkers. No wonder absinthe is given a beautiful name despite its 80% alcohol content, The Green Fairy. 

For how much I love tea, the irony is, I always dislike the first brew of the tea. The taste is just too strong, and makes me feel like I am chewing a mouthful of fresh grass. It is until the second or third brew that the taste is the best. And I prefer no sugar. For me, sugar will ruin the taste. Even it is just Lipton, I always drink it without sugar.

Normally, when other people are taking coffee or beverages other than tea, I won't take tea neither. Because tea has a delicate flavour, anything other than water would spoil the flavour of the tea. There is no way tea can beat the aroma of coffee. That is why I rarely drink tea outside my house. Rarely, infers exceptions. The only exception I can think of, is when having Bak Kut Teh. There is no better combination than Bak Kut Teh with tea.

Like I said, I am not a connoisseur of tea. It tastes good as long as it is tea, it doesn't matter whether it is just Lipton. But whenever choices are available, I would prefer pu-erh tea. For the sake of easy preparation, I now drink more Ho Yan Hor herbal tea than any other tea.

I don't how to prepare Kungfu tea. I don't know how to differ a good quality tea from a bad one. I don't even know the exact way to properly prepare a tea. So how to learn about tea?  To quote James Norwood Pratt during an interview (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9zT5VZKHI0) about tea obsession and his book, his answer to the question is,

"The same way to learn about love making. Privately, discreetly. And with devotion and feeling."

For me, I totally agree with a quote from the movie Fearless. Drinking tea is a mood. When you are in good mood, good tea or not, it doesn't matter anymore (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_dp5W3FEPI). So what James Norwood said is quite true. You need to be in the mood of love making in order to have a good sex.


     

Memories

How we remember things is very interesting. "Somehow when we are telling our memories to someone else, we are changing them at the same time", someone told me this, and it is indeed quite true. While telling the stories, sometimes we may create some fake memories, to make the story more interesting to the audiences or to cover the ugly truth. The more we tell the story, eventually we will convince ourselves that the fake one is real, and finally replace the reality.

Not long ago, by chance, I discovered a youtube channel of a blindman via Vsause. He shares his experiences of blindness, and my mind was blown first time watching his videos. A good book is a page-turner, then his channel is a video-turners. And here is one of his videos talking about his dreams.

People say photo is the best way to conserve memories. After watching the video, I guess it works only for sighted-people. Plus people tend to post, to bring out the biggest smile on their faces, or to pretend to be a person they want to be. So it doesn't really represent quite right the moment  when the photo is taken. Often, the most intense, the most important, emotional memories are not photographed. 

In the world nowadays, we are so bounded by visual-based stuffs, that we often forget the other 4 senses. Here is a Vsauce video about how many photos have been taken. 

Then I realized, some of my memories, good or bad, but surely intense, are captured through songs. And hearing these songs can always bring up the corresponding memories. 

..........................................

- Children by Robert Miles

  Me sitting at the back of my dad's car, my dad is driving, my whole family is on the way to the Penang island. When I was small, we rarely go to the island. Our home is on the mainland Penang, and going to island always means one thing, road trip! 

- Hey Ma by Soler

  The TV was playing this song, when I was about to leave home to study in France. What a coincidence I thought. It is particularly meaningful to me, beacuse I am quite closed to my mom. She is like a friend to me.

- Stranger by Soler    

   One of the songs in my phone. This song always takes me back to old days when I was in a TGV from Toulouse to Valence, and the coastline of Montpellier flying pass me. I was reminding myself to appreciate this relationship. 

    It made me sad, and still make me sad. 

- Home by Michael Buble
 

   Two of my friends and I were in the bus from Rome Ciampino airport to Rome Fiumicino airport. There was a 12-hour delay on our flight. In the end we were taken to the Fiumicino for departure because the "problem" in Ciampino airport couldn't be fixed and was closed down. When taking the transiting bus, it was a total chaos, since everybody's flight was delayed. Unluckily, my ex didn't manage to get into the same bus with us.

   I was sitting in the bus with two of them behind me. I was so afraid of get lost of sight of her and worrying like hell, while this song was played in the bus. And I had never felt so worried about one person in my life.

- Dandelion's Promise by Jay Chou

  It was the summer of 2010. My ex was trying to learn the piano version of the song. She said she was going to finish learning it by the time I came back from the Italy backpacking trip. I took the train to Milan to start my trip but I returned to Toulouse straight away, on that same day. I felt lost and realized I really miss her. In the return train, light-hearted was the feeling. I reached at midnight. When I opened the door, she was just there infront of the keyboard, learning the song.    

- Fall for you by Secondhand Grenade

   It reminds of London. During the trip to London, this song was the morning alarm of one of my friends. I remember I was really irritated by the alarm because my friend could continue sleeping with the alarm. I can't and I had to wake up and shut it down myself. At the end of the trip, everyone in the group remembered the song as the theme song of the trip.

- Pourquoi tu pleures? by Madame Kay

   It reminds me of the brief one month period in Intec, Shah Alam.

- Trois ans et demi d'amour by Patrick Bruel

   It reminds me of 3 months stay in Royan.

And last but not least, Coldplay's songs. I can't remember exactly which Coldplay's songs simply because I was not very familiar with Coldplay that time. It was played when me and my friends were in a car, going back to safety after two-day lost in the mountains. We all were exhausted but felt secured and lucky to be able to live through the odds.

...........................................

I notice that smell can do the same too. Too bad I am not good enough in describing smells. But there is an author I know who can, Patrick Süskind, in his novel, "Perfume : The Story of a Murderer". I tried to read the french version once, but didn't finish. For me, he is really good in describing the smells but a bit too elaborated, in a sense that, too hard for me to digest all those details. There is a film adaptation in english also. The ending is simply WTF!!! 

So, may be we should start conserving precious memories through other 4 senses, rather than photos or videos. 

Did Lance live strong???

Recently, I came over this video about links between athletes and psychopaths. 

The first great athlete that came to my mind is Lance Armstrong. According to the video, he certainly fits into the characteristics of a psychopath. And then I discovered the following video about the 2 time Ironman world champion, Chris Mccormack's (nicknamed Macca) view on Lance. 

To Macca, Lance really got the attitude to be The Winner. In fact, I think it was the arrogance that won him those races. His arrogance was so terrifying, thereby scared off many other athletes. I can totally understand that fear, because whenever I swim in the pool with many pros, I would get scared by them, fearing that I am blocking their way. Everytime I come into this situation, I either can't swim properly or swim too fast and my energy drained out so quickly that I can't endure more than the time normally I do. 

Following this logic, I even think the arrogance, the attitude of a winner, is the missing key for Lee Chong Wei to win against Lin Dan during many of their match-ups. However I still prefer Lee Chong Wei for his humble character, ironically.

When Lance's doping was confirmed, many people have been commenting about this incident. I agree with many comments but there is one I am furious about, saying anyone can do what he did if doped. Lance is still great as a fighter against cancer. He is great for his determination to win at all cost, entirely commited himself into his aspiration, which is something can't be done by sitting idly at home. 

After years, I realized that one doesn't have to be good in order to be great. It reminds me of Gatsby in "The Great Gatsby" and a video discussing whether Gatsby is great.

Just like what John Green said in the video, Gatsby is certainly a great man, but a great man must be even more careful of what he worships. If winning was all Lance worshipped, then in my point of view, winning is dangerous to be worshipped. 

All I said doesn't imply that we shouldn't punish Lance for what he did. He cheated, he broke the rules, and therefore should be punished. Other than that, me as a spectator, I ask myself, do I really care whether athletes are doped? Frankly, I don't care. I just want to have a great time watching sports. All I care the most while watching a competition is the performance, the result. This reminds me of the movie "Real Steel". Spectators in the movie want more violence, more speed and more great performance, that human boxing couldn't satisfy them anymore, hence the robot fighting. Just like I want to see athletes to go faster, stronger. The more exaggerated the performance is, the more I am excited. I don't care whether if athletes are honest or not during the mean time. I want something amazing to happen, a miracle almost.  

In the end, for a spectator, is doping really that bad, other than bad for heatlh of the athlete concerned? The rich can exploit the new technologies in construction of suits and equipments while the poor can't. So is the competition always fair for everyone?   

So did Lance live strong? Yes, of course! And he is now stronger, for he has the courage to tell the truth. 

Empathy isn't enough, must react

Last friday, I was in the waiting line for my titre de séjour, in the Grenoble Préfecture. They just shifted the counters for foreigners, into the roofless yard in between the main entrance and the main building. The counters themselves have roof though. In fact, there are four of these counters built inside a really small air-conditioned office, so small that they actually won't allow people to wait inside the office, which on the other hand is impossible to do so also. One has to wait outside until one of the counters is available. 

It was raining heavily that day. With only two out of four counters were opened, long queue was inevitable. Luckily, the main entrance has big enough eaves for people to wait under it, instead of under the rain. And that is when the confusion came in. The queue under the eaves had some distance away from the office, which made the queue seeming like lining up for other counter. So some new arrivals might think that nobody was lining up for the foreigner's counters, and cut the line. Many would realize eventually, but there was these two teens cutting the line even though they knew where the real queue was. I wanted to ask them to queue up and almost did it. But it is embarrassing that it took me so long to react. I actually stood there doing nothing and hoping the others might stand up against them. 

Finally, a guy took action, asking them to line up. The teens said they only wanted to ask a simple question. The guy said, everybody else was lining up, and insisted that they must played by the rules also. But the teens just wouldn't listen. In the end, the good guy asked the queue to move to the front of the office to force those teens to line up like others and the strenght of the majority prevailed. Now the queue was under the rain but eventually it stopped not long afterwards. 

I felt so embarrassed for the fact that I didn't react. In this world we need more people like the good guy. But sadly, many people are like me, not reacting against injustice. 

And it seems to me that one of the ways that we don't come into this world knowing how to be a person is that we don't really know what to do about empathy. Like the weird thing about self-consciousness is that you become aware of the fact that, you can never fully feel someone else's pain and someone else can never fully feel your pain. ......The question is how do we get to a place where we can empathize with each other enough, to take care of each other enough, to get through this vale of tears.

- John Green, vlogbrothers - 

I think many of us have the empathy with us, just like I can totally understand how the people in long queue would feel if I cut the line. However, obviously we are not taking care of each other enough, and cannot even achieve a simple act, like standing up against those teens who cut the line.

Mesmerizing starry night

Many people I know live in cities. We put electrical lighting everywhere in the cities to be able to see clearer. Many of us living in cities will know, totally out of artificial lighting is rare. When you switch off the light to go to bed, there are always street lamps, the litttle LED from your charging phone, your internet router, etc.. 

Yes, night is dark, but not as dark as we always think. There is light from the stars and the moon. It might be hard to believe for those who always live in cities and have never been far away from the light pollution, that, with this light from stars and the moon, we are actually able to see very clearly at night. While in the nature, while the sky is clear to let enough star light and moon light to shine through, we should just let the pupils slowly dilate and adapt to the surroundings. Torchlight is pretty much useless in this situation, because it can only let you see wherever you point it at. 

As I live in a city also, so witness a starry night sky is quite rare for me, simply because you can't see the sky clearly in the cities with the light pollution. In my country, Malaysia, it is even rarer. In Malaysia, apart of the light pollution, there are clouds, since Malaysia is a tropical country where it rains frequently. So until now, the only constellation i can recognize is the Orion's Belt and Orion. Whenever I can see the Orion's Belt in Malaysia, I would consider the weather to be very clear already. 

Witnessing a trully starry night, it happened to me only twice (may be more but that's all I can remember). The first time is when I went for a 3-days hike in the national park of Ecrins. We were lost on the second day and couldn't get to lower altitude and flat land to set up our tent before sunset. We managed to continue going down the mountain to just below the snowline and found ourselves a slope which was not so steep. We failed to put up our tent also due the rocky surface where we couldn't anchor our tent. In the end we just sneaked into our sleeping bags and tried to get some rest. Nobody in the team managed to sleep that night. It was just too cold and we were in constant fear of rolling off the slope. So we basically were awake throughout the starry and windy cold night. The sky was beautiful as the stars slowly moving across the sky, though we were shivering like hell. That night was a long long night. We were all praying for the sun to come out sooner, and finally the sun rose, we never felt so alive before. 

The second time that I remember is during a stay with a family in Thar desert. This time I had a comfortable bed, sleeping outdoor, with the starry sky as blanket. 

It is an amazing experience to see a starry sky. It makes me think about many deep questions in life and in the universe. 

National Geographic, Best Travel Pictures of 2011 Named : 
Star Sprawl, by Ben Canales