Changing Your Grass
I'm a pretty habitual tea drinker at work. When my work style was more sedentary, this consisted of a cup of tea, sometimes with milk, sitting at my desk; however, due to the fact that I spend at least half my day in meetings each day, often traipsing about like a nomad from floor to floor and room to room, I had to come up with a more mobile tea arrangement. What I wound up with was using a high performance sports bottle, into which, first thing each morning, I add a dose of loose leaf green tea, and throughout the day fill and refill with hot water to brew the tea. (This was inspired by the ubiquitous tea jars people carried around in China, some of which were the same kind of plastic bottle.)
Assuming that I stick to tea which does not get too bitter when left in the water for long periods, and which behaves nicely at the bottom of the bottle and doesn't float up into my teeth, this system works quite well for me.
It perplexes the holy heck out of my coworkers, however.
Practically not a day goes by without at least one comment from someone about my tea. I concede that I'm the only one around who carries his tea in a transparent jar to meetings, but it still seems pretty intuitive what's going on, but apparently not so.
"What is that in your jar?"
"Is that a spider?"
"What are you eating?"
"Oh, you've gone on a natural food diet?"
I try to keep the explanation simple and concise, usually something like, "It's green tea." That's seldom sufficient for most people, it seems.
"Is that hot water or cold?"
. . . and my personal favorite, "Do you change your grass every day?"
Lately, I'm torn. On one hand, I could invest the $5 or so to buy a replacement bottle which is opaque, and save myself a lot of questions. But on the other hand, it's kind of an interesting position to have now earned, to be the emissary of tea knowledge at the office, especially since I've had to learn a lot of things in response to some of the more insightful questions I've been asked thus far.
And just to set the record straight, yes, tea leaves have more caffeine than coffee, but by dry weight, not by brewed volume. A cup of coffee has up to four times as much caffeine as the same size cup of tea. So there you go. Other bits of tea trivia by request only. . . .
Assuming that I stick to tea which does not get too bitter when left in the water for long periods, and which behaves nicely at the bottom of the bottle and doesn't float up into my teeth, this system works quite well for me.
It perplexes the holy heck out of my coworkers, however.
Practically not a day goes by without at least one comment from someone about my tea. I concede that I'm the only one around who carries his tea in a transparent jar to meetings, but it still seems pretty intuitive what's going on, but apparently not so.
"What is that in your jar?"
"Is that a spider?"
"What are you eating?"
"Oh, you've gone on a natural food diet?"
I try to keep the explanation simple and concise, usually something like, "It's green tea." That's seldom sufficient for most people, it seems.
"Is that hot water or cold?"
. . . and my personal favorite, "Do you change your grass every day?"
Lately, I'm torn. On one hand, I could invest the $5 or so to buy a replacement bottle which is opaque, and save myself a lot of questions. But on the other hand, it's kind of an interesting position to have now earned, to be the emissary of tea knowledge at the office, especially since I've had to learn a lot of things in response to some of the more insightful questions I've been asked thus far.
And just to set the record straight, yes, tea leaves have more caffeine than coffee, but by dry weight, not by brewed volume. A cup of coffee has up to four times as much caffeine as the same size cup of tea. So there you go. Other bits of tea trivia by request only. . . .