Dear aliens,
If you are looking down on earth right now and shaking your heads in disgust, mirth and exasperation at the imbecile homo sapiens that inhabit this beautiful blue planet, you have every right to do so. Humans (unfortunately I am classified as one, but I'd still like to pretend I'm not) have a lot of faults and more than often regress in intelligence, understanding and progress rather than evolve or, okay, I'm not even asking for much here, remain constant. We have not yet found our place, our stable spot and I doubt if we'll ever find our equilibrium. And if we did, I would only have to pray that it would not be one where our violent nature dominates.
If you are looking down on earth right now and shaking your heads in disgust, mirth and exasperation at the imbecile homo sapiens that inhabit this beautiful blue planet, you have every right to do so. Humans (unfortunately I am classified as one, but I'd still like to pretend I'm not) have a lot of faults and more than often regress in intelligence, understanding and progress rather than evolve or, okay, I'm not even asking for much here, remain constant. We have not yet found our place, our stable spot and I doubt if we'll ever find our equilibrium. And if we did, I would only have to pray that it would not be one where our violent nature dominates.
I must confess, I began writing this post last week but I found myself to be in such an irritable mood that I decided to take a breather and not burden my readers with my frustrations. So it was a long break from blogging, twitter, and Facebook. While I am in a slightly less irritable mood, I cannot wait until I am officially on holiday so that I can take a break from all this crazy! :)
Two weeks ago I watched a video where a father was arrested for trying to pick his daughter up from school - on foot! Utterly crazy! This happened somewhere in Tennessee and it was the school's policy that all students had to be picked up by car! Rather than wait in traffic a mile long, the father decided to leg it like a normal human being to the school to greet his little baby. Before I find myself descending into verbal diarrhoea over this incident, I shall instead post the video below so you can watch at your own discretion. But don't say you haven't been warned!
Now onto better things. Tea. The beverage that brings a sigh of pleasure for the lesser alcohol inclined people like me. Fiji is a nation of tea lovers and needless to say, I grew up on strong black Ceylon tea with crackers soaking in it, but it was much later that I learned to appreciate the subtler, yet full flavoured Darjeeling teas. Being the ignorant person I was back then, I never really thought about the whole process of tea production, and about the people who worked hard to pick the young tender leaves in all seasons just to have it dried, packed and shipped to our nearest supermarket and specialty tea shops. So, BIL (I did warn you I'd be mentioning him a lot) gave me some homework. Read about Darjeeling and think about where their tea actually comes from. Hmmm ... homework accepted.
So here's what I found out. Darjeeling tea comes from the Darjeeling District of West Bengal, India (obviously I knew that, hehe). It's made from the small-leaved Chinese variety of Camellia sinensis (why can't scientists give normal names? I would have called it Caramel Sun!) and while traditionally it used to be a black tea, Darjeeling has now branched into oolong and green teas. What is interesting to note and the reason for BIL assigning me homework is, the amount of tea sold as Darjeeling worldwide. Based on information I pilfered from Wikipedia (well, not pilfered - gleaned :)), the annual tea production of Darjeeling is around 10,000 tonnes and yet, the amount of tea sold as Darjeeling worldwide is estimated to be 40,000 tonnes. Hmmm, clearly someone's been selling us fake Darjeeling tea. Anyway, to combat all this falsification of Darjeeling tea, the Teaboard of India administers the Darjeeling certificate and logo. I pasted it below:
Two weeks ago I watched a video where a father was arrested for trying to pick his daughter up from school - on foot! Utterly crazy! This happened somewhere in Tennessee and it was the school's policy that all students had to be picked up by car! Rather than wait in traffic a mile long, the father decided to leg it like a normal human being to the school to greet his little baby. Before I find myself descending into verbal diarrhoea over this incident, I shall instead post the video below so you can watch at your own discretion. But don't say you haven't been warned!
Now onto better things. Tea. The beverage that brings a sigh of pleasure for the lesser alcohol inclined people like me. Fiji is a nation of tea lovers and needless to say, I grew up on strong black Ceylon tea with crackers soaking in it, but it was much later that I learned to appreciate the subtler, yet full flavoured Darjeeling teas. Being the ignorant person I was back then, I never really thought about the whole process of tea production, and about the people who worked hard to pick the young tender leaves in all seasons just to have it dried, packed and shipped to our nearest supermarket and specialty tea shops. So, BIL (I did warn you I'd be mentioning him a lot) gave me some homework. Read about Darjeeling and think about where their tea actually comes from. Hmmm ... homework accepted.
So here's what I found out. Darjeeling tea comes from the Darjeeling District of West Bengal, India (obviously I knew that, hehe). It's made from the small-leaved Chinese variety of Camellia sinensis (why can't scientists give normal names? I would have called it Caramel Sun!) and while traditionally it used to be a black tea, Darjeeling has now branched into oolong and green teas. What is interesting to note and the reason for BIL assigning me homework is, the amount of tea sold as Darjeeling worldwide. Based on information I pilfered from Wikipedia (well, not pilfered - gleaned :)), the annual tea production of Darjeeling is around 10,000 tonnes and yet, the amount of tea sold as Darjeeling worldwide is estimated to be 40,000 tonnes. Hmmm, clearly someone's been selling us fake Darjeeling tea. Anyway, to combat all this falsification of Darjeeling tea, the Teaboard of India administers the Darjeeling certificate and logo. I pasted it below:
Does this mean that Twinings and other popular tea brands are selling us fake Darjeeling? I do recall seeing this logo somewhere but not for a long while. Now that I know, I'll try to make a conscious effort to keep an eye out for it. Not that it really matters, there are lots of good teas about and they don't have to come from Darjeeling. After all, Darjeeling tea seeds were first pilfered from China by a Dr. Campbell (the British were famous for this sort of thing back in the days!) in 1840 and commercial tea production in the Darjeeling district began in the 1850s.
But it gets even better! If you were an ardent lover of tea and uh, tea also happened to fall into your work research, and you actually investigated the actual output production of tea leaves in Darjeeling and realised it fell short of what was officially stated, AND you knew your geographical regions extremely well combined with what was grown there - then you'd come to the realisation that Darjeeling has a lot of elf workers. What do I mean, you ask? Well, Darjeeling (the district) borders with Nepal to the left, another country that produces a lot of tea. Very close to that border is a region called Illam. Now everyone has heard of Darjeeling tea, but no one has heard of Illam tea. Illam has a lot of elves. At nights when the good shoemaker and hardworking people of Darjeeling are asleep, Illam elves carry their leaves across the border into Darjeeling. When the shoemaker wakes up, presto! He has met his production quota for the month. I bet you never thought tea could be this interesting, did you? :)
As you can see, I began this blog with pictures (courtesy of BIL) taken in Illam showing the hardworking tea leaf pickers braving it out in cold, wet and foggy conditions. It is hardly romantic work, and these women have to protect their bodies from the ravages of tea plants ripping through their clothes and grazing their skin. The next time I buy good tea, I won't complain about how expensive it is. As BIL says in his efforts to educate me, 'Keep being curious.'
But it gets even better! If you were an ardent lover of tea and uh, tea also happened to fall into your work research, and you actually investigated the actual output production of tea leaves in Darjeeling and realised it fell short of what was officially stated, AND you knew your geographical regions extremely well combined with what was grown there - then you'd come to the realisation that Darjeeling has a lot of elf workers. What do I mean, you ask? Well, Darjeeling (the district) borders with Nepal to the left, another country that produces a lot of tea. Very close to that border is a region called Illam. Now everyone has heard of Darjeeling tea, but no one has heard of Illam tea. Illam has a lot of elves. At nights when the good shoemaker and hardworking people of Darjeeling are asleep, Illam elves carry their leaves across the border into Darjeeling. When the shoemaker wakes up, presto! He has met his production quota for the month. I bet you never thought tea could be this interesting, did you? :)
As you can see, I began this blog with pictures (courtesy of BIL) taken in Illam showing the hardworking tea leaf pickers braving it out in cold, wet and foggy conditions. It is hardly romantic work, and these women have to protect their bodies from the ravages of tea plants ripping through their clothes and grazing their skin. The next time I buy good tea, I won't complain about how expensive it is. As BIL says in his efforts to educate me, 'Keep being curious.'