Coffee and Tea

There used to be a time when I couldn't tell the difference between tea and coffee. It was many years ago, but still rather inexcusable, especially for someone whose parents make tea everyday. I blame the ignorance partially on the way most places disguise both drinks with a lot of milk and sugar and partially on the fact that I was young and stupid.

I don't have a story about my first cup of coffee; in fact, I don't even remember when and where I began drinking it, but I'm certain it was milk coffee with sugar. Once I was somehow able to tell it apart from tea, it wasn't long before I looked upon it with reverence. I'd grown up drinking milk while the grown-ups drank tea (without milk and sugar, of course) so coffee was quite the novelty.

Coffee became my drink of choice, transmogrifying from sweet and milky to bitter and black. It wasn't long before I'd completely turned my back on tea. However, things change. For a while, coffee was the most fascinating thing in the world. But then something happened - so sneakily that I didn't even realize at first (or maybe I just didn't want to believe it). It may have simply been a period of bad coffee, but my body seemed to be rejecting it, so I turned to tea who was just waiting to step in and save the day(s).

That revelation might have been the effect of all the coffee in my system. I had a friend tell me once that there was "too much blood in your caffeine system". However, I was convinced that my Assamese roots were taking over and punishing me for straying from my natural path, so I decided to make up for lost time.

I found I really enjoyed tea. So much that I didn't even miss coffee for a while. Oh, and all you people hating on green tea must know this: green tea is NOT what you get in those awful tea bags people use because they're trying to lose weight. In fact, I'm not sure those have tea in them at all. I suspect it's tea-scented sawdust. Anyway, it's just tasteless marketing.
Green tea is beautiful, and drinking it is a sublime experience. Try it. Can't guarantee you'll love it, especially if you're a sweet milk tea person, but I can promise it's fragrant and flavourful and not hate-worthy at all.

Most people are firm about their identities as tea drinkers or coffee drinkers, and both sides will try to convince you that their drink is undoubtedly better. If we're talking sweet and milky, I'm Switzerland - neutral because I dislike both. But if it's just a general coffee versus tea debate, I'll most likely side with the minority to balance it out a little.

Truth is, I need both. Strong coffee in the morning, light tea through the rest of the day. If I seem more excited at the mention of coffee, it's only because finding coffee the way I like it seems much easier here than finding good tea.

Coffee is infatuation. Tea is love. Both are wonderful.

Water Colours

When I was little, I used to treat water colours like poster colours. As a result, I never quite appreciated them because they always felt like a weaker substitute for poster colours. But with increased exposure over the years, I know now that they are absolutely splendid if you know how to work with them.

The thing is, it's really hard. Blending colours on paper can be tricky. They dry quickly, so you have to work fast. You need to possess a very strong understanding of light and colour. There's a method to it: light shades first, darker shades later. One at a time. But quickly.
And if you mess something up, there's almost no way you can fix it except to start all over again.

Through the years, I've been struggling to make a half-decent water colour painting, and my latest attempt was a few weeks ago. I walked into the art room in school, and there was this lovely bunch of leaves in a pot in the centre of the room.

Those black smudges are supposed to be sparkly fairy dust. Or just sparkly dust. I mention that because they suddenly seem a little like flies.

It was very exciting, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to take another shot at a water colour painting.

But it wasn't to be. I sat there for what seemed like a really long time, trying to find a way to do justice to all the beautiful light on those leaves.

And a few failed attempts later...

So yeah, it's going to be a while before I can produce something reasonably satisfactory in watercolour. Until then, pens and doodles it is. Oh, and oil pastels. I'm really loving those lately.

Why Twitter Doesn't Suck

A few years ago, I'd put up a post about how much I disliked Twitter. For those of you who won't read it, which I'm assuming is most of you, especially now that I'm giving you this shortcut, these were my main reasons for the anti-Twitter rampage:

• It was difficult to use and also sort of pointless.
• It showed me lots of random posts by people doing mundane stuff. 
• It didn't allow for adequate expression due to the character limit, which in turn resulted in people tweeting multiple times an hour, which again leads to my previous point. 
• Every time I replied to someone, it showed up as a new tweet.

After trying it out for a while, I decided it wasn't for me and simply stopped using it.

Then, over these summer holidays, I watched Heroes for the first time (yes, I'm many years behind on lots of TV shows. I only just started watching Buffy recently, after finishing Heroes). I loved the show and wanted to find out where else I could see Milo Ventimiglia and Zachary Quinto. I figured I could also follow them on facebook, but Milo doesn't seem to have a facebook page (although there is a fan page with at least a couple of creepily obsessive fans).

After a few moments of perplexity over what to do next, I remembered this little thing called Twitter, and it turned out that he was on it. So I decided to give the site another chance, and I'm glad I did.

Ventimiglia tweets often enough to keep things interesting but not so much that it gets annoying.
Also, get this: he actually replies! Especially when he's on a flight, apparently. There was this one time he was my entire news feed because he was replying to tweets for about 5 hours straight. Not that any of his followers were complaining, I'm sure. I mean, seriously, replying to so many people instead of taking a nap or something - how very nice of him!


Stephen Amell and Neil Gaiman also use Twitter

We all know Neil Gaiman's got a wonderful way with words. His tweets are funny and entertaining, and since he's Gaiman, even when you see promotional tweets, you're not thinking "Oh god, stop!" Instead, you're probably thanking him for gracing you with information like where you can get signed copies of his books and so on.

Stephen Amell is someone I started following on facebook after watching Arrow, and while I didn't expect him to be exactly like the character he plays, I was pleasantly surprised to discover how funny he is. Recently, I saw that he posts more often on Twitter. One more reason for me to not give up on this site.


The 140 character limit is actually rather fun

Of all the annoying traits Twitter possesses, this one was initially at the top of my list. However, with all the precis writing in school and flash fiction in college, I decided I was more than capable of turning it into a sort of challenge.

Oh wait, to Barney, the challenge would have been to use more than 140 characters. Hmm, I really didn't think that one through. Ah, whatever. Those pictures are staying right there.

This reminds me of how funny NPH's first few tweets were. Before he understood the character limit, sentences would just stop abruptly, often mid-word, if I remember right. I'd like to put up screenshots, but there's no way I'm scrolling to the very beginning of his page (especially with my aggravatingly slow internet).

Coming back to what I was saying before the NPH distraction, I swore to always use exactly 140 characters to make the most of every post. Even if I really didn't need to. I discovered it was fun and not so hard to do. Also, when I'd done it the first few times, no one seemed to care, and for a while I'd slipped into using fewer characters than I could (gasp!)
But then I reminded myself that no one really cares what you do on twitter most of the time unless you're famous, and that there was one person who cared about sticking it to the character limit: me.

I've learnt that a 140 character tweet is called a twoosh. And that's the last time I'm using that word because it sounds incredibly stupid. Way stupider than "tweet".


Quick scrolling

Since there's a character limit, even though people tweet often, posts are really short. This means you can quickly scroll down without wasting time on uninteresting things. I don't follow too many people, so a few seconds of scrolling shows me the entire day's new tweets.


#Hashtags

Some hashtags are pretty crazy, and it's a lot of fun to see the different wacky things people have to say about them. #foodafilm and #dressamovie were a couple I really liked. Okay, they were the only ones I bothered to look at, but the point is, they were fun.
That being said, some people really need to stop using hashtags with every other word. Unless it's in a parody like the one with Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake:

  #funnyvideo #LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

So, those are all the reasons why, although my problems with Twitter haven't disappeared and are still quite valid, I've reversed my general opinion of the site. I rather like it now.

Also, did I mention that Milo Ventimiglia uses Twitter and replies to lots of messages?