That’s enough tea for me
the tea in Myanmar tastes great, but I’ve had my fill ..
My current full-time job (at least, until mid-January) is to edit application essays of all sorts, but especially MBA essays. It’s fine, just fine, but everyday is a work day from here on out, but some essays are written in a patchwork language resembling English only on the surface. Of course there are the little victories — I was personally proud of one set of essays (after six rounds of edits, though) — but it’s mostly a gentle slog.
So, I’ve decided the best way to cope with these repetitive, dull essays is to write a little on my own. My goal: a little something everyday — could be 100 words, could be 1000 — just something.
I spent the last roughly six months on the road — most of it in Singapore — on an internship doing chemistry research. I also did my fair share of travelling around Southeast Asia, and the stories come back to me at their will. Like good ideas and new acquaintances’ names, they flow into my ear and out again; they’re remembered upon hearing someone else’s story, then forgotten just as quickly. These are the stories that make a person who he is, these small one-time narratives that’ll never be written down in a book, told once but never truly forgotten. These are the stories that start: “Oh, that reminds me of the time …” So here goes:
Perhaps the best part of being in Asia is the tea. They serve it everywhere and with everything, the perfect pairing for a delicate dimsum meal or a spicy kimchee noodle. It’s warm and has that slight taste that cleans the palate.
Myanmar, being part of Asia, serves tea too. It was surprisingly very tasty and ubiquitous; on top of every “restaurant” table we sat at, there was a thermos of tea with small cups, face down, all in what amounted to a serving dish. I was amazed at how convenient the whole thing was — no having to wait for anybody to serve you, no waiting for cups, no waiting for refills.
One time, though, I had the luck of watching the busgirl clean our table. She collected the dishes into a haphazard pile, which was normal. She then took our two teacups — the ones we had just used — and flipped them face-down back into the serving dish. That meant our cups would be used by the next person, without washing them, which meant that the cups we used were probably used by somebody else.
On second thought, I’m not sure why I was so surprised. I had the luck of finding a nice bug in my rice twice in my three day stay. I fished a bug — which then proceeded to crawl around — out of my fresh-squeezed orange juice, along with a bunch of other bug parts. So I’m sure the tea thing was no worse, but I felt I had been tricked. Tea is tea is tea, but Myanmar wouldn’t let it be so.
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