#1 Making Tea
It was a bit unclear how that teapot got there on the table in front of him. He was quite sure no one really put it there in his presence, or better he didn’t have any recollection of that teapot ever existing. It was white with a handle and a cap, pretty much what he expected from a teapot. It was not really sure it was actually a teapot, as his idea of a teapot was quite abstract and unclear. Is a teapot without a teacup an actual teapot? He always recognized things based on other things around it. Association helped him understanding what things are. A bike has a person on it, a weight has an arm attached to it, normally dogs have leashes and a lamp has a wire and a socket. This loneliness of the teapot really bothered him, as it made him really not sure that it was a teapot after all. Who put this teapot there and why, he started thinking, but maybe there is not really any need of knowing why a teapot is there if you are sure it is one, you probably would wanna use it to make a tea. Maybe that was the cue. Someone put it there for him to pick it up, to go find water and make a tea. That seemed like the most plausible situation. However, no one was around to make tea for. So why should he be preparing tea?
As he was going through that logic, he anyway saw himself starting to move his arm to grab the teapot. He felt good at smoothly moving his arm towards it, the movement was smooth and direct. The hand and the teapot looked very nice together, as the hand rotated and opened to grasp the handle it felt just right. After a little, the grip of his hand tightened. The teapot was finally in his hands. The teapot changed something in him, he suddenly felt more sure about what to do. Once you have a teapot in your hands, there are not many options going forward. Throwing it didn’t feel quite right as also shaking it seemed a little odd. So it seemed pretty clear at that point that somewhere around there should be water to fill the teapot with. Most likely on his right or his left he would find some water. As he looked to his right there was a tap! Who knew.
It seemed almost too easy at this point, but what are the actual chances that a water tap is so close to a teapot? That didn’t seem to matter as the urge of filling the teapot with water was way more strong than starting to calculating the chances of the situation he was in. Was he thirsty anyway? He started thinking and pondering. As no one is here he must want a tea himself, but was it the teapot idea or his own idea to have a tea actually. As the water started flowing in the teapot he wasn’t really aware how he opened the tap, but that happened.The water was filling the teapot fast, he knew that soon it would be enough for a good cup of tea. Was he counting the time or the liters? He was not really sure whether he ever thought of water in the form of liters before, cups seemed more like the right way of talking about tea. Ah yes, fire, tea needs fire.
He turned the other direction to find the fire stove, firestorm seemed to be often near water taps. That was new learning, probably fire and water need to be close to each other, just in case. He snapped out of this thought as the sound of the water and the steam coming out alerted him that most likely it was time to turn off the fire, find some tea and finally make a good cup of tea. The cup was there, perfect and white. His precise pouring of the water in the cup made him feel very good with himself. It’s often easy to spill water out. But why do people actually care about that? Is it because of saving water? Or just not to get the table wet? But anyway, why is there only one cup, and no biscuits, no one else around. He felt something weird like he did this many times.
He felt a bit forced to do all these actions one after the other, why just not putting the tea in the teapot straight away? Why did he have to move up and down the tea bag? With repetitive movements up and down, it might not even be the best way to actually let the leaves release the flavors. Mathematically speaking, you are probably better at moving in a more circular movement and get more water on the surface of the tea leaves, but you know, that seemed the way he learned. Learned? but from who? He felt this happened already, he was natural at making tea, but he also felt like it was the first time he was making tea. The last step, a little bit of sugar, he wanted sweet tea after all. But wait, which one is sugar? how does the sugar look like?
He soon felt lost, like he wanted to finish making tea, but something was missing, he was missing the last step. His arm started moving, but this time was not natural, something was pulling him. A hand, another hand was pulling his arm towards another cup, not like the teacup, a different shape, with something inside that was not water, is that the sugar? Is it? But wait, this hand was not really like his hand it had more than two fingers, also it was of a different color. As this other hand brought him towards what at this point felt pretty clearly sugar, he poured some in the cup. He knew how to mix by now already, turning slowly the spoon in the water in nice circular motions, that was it, he made it. He made a tea. He was so happy he felt like, …
As the robotic arm finished to mix the tea, the researcher was very happy and stopped the session. After 100 sessions the robot arm almost learned to make tea by itself. He was ecstatic and placed again the empty white Utah teapot on the table.
