Whoop, whoop, I am set up for school! Dad spotted me a bit of money to cover tuition until my Christmas bonus comes in on Friday (I hope), and I got all my tea gear in my locker, if not my tea – sugar, spoons, filterbags, wee travel mug. I went to SBUX tonight to test the hopeful hypothesis that they will give me hot water for free after the Market closes as long as I don’t need a cup, and this hypothesis has so far proved correct. Yes.
So I’m finally getting around to my sample of this that I’ve had floating around since…it came out. Yeah, that long. I let this steep longer than I meant to, but it seems none the worse for wear.
And ooooh pineapple!
I’m such a fan of pineapple-flavoured stuff. Not so much the actual pineapple, because I have difficulty with the texture. But juice and flavouring, that I can do.
This one just has an awesome balance of flavours, to me. There are some people who seem to like the base to be stronger than the flavour in a flavoured tea. I don’t quite understand that; if I wanted only tea flavour, I’d drink a straight tea. And I do drink straight teas, but I generally want a strong flavour in a flavoured tea…and a base which is not weak, but which takes to the background and meshes well with the flavour.
That is the balance I’m getting here. The oolong is nice, but I’m more aware of the pineapple. Pretty much exactly what I want when I picked up something called “Pineapple Oolong.” It’s very bright, and the bit of floral I get at the back of the sip is actually working with the other flavours. That’s nice, because floral notes sometimes make me rather queasy. Then again, that may only be when they are added to the tea and not natural to it.
There also seems to be another fruit in here. From the description, I’m guessing it’s apricot? It comes out a little more as the tea cools. I bet this would be amazing iced!
I want to give this a couple more shots, as well as try it iced, but I think this might end up being a cupboard keeper.
Very nice, anyway. And very relaxing, which I need just now. I had my first Women’s Studies class today, and I really don’t know about the prof… I was about 3-4 minutes late because the building the class is in is numbered in a really confusing way, and I went down the wrong hallway at first. She did not give me a chance to sign the attendance sheet. Um, okay? If this were even the second class, I would accept that, but geez, people coming late because they couldn’t find the room is something that HAPPENS on the first day!
And then she rushed through her PowerPoint slides and didn’t give us more than a few seconds per slide to write anything down – some slides she didn’t even show because she got so caught up TALKING, which I guess must be the only way to communicate! And her written notes suck – no complete sentences, because she’s one of those types that puts up the barest sketch of notes and then “fills in” during class.
ADHD makes my working auditory memory virtually non-existent, so I depend on clear written notes, and the shitty notes she gave us aren’t even on the student Blackboard, so apparently she’s also one of those types who withholds written material to blackmail people into coming to class. So now I have a few pages full of half-finished sentences, and the barest idea of what we discussed in class because I can no longer really remember it. In a few days, I will have no memory of anything she said at all.
I came to the library stressed almost to the point of tears, but the tea is helping immensely. I am definitely never going to her class from now on without tea in hand. And maybe a discreet voice recorder. But mostly tea.
