1598 Tasting Notes
This tea is a bit of a miss for me today, and the other one I brought was so undrinkably strong that I had to dump it (no milk or sugar here to fix it with). It’s cold here too. And mediocre tea = a SAD Cavo!
Also, I had to laugh at how my friends in BC are freaking out about the 5 cm of snow that fell. :P Ahahahahha. Ok, that’s mean, but I can’t believe how extreme the weather is in Toronto, while I managed to wear sandals for 80% of the year when I was in Vancouver. Granted if you go to SFU it’s a bit different because the mountain is pretty undrinkable, but it’s not a crisis situation all around.
Ok, enough poking fun at my BC people ILU guys, really. I’m just jealous. :P
I’m gonna make myself finish this cup (or not) and then move on to something tastier.
Just a quick review before bed – this was one of the teas MissB surprised me with in her package and I was quite thrilled to try it. It smelled so rich and amazing and the long story short of it is that it tasted nearly as good as it smells. That’s really saying something because it’s hard to get that rich dark chocolate taste into a tea.
THANK YOU. :)
And that sipdown puts me at 175 now that MissB has bumped me up. Hahaha.
This makes for a pretty great breakfast tea. I’m sipping away on this, doing work stuff and listening to Welcome to Night Vale. Cecil is squeeing because Carlos called him and it’s just adorable.
I listened to the Street Cleaning episode before that (http://nightvale.libsyn.com/15-street-cleaning-day) and it was horrifying. Just horrifying. This quote is tangentially related:
“Sirens have been going off in Central Night Vale as a warning about sirens going off in Old Town Night Vale. These sirens indicate that sirens might occur in the general Night Vale area over the next few hours, which would be a declaration of a current siren watch. Please check that your siren preparedness kit is fully stocked and easily reachable. Lieutenant Regis of Unit 7 of the local National Guard Station and KFC combo store said that, ‘It always seemed that the only way to live without regrets was just to never regret anything you did. And that seems to be the only hope for the future, anyway. Regrets just bear us down. Regrets just bear us down.’”
First off, I love love LOVE the color of this. It’s such a rich and vibrant blue. I imagine that if I drank it iced the color would help convince my brain that I am tasting something amazingly refreshing.
I made this hot though. And it’s good. I wish it were more like a chai though – the spices seem fairly mild. Maybe I should have used more leaves? It said 5g but IDK how much that is and I guessed. It tastes like a flower, (but not perfumy) which is not surprising, with some interesting plant-like notes that I can’t really put my finger on. There’s also a nectar-like sweetener that lingers at the end of each sip.
It’s an interesting alternative to other non-caffeinated teas though, and for that I’m happy to have tried it!
Sipdown! (161)
Thanks VariaTEA for sending this! It was a nice strawberry rooibos, but it didn’t blow my mind. That’s ok though, bc I DID enjoy a lot of the other samples from this company. They’re allowed to strike out once in a while.
I’m at 165 teas, and I’d like to end the month at 150, but I think that’s a silly thing to push myself towards. I’ve got one, possibly two packages that WILL arrive next week and I don’t want to be limited to drinking down those oddball teas when I have other choices. 1/3 of my teas are herbal, and I think that’s where most of my near-sipdown teas are, so they’re not going anywhere unless I go all day without caffeine. /flails/ NOOOO, you can’t make me.
Maybe I’ve had enough caffeine already?
But this was a good choice. It’s a nice straightforward Assam, and the first one that really stood out to me to help me realize that YES, Assam’s are a type of tea that I would like more of! And this has been in my cupboard since July so I should drink more of it. I don’t want any one tea to stick around for more than a year!
I need to start using flails more often. It creates such a funny imagine.
A year is a really good rule of thumb. That said, I have some approaching a year that need sip downage!
Right? Everyone should use /flails/. It’s so expressive.
And I have a few that are technically over a year but I will never sip them down – like my glacier blend tea which I only drink when I’m sick. I don’t want to need it. ;P
*image, ugh.
OK, time to try NV Tea #2! I’m listening to Welcome to Night Vale #41 as I do so. (http://nightvale.libsyn.com/) I love the series, but there’s something almost Lovecraftian about the way I try to listen to it, and then my mind slip slides away to something else, possibly in an attempt to protect me from hearing about the casually mentioned horrors…
This is a really light and delicate blend, with peach as the most prominent note. Further sips bring out a touch of puerh earthiness to give it weight, and I can taste green tea and citrus. This tea grows on you, much like an enveloping glow cloud will slowly block out all surrounding stimuli and eventually become the sole point of your focus… You then become aware of more and more…
“Stay tuned next for the noises of my hurried retreat echoing first as sound, and then as memory, and then maybe then again as part of tonight’s fractured dreaming. Good night, Night Vale. Good night.”
Preparation
Oooh, sipdown! (167)
I didn’t realize this was green rooibos when I decided to make it, but that’s cool. It’s midnight. Rooibos time! I don’t think I’ve had green rooibos before, but it’s interesting. This really tastes like strong coconut, and cream, and sweetness. Very decadent!
Thanks MissB!
I’m so happy I discovered green rooibos, since red doesn’t generally work for me. This one may go in my next S&V order. :)
I really like this one too!
Green is def better for me than red.
I wish there were more green rooibos blends out there!
Me too, Tea Brat! Same for honeybush!
I’m drinking a mason jar of this because I’m trying to sip down all my winter teas. It’s time to move on. i don’t mind snow, and I don’t mind the extreme cold because I bundle up well and don’t spend much time outside, but I’m sick of walking on ice/slush/snow covered sidewalks, and not being able to push the stroller around. J’s driving his car to York right now bc getting the stroller to the bus is just too much work unless we walk on the road and uh… that’s not safe. :P
So, let’s drink this down and welcome Spring!
The slippery sidewalks are definitely the worst. I can’t imagine dealing with a stroller on top of that. My mom was in a wheelchair for a while when I was a kid due to an accident, and I remember my brother and me trying to wheel her through the snow. So hard!
I do the mason jar treatment also when I want to do “get rid” of a bunch!
Yes that winter of ours is ridiculous, I really feel for you, having to carry the stroller. The cities should at least keep the sidewalks clean!!
Haha! Are you originally from BC Cavo?
Yup, this one was a miss with me also!
I am! I grew up in Merritt, then went to college in Kamloops (both in the Interior). I went to Northern Alberta for a few years to work, then retreated to Vancouver Island, and then finally Vancouver. So I’ve seen a few different climates!
I never really believed that the Island/Van were an actual rainforest until I got out there, but then Merritt is pretty much a desert (with actualfax tumbleweed!) – I didn’t expect so much variety so close!
Keychange – I had a sample of it before and it was amazing. So I wonder if this one is just really finnicky?
Haha we drive through Merritt every summer when we visit Vancouver. It always amazes me that people live there. :P I lived in Burnaby for 6 months before I had to move to Calgary since J was here. I loved being out there. :)
Hmmm, it’s possible. Definitely wouldn’t be the first time I screwed up a tea haha.
Wow, Cavo, I had no idea you lived in AB or on the Island. I’m going to have to ask you sometime about your thoughts on where you are now, and how it compares to Vancouver. Because as much as I love it here, job prospects-wise, it seems like it would be a smarter move to head to TO eventually. :)
I don’t know why people live in Merritt either! :P Especially before the music fest was a thing. Pretty much everyone I knew that I graduated with moved away.
And fjellrev – it might depend on your personality etc, and what kind of job you are looking for. It was tough to find something on the island, but within a month I was working in Vancouver, and when I was laid off there, it was less than a month before I found another job (making $15+/hour in an office setting).
It took me 4+ months to get a job here in Toronto, and even then I only got this job because my sister-in-law recommended me and got me the interview. Before that I was trying to find something within the same wage that I had back in Vancouver, and wasn’t too far of a commute.
Toronto is far more formal than Vancouver, which is NOT great for me because I am a jeans&t-shirt lady all the way. I do not do formal business wear very comfortably and would have had to buy a full wardrobe if I did get an office job elsewhere… IDK if any of that helps. :P
Wow thanks, that’s very helpful. I keep hearing and reading that it’s next to impossible to find a job in Vancouver, and if you do, it’s usually around minimum wage and/or you’d have to juggle 2+ jobs in order to earn a living. And this is why the younger crowd are getting driven out. But yeah, I’ve been hearing and reading about Victoria being just as bad, if not worse. So I’m so torn on what to do once I graduate. It doesn’t help that my mom wants to retire here, so in a way, if I am on the west coast, I feel like I’d be obligated/stuck staying on the Island.
But the formality part doesn’t surprise me. I’ve never been to Toronto before, but seeing that it’s essentially the corporate centre of Canada, I can see that. I’m shocked it took you that long to find a job though? I don’t know why, but I always had the impression that there are far more job opportunities there than in Vancouver.
Part of the issue was that I needed to make at least $17/hour in order to make paying for daycare/transit etc worthwhile, especially when daycare can start at $700month. If I was willing to work for $15 I might have had a job within a month, or at least made it to the second interview. And these jobs were all for Office Managerial roles, or something like that where I’d be in an office and have some degree of responsibility.
It’s funny but with both jobs I had in Vancouver, I found them both through Craigslist, even though people say it’s all scams etc. And the second job was AMAZING. Until I found my new job I was a little sad we had to move and I had to quit because it paid well and was interesting. What field are you going into? And do you have any experience? I guess that would make a difference as well since I’m 32 and have had several different jobs with a wide-range of experience, making me both more and less hirable. :P
Oh ok yeah, dealing with extra expenses such as daycare can definitely complicate things. Haha I’ve never applied to jobs on Craigslist before but I’m glad it’s worked out for you.
Outside of academia, I have mostly retail and supervisory experience, and within academia, research and teaching assistantship duties. I’m open to trying to get into HR, or some sort of office/government job. Teaching languages. There’s a lot I could do with my degree, like it can be applied to many domains. But it’s always nice to hear from someone who’s lived in different cities what the job market is, or can be, about. :)
Fjellrev, Vancouver is easy, especially if you have any office skills. $14+ an hour to temp reception? Uhh, ok! Can be boring, but it’s easy money, and you can gain experience/work up to longer contracts/permanent stuff. Gov’t jobs, check out the temp agencies. I forget which one has a gov’t contract here, but it’s a good place to start. Once you’re temporary you can apply for inside positions. Which sounds terrible, but whatevs. :)
I have a feeling I’m going to be back in office work by 2015.. I’d just make more money, and that’s sadly really important.
Huh, you know, I never considered temp agencies before. You’re making it oh so tempting. My gut says Vancouver would be better than Victoria too. I just keep hearing that it’s super competitive and you need connections.
I also read that the wages you earn in Vancouver support the COL there, whereas in Victoria, they don’t. Gah!
Haha. Cost of living here is just over $19/hour (about $40k). I don’t make anywhere near that, and it’s hard, but it’s do-able. Temp agencies are nice because you can temp while you look for something permanent. Get a feel for different companies and corporate environments.
Maybe check out Victoria, see what’s available. I had a really hard time finding work there because I’m definitely from Vancouver. :)