Tea:

Drinking tea is one of those weird things for me. It isn't necessarily the fact that is the sister beverage to coffee, but what is interesting about it is where I usually consume tea, (most of which is Chinese tea). Now when drinking in Chinese restaurants, it's quite funny because tea isn't like a coffee where it's a beverage that goes well with in the morning, especially a cold morning. Nor a thing to wake you up. But it's a sort of thing that must be had, like table manners.

I really find it interesting, no matter where I go...the sweltering heat of Hong Kong restaurant or even in my house, who's just humid as fuck from all the heat coming from the kitchen, I can still stomach a hot tea. It's almost like masochism on a temperature scale, where you abuse your body which is already sweating from all the hot dim sum you are eating with boiling hot water of tea.

It's quite interesting, because I do find tea refreshing, much like ice tea. It isn't so much the fact that it is minty or cool, but the tastes implies cool. It implies relaxation rather than coffee. And for that single moment, as the water just sears your tongue, it passes through warms your body to above bearable and then the soothing after-cool sets in. Like you pushed yourself to the limit and are now taking a rest...a rest you shouldn't take because you have to temper yourself down from scalding hot tea.

And despite me, I always find that if I were in a restaurant in Chinatown, or Hong Kong, I cannot drink anything else other than tea with the food. It's funny how [i]strong[/i] the association of tea as the ultimate universal Asian drink for breakfast, lunch and dinner is that it would even surpass colas and coffees in beverage dominance. Even a cool drink of water seems like a foul contrast at the serving table. I'm hooked and call me a masochist, be give me my hot tea...or give me death.