I punched in my PIN, and hit OK. The ATM beeped angrily back at me. Huh?

I tried again. More irritated digital chirping.

Then it dawned on me. Instead of my actual PIN, I had been keying in the recipe number for my current favourite ripe pu-erh cake…

You know you’re a tea obsessive when… – No. 147 in an on-going series…

You are so excited about an upcoming tea session with a tea you received in the mail the day before that you get up at really stupid o’clock to make sure your most important chores will be done before 9:30 am, clearing the rest of the day for your planned tea event.

This session is going to be long. Very long. So long, in fact, that it will be at least a 2 parter, straddling lunch, and will finally end with you thoroughly exhausted and in need of a good nap.

The fun kicks off at 11:00 am. Six hours later, you’re 15 nice steepings and a slice of entrecôte to the good. You are still somewhat tea drunk, but rested and content, and ready to start the preparations for the family’s evening meal with a tea-induced look of transcendental bliss on your face…

Is there anything sadder to a tea lover than the sight of a used Lipton’s tea bag abandoned on a hotel’s parking lot…?

I’ve started an interesting little project – a home grown Pu-erh reference book, based on an old A5 sized journal I bought years ago, and never really did anything with.

Sometimes I find that I want to consult hard copy rather than digital sources. One other great advantage to paper is of course the fact that you can go back and easily physically amend information, by adding notes, or what have you.

When I come across an interesting article about Pu-erh producing areas in Yunnan, or the history of a certain factory, anything Pu-erh related in fact, I save the page as plain html, so that I can easily work offline on the source material if needs be.

From there, it’s simply a matter of copying and pasting the text into a document template I have set up for the page size in the journal.

Once the documents are printed, the fun bit of cutting and pasting in real life begins!