Recently I've taken up ordering tea at sit-down restaurants to avoid looking too cheap and getting that awkward look from the server of, "ok I'll just give you some waters then" when the answer you know they're hoping for is, "oh we'll start with a round of drinks" to start racking up the tab. I've been doing it a fast-food restaurants too though, where most of most famous chain restaurants have some sort of unsweetened tea option available, except......Costco. When I get those $1.50 soda and hot dog options, there's just not many tea options. It's disappointing. However, because of this new tea inclination, I've learned that different restaurants use different types of tea: McDonald's uses orange pekoe tea, for instance, while Starbucks uses Teavana shaken black tea, but most restaurants just use a standard Lipton tea. That's why it tastes pretty much the same everywhere, but.....in a good way.
My fantasy baseball league commissioner just sent me a box of teas as a present, and even the box smells good, like a fresh batch of teas. I'll be the first to admit I know nothing about teas, but it seems like a good habit to get it, between all the different kind of drinks I could be into from coffee to alcohol to diet sodas to non-diet sugar water (aka any time of sodas produced by the big corporations Pepsi and Coca Cola), I think teas is probably the least damaging, and gives me a slight kick of stimulus that's not water or milk, the only 2 things I usually drink. (Oh and sparkling water). In fact, certain teas like green tea have these catechins that are antioxidants reducing inflammation and improving heart health. Why hasn't America had a Big Tea revolution and fad/craze like pickleball or the "broccoli masks" I just heard about that help skin health? Maybe there's just not enough of a demand for it, or maybe it just doesn't make much profit: There's a reason I get the ice tea, which is just $5 instead of the $10 alcoholic drink at all restaurants. Much more profit in alcohol from just the drink itself but also the bad spending decisions made after it. I've never regretted getting the teas.
My law school friend just had wisdom teeth removed in his mid-40's. Ouch. Definitely not something I'd want to try, but maybe one day I will have to: I often wake up to cold sores because the previous night I was involuntarily biting down on my gums and my wisdom teeth got in the way. He did NOT look comfortable.
Shogun is a really good show and deserves its 99% Rotten Tomatoes rating and is a good way to hone my Japanese which I've neglected for awhile now that I have no one to speak to (see Loneliness Epidemic entry) but I really gotten question this trope of white men going to Asia and falling in love with a beautiful Asian woman.... it happens all the time in Western media, most famous being the Last Samurai with Tom Cruise, but with other shows too like "To all the Boys I've ever Loved, Lucy Liu's character in pretty much every show or movie she's ever been in...." all us Asian men have for instances of getting with white woman is Glenn from the Walking Dead getting together with Maggie. Even on a show about shogunate Japan in the 1600s which has a plot that's great of its own merit with a power struggle to become shogun and epic battle scenes, there needs to be a love story about a white guy forming a forbidden bond with a Japanese woman. I get that's what it takes to get a Western audience (Hulu subscribers) into the show, but it's kind of pandering to those people and further pushing that trope of emasculating Asian men, even on a show that's set in Asia. Literally zero other men on the show get a love story (the main character played by veteran actor Hiroyuki Sanada from Lost, doesn't have a wife or any time to have love interests because he's fighting to the death all the time), and all the Asian men are busy beheading people or scheming.....no one is loving except the one white guy on the show, who's kind of playing the white savior role of saving the Asian people. Just for those reasons I can't give this show 99%.... take off a few points to 96% please. And taking it as a gut punch to us Asian men, who already have difficulty in this society as it is without having to be reminded time and time again we're not that valued except for our tuition dollars to colleges that we can't get into and for our tax dollars working in low-mid level white collar jobs with white bosses.
Except for Jensen Huang of Nvidia! You kick their asses! And help my portfolio get stronger!
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