Cor Blimey, it's been a while.
Time outs, breathers and vacations have been taken. Nothing mega has happened, apart from some new boxes, some right royal Royal Mail cock ups (If i was the Queen i'd be well and truly ashamed of my postal service, and politely but sternly lash the person responsible with my royal whip for shaming my name. Then I would use my powers to change my name to Queen DumbleFluff and get some plastic surgery for a massive {like, really massive} nose, so they would have to change the coins and the stamps and everything with my small nose on. In fact they would have to make the stamps really wide to fit my nose on, and the coins would have to be a weird oval shape....but that's neither here nor there.) and some much appreciated online tea retail. Basically, things have been coasting.
Which is a nice link to some thoughts we had on coasters yesterday.
For all you hip hop folks -
And for all you biddies (not that the 2 parties are mutually exclusive).
Any more coaster puns, then please, do holler.
In exciting news, we have decided to invest some efforts in creating a tea bag. Now, this may seem to be going against our loose leaf ideology, but that is not the case. For we will be putting our finest loose leaf tea in the bags. Merely making things simpler for those who like it simpler - It is not the harnessing of the tea in a bag that lowers the caliber of brew, it is the quality of the tea that is often harnessed that makes it not as good. So much so, that bagged tea has become synonymous with inferior tea, and it doesn't have to be that way. Also the claustrophobic nature of some of the bags leads to a poor infusion, so we will be giving a lot of room for our leaves to do their thing. Our bags will only contain our uber delish breakfast blend for starts, but things may very well change from there. And they will be special, amazing bags. So we are doing all sorts of scribblings, inventing some froody bagging techniques. It's thrilling.
Again, if you've had any tea bag ideas on your mind of late that you have been itching to tell someone about, then please, do holler. And stop with the rude connotations! You filthy folks you.
So, apart from my shave yesterday, Sam's 5 kill streak on COD and Pat's newly installed RAM, there isn't much to report. So here's some more blog from our India trip 8 months ago-
Day 14
I take all the wrap for getting the three of us up at 7.00 am for a taxi jeep that was meant to leave at 8. It actually left at 9ish, and the 1+ hours spent waiting at the stand wasn't entirely pleasant. We saw, amongst other things-
A chicken seller man with over 100 chickens stuffed in a wheeled cage deliver his chickens at the appropriate place by poking them out with a big stick into a heap of broken limbs and squarking agony and distress onto the floor before throwing them through the door at his loyal customer.
We saw a little kid walking with his dad to school take a sweet out of its wrapper and pop it into his mouth, then put the wrapper in his pocket. We then witnessed his father tell him off for putting the wrapper in his pocket, and instruct him to throw it on the floor. This when there was a bin about 50 cm's from them both. That's some top parenting right there!
And of course we saw a huge amount of phlegming, dogs shitting, fuel guzzling jeeps and general festiness. Darjeeling jeep stand is not one of our most favourite of places.
But, the jeep ride was gorgeous, through tea estates and wonderful villages, up and down ever so steep roads with hair pin after hair pin, over rickety bridges and scary fjords.
stopped at the
Singtom tea estate (delish) for a quick purchase and finally got to the Sikkim border.
We handed our precious form in and waited a bit for them to fanny around, with their loaded weapons at their sides, and their stern stares on their fizogs. All good, we arrived in Jorethang, where a kind gentleman helped us organise our next jeep up to Yuksom. With 2 hours to kill, we ate loads of Momos
and took a walk in the monsterly heavy air to the river. This is what we did see -
-The riverside was quite, quite bizarre. Totally baron and rank on one side, and a beautifully kept monastery on t'other, thus-
Eventually we left, on the trip to Yuksom
View Larger MapThis is what we did see -
We were sharing the jeep with a lovely female person, who was called Athanansis, or something. The driver sounded EXACTLY like Pingu's Dad. The air got cooler/cleaner, the views got breathtakinger, and we had a little stop in a village. Just enough time to stretch our legs and see a cow getting slaughtered.
Arriving in Yuksom, we had to choose which establishment we were to stay in. The cheapest won. Surprise, surprise. 3 in a double bed, in the moistest room known to man. Hotel Yak. With a MENTAL LAD called Tassi as our customer service representative. He had a fantastic lack of knowledge, and offered his tour guide services for a very unreasonable price. We said no. Despite this, he was always with us, showing us around. Except when there were big hills to climb.
We had a brief wander to a few Buddhist sights, and took in the serenity and appreciated the marvellous feeling of calm that prayer flags bring to a place.
After that, with lovely athansis (?) as company, we ate from the extensive menu -
and obeyed the 8pm police controlled curfew. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
