daf yomi- renewing the things i love

6 tammuz, 5782

over the past 4 months, my life has been consumed by work and school. it felt like all i was doing was working, reading research articles, and going to classes. thankfully, that is no longer my life. to my exuberant surprise, i dont have school during the summer, yay!!! this means i am going to try and do as much camping as i can. i still have work to think about, but that is manageable. with some normalcy returning to my life, i am trying to rebuild the habits of doing what make me happy. one of those things is writing (and not just blog writing). another of those things is praying which, like exercising, is z hard habit to pick back up after tucking it into the part of my mind labelled "things i will do when im not doing school and work at the same time anymore." speaking of exercise as a metaphor, i am rebuilding my habit of going to the gym. i still did it during classes but not as often as i liked. time to get buff... as if.

even as i write this post, this afternoon has been full of reclaiming the things i love and that which gives me excitement for life. i had a very atzei kind of day. after finishing work i went to the gym, bought some cherries (i love cherries and i know i didnt have as much as i wanted as the season is coming to a close), smoked a spliff, walked around in the woods, did some davening, wrote in my journal, and now, i am listening to dr. octagonecologyst as i write this. not only am i being true to myself and what i do with my time, but i am also being true to myself in how i want to live my tea drinking life.

i did it. i finally did it. i bid on some tea in a Taiwan tea auction. i am going to write an instructional on how to go about doing that once i have some more experience (think of it as a budget 2nd rate version of James' "how to use Taobao' series). i have never tasted either of these teas. one is a 1998 bluemark that was stored in a warehouse in Hong Kong and then another warehouse in Taiwan. i won with a bid of 700ntd which is very cheap. it makes me wonder why no one else bid on it. hmmmm...

over time, i will know which sellers will have the better quality teas or teas with better curation and storage when i buy consistently from sellers multiple times. a lot of these teas have a reputation of being sold on auctions because the storage on them isnt the best. but i like dank storage and my hopes are that if the teas' base materials are good, than if it is aired out enough in my storage, it shouldnt be too bad. and maybe it will even be good :p

the other tea i bought from auction is some random 2004 one whose wrapper is a knock off of the yqh designi and it is a tea i saw on someone's site for sale. based on the information from that seller's site it sounds good but without tasting it, it is still very much a guess purchase. a big determining factor in buying it was the price of 1600ntd which is pretty darn cheap. plus, this tea got a lot more competition in terms of people bidding compared to the other i bought. all in due time, i will see how these both are when they arrive, get a nice rest from traveling, and then join my pot and some hot water for some quality bonding time. i am now officially begining my true auction journey by tasting the fruit of my keyboard typing and the use of web-based Chinese to English translators.

lchaim

xoxo,
atzei besamim