jamie goode's wine blog

Monday, October 26, 2009

Not wine, but tea


Instead of a glass of wine, I'm drinking some tea. It's Flowering Dragon Eye Tea from specialist importers JING. It's certainly the most visual brewing experience I've had: the hand tied balls of green tea open up in the pot to reveal flowers - in this case, a pot marigold in the base, an arch of pure jasmine blossoms and a globe amaranth flower on top.

The taste is attractive: mild, tea-like, and quite subtle. I haven't got a decent vocabulary for tea, so describing my perception is a little tricky. On the main site, I have just written up (rather belatedly) a tutored tasting of Chinese tea organized by JING. There are quite a few parallels between tea and wine.

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Friday, January 25, 2008

Eeepc on the road, and a tea tasting

Yesterday afternoon I learned a great deal about a subject I'd previously been woefully ignorant of: tea. It was the Circle of Wine Writers/Guild of Food Writers tea tasting, held in association with specialist tea importers Jing (http://www.jingtea.com/). It's a huge subject - I felt like a wine novice must feel at a wine tasting, and came away with the impression that this is a really interesting but rather daunting subject.

Now for the promised eeepc update. For the last 10 days I've been on the road with just my eeepc. I was slightly nervous about the decision to leave my laptop at home and rely just on this tiny notebook device, but it has served me well. For picking up emails, surfing and posting blog entries it has been perfect. You get used to the small keyboard (any smaller would be unusable) and tiny screen (which has great resolution even though it is small) fairly quickly. Its portability is a great asset, as is its fast boot-up time and easy connectivity by Wifi and LAN (bizarrely, the Iberia VIP lounge doesn't have wireless).

What I haven't used this machine for is image editing or updating the main wineanorak site, largely because I haven't had time to learn how to install the relevant open-source software. The fact that the eeepc has an SD card slot means that photos can rapidly be uploaded even if you haven't got time to download them all from your digital camera. I also haven't been able to do any video editing on the road.

In conclusion, the portability of the eeepc makes it a great choice for a travel computer, and it will take the place of a full-sized laptop for my travels in the future. At just over £200 it is a total bargain.

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