The Guardian of The White Mugs

She cleans the mugs
From which we drink,
She swipe the stains
Of tea and coffee.

She moves the mugs
To humming machine,
She unloads them out,
In to drying machine.

She smiles to us
We smile to her,
She says hello
We say thank you.

She asks me why
I drink so much,
She guesses I’m thirsty
Or the aircon is cold.

She’s a guardian
Of the white mugs.
How life is hilarious!
Among those who are serious!

—-

i like talking with certain cleaning ladies assigned in the pantries near my section and the gym, and seems that they love doing it, too. there is one particular loving it the most, a (probably) 25-yo lady with a syndrome making her not talking clearly and processing messages rather slowly yet she is the friendliest. today she told me how many mugs she has to wash (helped by machines) everyday and why there are many more on Tue to Thu. she said many employees like to use more than one mug (each mug for one tea flavour) and she’s wondering why. when i said “i use one mug for one tea flavour because i don’t want to mix the taste, i am sorry”, she said “no, no, then it is ok lah” 🥹 what a blessing to talk to a humble human being — not so much thought processed and so much fun enjoyed 🥰

thanks for taking good care of our white mugs! 🙏🏼

Chinese Tea

Do you like drinking tea? What tea? Chinese or English or Ceylon or Indian or local tea in your country?

Just last month my colleagues and I went to Shanghai’s Yu Garden to get some tea – a routine walk in Shanghai. Everyone in my circle like going there for good tea.

IMG_2675

IMG_2680IMG_2679

Different sizes of jars are piled and arranged in sparawling racks wall to wall. On a humble table the beautiful tea seller serves any requested tea. She infuses the tea with boiled water gracefully. She tries her best to speak English to all of us. Lucky we have Sabrina, a Singaporean Chinese with very good Mandarin; she always acts as our tranlator — thank you, buddy!

IMG_2678 Leaf to wrap flowers – you infuse the tea ball, it will bloom and you see what flower inside the ball

IMG_2677

Fruit base tea – orange peel, Apple, pear mixed together, the taste is amazingly good! Like a tango in the mouth and refreshing the cavity where it goes before reaching the stomach…. Then…. it goes to blood transporting energy to the whole body!

IMG_2676

Green tea mixed with rose

Long story short, Chinese tea offers various kinds of a lot of ranges of color, ingredient, origin, taste and efficacy. You can find flower base, fruit base, leaf base, bark base, root base and all combinations of those all. So, you can shop as many as you want excitedly. There are tea for gastric, diet, cough, toothache, tiresome, skin rash, skincare, flu, rheumaticsm, etc…. It’s just exciting to shop teas in Yuan Garden.

When you are in Shanghai, please go to Yua Garden where our regular tea shop is located, it is shop lot # 99.

Grand Hyatt Jakarta, October 10, 2015 – 11:08pm

2015 – A Simple Resolution

Resolution 2015? Ooooh lala…. Once forgotten, let’s do it now!

What do I project?

  1. All assignments – well done
  2. Clearer understanding about myself
  3. More relaxed and cheerful
  4. Consistently writing

That’s it? Those four are the big points, smaller are flowing, following those main topics.

Today, Getting back to Singapore, getting back to work — a bunch of work.

Bismillaah….

IMG_3670

among the wine, holding tea

Temasek – January 4, 2015 – 10:48pm