Strainer readers may recall, about 3 years ago, reading about a new concept in tea preparation. It was called InWE Tea (因味茶). It exerted on the tea leaf high pressure as well as high heat, much like brewing an espresso. I was excited.  Maybe I was wrong to be too excited. While most of the company’s tea bars do still exist, my prediction that we would all start fracking our tea leaves has been unfulfilled; tea capsule machines have not become mainstream.   Except that aluminium tea capsules are appearing. Maybe you’ve...

Does tea itself contribute stress?The answer here is: surely, yes.If so, then what’s the remedy?Why, clearly, it’s a cup of tea. Hard-liquor drinkers sometimes make that face; the one that isn’t just pleasure. Children must see this wincing face when watching, say, Westerns, and wonder why grown men would voluntarily drink something so painful-tasting, again and again.  Perhaps children intuit the social aspect of the deal; the difficult drink must be imbibed because the situation demands it.  Perhaps children recognise the celluloid sour mash as a necessary medicine. Children surely know the...

This is the era of big data. There was more digital data created, stored and shared in the past 2 years than all of the digital data existing before that.  What used to be a computer thing is now a watch and fridge and spy-camera thing. Lots more ones and zeroes flying around.    Yes, but this 2-year rule has been true for far longer than 2 years. The “big data” term is 800 bytes, which has somehow survived that exponential data churn unharmed, used by humans for decades, most continually...

I need to cut back. We’ve overspent this month. When I look back, I don’t know whether it’s the newly-printed poster board on my wall which I’ll point to as “peak-splurge”. Maybe it will be the sailing sun-hat from the French sports shop in Shanghai. The family have teased me about the price tag on that one. I bought the poster despite the teasing. Profligacy. Maybe it will be the tea I’m drinking these days; comfortably the most expensive I’ve bought with real money in ages. It was ¥170 for a bag,...