So I’m a red risk all of a sudden.
It’s a shock for someone who’s conjured only green codes from so many apps this past quarter-of-a-decade.
My red code will be a shock for some reading this, too.
Perhaps, blissfully green for as long as such colours existed, you just experienced a twinge in your buttocks, before remembering that, no, printed paper cannot transmit pathogens from some guy in Shanghai, and nor can an LCD screen.
Mindful of the two negative results after my near-exposure and before my colour-slander, it’s not concerning me that I might be incubating something or living something asymptomatically.
This is merely a sickness in my account.
Of course, as well as addressing those complacent virgins (me last week), I also need to acknowledge the actual people who have experienced the actual thing. You, probably, are not shocked, except at my exaggerated indignation over an unflattering code.
It’s this group who I fully expect to join in the fullness of time. Myself and all readers. Naivety does not sustain. Yes, that’s a significant word. Search Engine it if you can.
And I’m not just out of green codes; I’m out of green tea as well.
I’m forced to dredge up the dregs of the apartment. The new job has left me too busy to buy any new tea, and it’s also the locked building where I’ve left most of my favourites. Now I’m home for a while.
There’s the inoffensive oolong I wrote about several months ago. There’s that pu er cake that never lived up to its fine wooden box. There’s jasmine tea, the popular favourite that just isn’t a favourite of mine. There’s the high-mountain oolong whose candied-peach chunks annoy me even more now than when I first watched them instantly sog in the cup.
I suppose I can chew the fruit before brewing the good tea. And there’s lemon in the fridge, always a palatability booster. These last teas may last me through.
But I know that, right there at the back of the cupboard, there is another dried drink waiting to be opened. It’s the drink of 1848 and all that. It’s the drink which, assumed to be a better gift to give a foreigner, I have a lot of. There’s a powder keg there at the back of the cupboard.
Hopefully, I can order some more tea. Maybe some nice red tea would suit this new badge. Soothing red tea. Calming red tea.
Tea is a big part of being here. It’s helped me through stints of enforced nonvalescence before.
Let me speak up for that wonderful cake of white tea started in March and just treated to a photo finish; it was two weeks ago that I expressed my gratitude to the giver of that beautiful gift, recalling how many times its herbal aromas offered refuge. Thank you again for that cake. Tea is important. Friendship is important.
Hopefully, I will never have to reach the back of that cupboard.
