I'm Such a Tea Geek

And I say that proudly! So many people go, "Oh, no you're not! You're a tea nerd! Not a geek!" as if geek is a bad thing, when I say it proudly. Hahaha.

But anyways, I just FINALLY got rid of my flighty mind by doing a bit of research on tea! I found 8 new articles that I was able to download and about 8 others that I had to request from the Five College Library. I hate UMass- Amherst. Apparently they have all the articles I want. But then again, if they were at Mount Holyoke, I would be the one who would have to go and find it and scan it, which would be a major pain, so haha for them I guess!

Some quick tidbits on the articles I found:

• L-theanine improves attention and task-switching, but it is not sure on the alertness part, and seems to be most potent in combination with caffeine!
• L-theanine may actually be highest in black tea! (Poor me, considering I hate black tea and it's quantity is significantly diminished in tea with lots of milk apparently too which is the only way I'd ever drink black tea hahahaha)
• L-theanine protects your liver!
• L-theanine helps schizophrenics!
• L-theanine helps significantly decrease smoking!
• THERE IS SUCH A THING AS ALBINO TEA!
• Black tea helps renal (kidney) transplant patients recover!
• And that kind of thing. There was much more. ONE DAY I will finally post summaries of all these articles up here, so that people from non-science backgrounds (and even those of science backgrounds but from non-biology disciplines) can have some extra excuses to justify their love of tea. Maybe I'll even get in to learning more about the biochemistry behind coffee and do comparative research. La la la one day over the rainbow... Hahaha.

Midterms are over!

Yay! With my last Macroeconomics midterm today, my midterms are now over! I feel so accomplished! Now I can finally do that scientific paper review for you guys! It's either going to be on caffeine content in tea (because I am unsatisfied with source citing on other resources about this), or L-theanine, my favorite amino acid ever.

But more importantly, my fairness pitcher finally arrived today! It took a while because I bought it from China on ebay. I would have bought it locally, but I don't know where any local reasonably priced and quality tea shops are in the western Massachusetts area, so ebay was my next best choice. Please keep in mind that I'm also a very poor college student (who probably unfortunately loves tea more than money). Either way, it's really funny because I'm glad I know Japanese! Since all the care instructions for it are in Japanese on the box. Haha!

Also, I finally got to try Gyokuro brewed by ice! MMMMMMMMM. This is why I love Gyokuro so much. Oh my goodness. It was like walking into paradise. Or rather like paradise slapping me in the face. It's such a shocking taste, really. Haha. But sooooo gooooooooood. And my friends really loved it too. ^^ You know though, this was actually difficult to do as a college student, because of the problem of ICE. Haha. I'm really lucky my roommate has a mini fridge, but that really doesn't provide me with a lot of ice! And ice is horrible about absorbing scents and things, so there was a moment of panic before I knew my roommate's mini fridge had an icebox when I thought my only option would be the communal fridge's ice, which had BROWN THINGS in it. Why would ice have brown things stuck in it??? What do these college students do??? Hahaha. But really. It was extremely disturbing. But then I found out my roommate's mini fridge could make ice, and the rest is now history.