This day, 18 October, in 1956, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy became the first Pakistani Prime Minister to visit China. Meeting with Mao Zedeng, Zhou Enlai and others, both...
You’re familiar with the rule by now. Do not carry your own liquids allowed into the airport departure lounge.
… except that I was drinking an awesome green tea I’d brought with me from China. And no one was asking me to surrender my cup. How long, I wondered, could I keep this up?
Right up to the boarding gate, it turns out.
Actually, it’s quite the comfort to have tea, especially green, in one’s hand while being herded through an airport.
But why haven’t any of the other liquids in my...
It’s teenagers who enjoy it the most. It’s there in so many of the snacks they eat. It is a horrifying rottenness. They love it. They are wrong to love it.
Of course, many of these snacks of rottenness contain chilli; that fresh adventure for the young person. With alcohol, even coffee, still far on the horizon, the enjoyment of chilli carries an illicit charge and bragging rights.
And, of course, these snacks are heavily freighted with umami, the protein decoy. While adults somehow remain wary of this big-FMCG alchemy, the...
Especially here in Asia, it’s common to hear how smoking is good for stress. Men, particularly, face stress in their lives which needs a remedy. Tobacco, though not intrinsically healthy, at least helps to assuage that greater health threat; stress. Or so the logic goes.
Well, smoking does greatly reduce stress, if you are a nicotine addict overdue a nicotine fix. If one of the significant sources of your stress is chemical withdrawal then, yes, a cigarette will greatly alleviate that.
But if you are a never-smoker who has...
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...
