On the Topic of Tea...

After thinking about what to write about on-and-off for a good half-hour, I just decided to write about the drink I was having: tea. Tea is and has long been a beloved drink, simple yet lucrative as an export. For the most part, you just dump some leaves in a teapot, pour in boiling water, and you get tea; it became the backbone of the largest trade empire in history, and remains one of the most popular drinks in the modern era.

As a recommendation for potential newcomers to tea, I would advise starting with green tea; the taste doesn't differ too much from regular water, but it feels soothing and contains select traces of caffeine, meaning it is desirable as a drink to sip while working or to start the morning. Despite containing caffeine, it is not to the extent of coffee, and its inclusion serves to promote yet another aspect of personal health rather than being the focus of the drink. Also, while several sources claim or dispute the health benefits of green tea, I haven't cared to look into those, so I can't say with certainty that green tea is some sort of panacea, but I would be shocked if it had any ill-effects.

As a recommendation for people familiar with tea or just a bit more daring, I would recommend my favorite tea: plum tea. First of all, plum tea tastes divine; different brands have a different balance between sweetness and the citrus tang, but I've yet to find a brand that tastes poor. Although I do not believe that plum tea contains caffeine, a quick Google search of its benefits lists so much that one would assume that it actually is some sort of panacea, though I won't claim that any of said benefits are scientifically backed. And as a final sell that isn't my personal bias, it smells pretty good, so if you want to look pretentious for whatever reason, making exaggerated motions to smell said tea won't irritate your sinuses.

Now, as a facet of the discussion of tea, I think it is only due diligence to speak upon a certain type of tea that has become absurdly popular as of late.

Of course, I am referring to "boba", or bubble tea. If I am going to be blunt, I'm not sure where the hype around boba comes from. As a preface to what I'm going to say, I've had boba twice, once that I recall was rose velvet flavored, and the other, while I don't recall specifically, was a pretty standard flavor like orange. I was indifferent about the orange boba, and I thoroughly disliked the rose velvet boba. If there is some specific flavor that makes boba worthwhile, I still probably won't try it, but if a situation arises where I have to have boba, then I'll keep it in mind. With that out of the way, I'll gloss over why I dislike boba.

To start, I don't enjoy milk tea. For me, tea is explicitly something that you can dump in a teapot, pour boiling water into, and enjoy for somewhere between a half-hour and hour. Tea fills a specific niche that no other drink does, except maybe coffee, but coffee serves the explicit purpose of being concentrated caffeine, and I have a bit of a high tolerance to caffeine due to one too many 5-hour energies. Whether it's a cold drink, a sweet drink, or a smooth drink, I already have things that fit the bill, and not just that, but drinks that, I would argue, do the job better than milk tea. Not only that, but, if I recall correctly, milk tea is often based off of black tea, which, may the British forgive me, is about the most basic, bland tea you can possibly have. Is that bad? No, but there are much better alternatives of black tea. Anyways, to my knowledge, boba is just tapioca pearls in milk tea. I don't like the tapioca pearls. When I first saw them, I thought they'd some sort of sweet pop of flavor, but both times I had them, they were bland. Under the assumption that they are bland, I don't understand their inclusion at all; maybe their flavor was absorbed into the milk tea? Unless both times I had boba the tapioca was defective, I just can't see what sets it apart from normal milk tea, which is something I already don't particularly care for.

Overall, I just don't see the appeal of boba, and, to be blunt, I feel like it's more of a trend from a select group of people who actually do enjoy it, with most others just having it with friends because it doesn't taste horrid.

So in summary, plum tea is great, you can't go wrong with green tea, and I don't understand why so many people seem to like boba, but that's cool.