#bookreview: Renegade Skyfarer | RJ Metcalf - and a #writing update

Renegade Skyfarer by R.J. Metcalf
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I... kind of regret putting this off for so long, because I really, really, really enjoyed this book! But the plus side of putting it off so long is... I supposed I can now just get all the other 3 (4?) books in this series and binge them at a go.

View all my reviews

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I've apparently read 3 books already this year, but written 0 reviews (well, now a very short 1), mostly because I have been busy trying to write. "Trying" being the operative word here, because I'm not being as prolific as I would like. 

I'm trying to finish off edits on the Tea Novel so I can get that sent out.

But I'm also working on another novel that I want to finish drafting before CNY so... 

whelp.

Probably need to be a leeeeetle bit more consistent in sitting down and working on it!

Tea update: currently still obsessed with Empress Grey, alternating with ChaTraMue Red label.

#mycheveningyear: Anna's guide to #tea in London

Everyone knows about the British and their tea. What not everyone realises is that most of the tea drunk in England, especially in local homes, is either black sludge or milk with a dash of tea.

Okay, that's a little harsh, but it's also mostly true--at least in my experience. I don't really know why, seeing they have so many great local tea brands. Maybe I just meet the wrong people lol.

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ANYWAY, I apparently abandoned this post in January 2020, but after talking to this year's batch of Chevening scholars, I felt like maybe I should finish it. This isn't a definitive guide! This is just a list of the places I went and the teas I liked. (I favour fruit/floral + black tea blends.) Also, I mostly buy looseleaf because it's cheaper and lasts longer, so everything I mention is probably looseleaf unless stated. 

Twinings

This was from my 2016 trip. I didn't take a new photo in 2018.

This is number 1 on my list because the two "famous" English tea brands you get in Malaysian shops is Twinings and Ahmad Tea, so you're likely to have already heard of this, or tried it before. Many cafes do use Twinings. You can probably get many of their teas in shops around London, but their flagship store is worth the visit because it's "the oldest tea shop in London". (I was just gonna say bla bla bla history, but they do mention it on their website)

What I especially liked was the mix and match section towards the front of the store where you can buy a bunch of individual teabags to see whether you liked it instead of having to commit to a whole box of like 15-20 teabags. (I used this to test the ones I wasn't sure about.) 

Favourite teas: Nutty Chocolate Flavour Assam Tea; Lady Grey (teabags)

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Whittard

You'll see that I also had a couple of Whittard teas in that big first tea splurge. I discovered Whittard at Covent Garden in my 2016 trip, so that's where I went back to. There's a bunch of shops in London, so it's not hard to find. Also, for continuity's sake, there is now a Whittard shop (tiny little island) in One Utama, and they do ship Malaysia-wide, so it's not impossible to find here. (Which can't quite be said of the others.)

I don't know if they're still doing this post-Covid, but what I liked about this shop was they always had various testers out so it was fun to try new stuff and consider whether I should get them.

Favourite teas: Piccadilly Blend; Baked Apple*; Lucky Lychee**

* They still don't have this in Malaysia booooo. Turkish Apple is NOT THE SAME.

** Not sure if this is a CNY special?

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Bird and Blend

This is my recent favourite, and it's sad that I only discovered them in my last few months in the UK, in the middle of Dissertation Summer. I wish I'd discovered them earlier! The most convenient shop is the one near Borough Market (which also has a few independent tea shops inside, but those have quite a limited range.), and it's probably on the way to one of the tube stations, because my association is something to do with Shakespeare's Globe + tube + Borough Market. 

I literally just stumbled upon it while walking, but the reason I noticed it particularly that day (instead of just following Google maps and walking by) was because someone in the Sheffield group mentioned "Bird and Blend" while we were there on our road trip so the sign caught my attention. 

Unlike the first two, Bird & Blend does not have a Malaysian store so I have been relying on people to hand carry it back to Malaysia haha. In previous years, they used to have free international shipping on Boxing Day but that's been discontinued. I mean you can pay for shipping but... 

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Favourite teas: Tea & Toast, Earl Grey Paradise (might be a special now?)

Also, the advent calendar is worth looking out for <3. I had a lot of fun with this!

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TWG

Okay, TWG is is a Singaporean brand so you don't particularly NEED to go there, but they have a fancy shop with quite a large range of teas downstairs and a cafe upstairs at Leicester Square. If' you're in the area to catch a play, it's just a nice place to stop and have afternoon tea and feel a little atas lol. 

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Favourite teas: I used to quite like their French Earl Grey but I don't know anymore. I don't think I have any repeat buys from TWG, especially not from London.     

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Main Takeaways

These are the bigger tea brands in London that are easy to get and have quite a wide range of teas. But I also enjoyed walking into tiny little teashops just to see what they had. Here are some:

From a random market stall in Scotland:

From random shops in Bath and Stratford-upon-Avon:

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From some tourist shop in Dublin:

One thing I ended up regretting was not getting a tea subscription when I arrived. They usually do this as an annual thing and could either be a subscription to a tea that you like, where they send you a new batch every quarter or so, or one of those tea boxes where they send you random new stuff every month for you to try! I kind of knew vaguely about stuff like that before, but just thought it was out of my budget. By the time I looked at how much tea I was buying and figured out what the options were, it was kind of too late to get a year's subscription. I'm not sure if they do shorter term subscriptions, but it's worth checking out if you know you're going to buy a lot of tea. 

Final thing to note: London has funny-tasting water, which sometimes translates into weird-tasting tea. (California had that as well but at least London admits to it.) I inherited a Brita water filter from Evelyn, which really helped haha (she was leaving, I was arriving). 

Anyway. This is all. I'll leave you with a tea stash from when I visited Europe. 

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#musicmonday: Tea and Sympathy | Jars of Clay

Because it came up on the Jar of Gems CD.

And I've been thinking about tea.

So maybe you should submit something.

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So fare thee well
Words the bag of leaves that fill my head
I could taste the bitterness and call the waitress instead
She holds the answer, smiles and asks one teaspoon or two

The 2016 #nanowrimo reflection post or how I wrote 33K in 4 days

Writing is often a constant battle between getting the words out and getting the words right. For the month of November and NaNoWriMo, the goal is getting the words out—whether it’s right or not. Not everyone can work that way, and that’s fine, but it’s often a handy tool for me to jumpstart new projects instead of procrastinating and waiting for inspiration to strike.

I had been a bit ambivalent about doing NaNoWriMo this year, mainly because I would be away for half the month, but I’d been encouraging a lot of people—mostly from our baby writing group—to do so and I thought I should set a good example by at least attempting it. After all, winning or losing wasn’t my main goal; my main goal was to continue to build this writing community.

I talked to our weekly write-in group as well as the NPO I work with, LUMA, and we set up the LUMA Drop-In Writing Space to host writers from 10am-10pm daily for the last 6 days of November. The dates also coincided with the annual George Town Literary Fest & In-between Arts Festival, which was focusing on food and zines, so we made a public event on Facebook and announced it in all the writers' groups we knew of online.

And then November started, and I went on my holiday, working sporadically on the new novel and totally pantsing all the way. Which was how I found myself at the start of our write-ins on 25th November with only 17K words. On one hand, I did wonder if I could actually reach 50K in such a short time, but on the other hand, I wasn’t very bothered because I knew that I had a lot of time before me and all I had to do was sit down and write, besides opening and closing the door for people (ah, the privilege of not working a 9-to-5). And so I broke a personal record and wrote an average of 8,000 words a day over the next 4 days, finishing 2 days earlier than I expected.

Now, obviously, I want to replicate this since I’m making writing my full-time job. If I know what’s been working these 4 days, that would help me to work better, right? I tracked all my writing this month (wordcounts & times) in Wordly and here’s my analysis of the data:

• I rarely wrote anything more than 1K before lunch (noon/1pm). I open the place at 10am, but by the time I’m finished pottering around, making tea, going up and down the stairs, turning on the laptop, checking my phone, it’s usually almost 11am before I even sit down and start writing. This isn’t anything new. Even in my previous day jobs, when I had to be in the office by 8.30 – 9am, I always felt super unproductive before 10am, especially before making tea.
• Tea is important, as noted above.
• I averaged about 5.5 hours of writing time per day, despite being at the centre for 12 hours a day. If you subtract approximately 2 hours for lunch and dinner, I only “worked” about 55% of the time. It seems unproductive, but I’m not very good at focusing for extended lengths of time. It also works out (as averaged by Wordly) to about 1,541 words per hour. I’m not entirely sure if that’s good or bad, but at least it’s measurable.
• Not having Internet access probably helped a lot, because there’s only so long you can stare at your phone before you feel that you’re wasting time.
• Setting small goals helps, especially when I don’t feel like writing, or am unsure where the story is going. During those times, I do a sprint of maybe 15 minutes. At the end of that 15 minutes, I’ve either written a good bunch of words and am excited to continue, or I’ve figured out a new direction and need to sit back and think about it.
• Knowing where the story is going helps me to write faster. Some of the “unproductive” time was spent thinking about the story’s direction and possible plot points, which then translated into higher word counts during the next writing session. (Some of the unproductive time was also spent staring into space, which is another matter altogether ;) )
• The best writing sessions were usually between 20 – 30 minutes.
• The best writing session goal was usually to hit 1K words per session, which usually averaged out to 30 minutes.
• I was hampered at times because I’d previously researched some local fairy creatures/folk tales, but I’d only saved the stub or link, instead of saving the whole document for reference. Having all research on hand (that is not online, where I’ll get distracted) is probably pretty important.
• Having the right mindset really helps. During these 4 days, all I thought about was “I need to finish writing this story before I can do anything else”. This is very different from when I’m writing at home and thinking about ‘oh- I haven’t finished my book review’ or ‘I need to do this other project first’ or even ‘maybe I need to read/research this’ (and the usual culprit - ‘I’m hungry/bored/sleepy, I need to find something to eat’). So – I do really need to get into this ‘cave’ mindset when writing to make sure that I stop procrastinating! (Also already noted by the way I can be superbly productive finishing a short story for submission… the WEEK before the deadline!)

In summary, here are the things I need to be working on to make sure I’m really writing and not just being a bum:

1. Set writing goals & deadlines and STICK TO THEM
2. Work on only one project at a set time.
3. Research BEFORE writing where possible (ahahahah) and SAVE/archive my research
4. FOCUS!

All of which I already knew before, but now there’s DATA. Hard, measurable data.

But other than that, the writing space has also been a win community-wise. There were some down/slow times, especially in the beginning where I feared I’d be sitting there writing alone (which turned out okay because I was productive), but there’s also been a steady group of regulars, as well as a few newcomers added to our writing community. The group’s excited to take it further, so we might see more people coming for write-ins in future. And maybe more collaborations/discussions/critiques happening spontaneously.



… the only thing I am actually uber sad about is that I didn’t attend anything in GTLF at all. I’d been eyeing maybe 2 – 3 sessions, but I needed to sit in LUMA to keep the space open. Maybe next time we’ll try not to overlap with the fest. I had been hoping for some drop-ins from fest attendees, but that didn’t actually happen.

#Tea review series: Traditional teas from @roleaftea

And I'm back with my final instalment of the tea review!

The first one I started with was Rooibos the Robust, which hails from South Africa. 

Anna's review: I've had Rooibos before and find that there are varying strengths to this. I once had a whole pack of rather light sachets that I finished off quickly in college, and I've also had some really thick rooibos from when a friend visited South Africa, so I was thinking "Robust" must be really thick. Surprisingly not.

As the product description says: "Strength: Light." Not sure why it's called Robust then. 

How I would describe it to my mum: Hey, it says it's caffeine-free so you can drink it any time. Though I think you probably won't want to try because it still has a very 'tea' taste. 

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The next on the list is a rather common tea: Jasmine. The name on the pack they sent me says "Just Jasmine", but I can't find that specific name on the website. they've probably rebranded to either Dragon Pearl Jasmine or maybe Jasmine Luxury. Which ever it is, it's a very nice Jasmine tea. 

Anna's review: Very often you don't get Jasmine tea any more. You get Jasmine green tea which is very much green tea and not enough Jasmine. This... is very flowery Jasmine. Be careful of over-steeping though.

How I would describe it to my mum: Uh, it's Jasmine. Like what you get in pots in restaurants.

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The last tea is Imperial Long Jing. I was trying to figure out what tea this was from the name because neither my mum nor I had ever heard of it before. The production description, "variety of pan-roasted green tea from Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China," didn't help very much, so I just drank it.

Anna's review & how I would describe it to my mum: We drank this together because we couldn't figure out what tea it was. Our conclusion was that this tasted like fancy Chinese tea from fancy expensive Chinese restaurants. It's pretty light, with a bit of a dry after taste and we still don't know what we would call it here.

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Again, super-duper thanks and much love to RoLeaf for these tea samples! Check them out at their website, facebook, twitter and instagram.

#Tea review series: Two peach teas from @roleaftea

I was pretty excited that I received the Pretty Peach White Tea because I love peach tea and had wanted to try it for a while now. There was this really lovely aroma that I just had to sit and bask in for a while when I opened the bag.

Anna's review: Okay, I'm probably biased already because it's peach tea, which is one of my all-time favourites. It's sweet enough to drink without sugar, though I personally feel that a teaspoon of sugar does help enhance the taste. However, because it's a white tea, it feels lighter in comparison to most other peach teas I have tried which use black tea.

How I would describe it to my mum: Uh, it's a fruit tea. No, it's NOT like iced peach tea that's made from the sachets and has too much sugar.

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My stash of teas for review also included Peach Green Sencha, which I have tried before. I remembered not really liking it because the green tea was often slightly bitter and too overpowering, but I decided to try it again anyway. Being smarter this time, I googled up the product page to check on brewing suggestions. Take note that the suggested brewing temperature for this is only 80° C. This is actually the same as for the other peach tea above, but the big difference is this: GREEN TEA TASTES TERRIBLE WHEN IT'S OVERCOOKED. Well, at least, to me.

Anna's review: Now that I allowed the water to cool a little before steeping the tea, the peach and the green tea taste seemed to balance out. The green tea was not too overpowering, allowing the sweetness of the peach to come as a nice after taste. I'll probably not be too crazy about it because green teas have never been a personal favourite, but it's not bad after all.

How I would describe it to my mum: A light green tea mixed with peach tea (again, not the super sweet iced one). I'm not very good at this, am I?

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Again, super-duper thanks and much love to RoLeaf for these tea samples! Check them out at their website, facebook, twitter and instagram.

Another 3 to go!

#Tea review series: 3 samples from @roleaftea

A couple of weeks ago, I received a batch teas for review from the RoLeaf.

Now that's kind of a lot to review at one go!

I'm an avid tea drinker but this is the first time I'm actually going to write reviews (What do I say? How do I describe them?) so I'm just going to put down my thoughts about the tea.
I'm also adding a section called "How I would describe this to my mum" where I compare the tea to more common teas (because she always asks "what does it taste like?")

Here's my review of the first 3 teas that I sampled at random:

I started off with the Osmanthus Fragrans, mainly because it smelled really nice. And because I was feeling fancy that night, I decided to make it in a fancy cup and take a photo. (I normally just use ginormous mugs, but figured that this one needed some special treatment.)

Anna's review: This is a very beautiful, light, flowery tea, naturally sweet to the taste. And yes, I drank it at night. It's an herbal tea so it probably doesn't have any caffeine, I think, not that it would personally affect me. I'm not a big herbal person, but I kinda liked it.

How I would describe it to my mum: Something like chamomile but sweet. Maybe something like chamomile and chrysanthemum together.

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The next tea I chose was Choju Hojicha, mainly because I wanted something light and this one didn't have a very strong smell.

Anna's review: It put me in mind of roasted rice/nuts and I thought it might have been a Korean tea, but when I looked it up, it's actually a Japanese roasted green tea. (I apparently can't tell from the name. Haha!) I would definitely buy this if I were looking for something in the Oriental/Chinese-type tea range.

How I would describe it to my mum: Like the watery free flow tea they served in that Korean shop in Prima Tanjung (that's now closed down), only thicker and "roasty-er" tasting.

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The last one I picked for this review was Chava Chai. I'm normally wary of chai, because it uses a lot of spices that I hate so I really wasn't sure if I wanted to drink this. Then again, it smelled okay (as you can tell, I go by smell a lot when it comes to tea).

Anna's review: I found it to be a thick and rich black tea, but surprisingly neutral (i.e. no overwhelming spice taste). I initially thought I might have over-brewed it because it was thick and bitter-ish, but I checked the brewing time and temperature of 4-5 mins and 100° C, which was kind of the range I made it at, so I suppose that's how it's supposed to taste. Tried it a second time, just in case. This time it wasn't as thick (made sure to take the tea bag out after 5 mins), but there was still a bitterish, strangish after taste that I didn't quite like. I guess this wasn't really my cup of tea.

How I would describe it to my mum: Normal black tea with a bitter taste at the end probably from the weird cinnamon, cardamom, ginger things. You might like it if you like those kind of stuff.

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A huge thanks to RoLeaf for the wonderful tea samples! Check them out at their website, facebook, twitter and instagram.

Check back next week for more tea reviews!