Chinese tea and a lump of salt

September 2, 2005

Day before yesterday(31Aug) was my pal Abe’s birthday and being the faithful buddies that we are, Sivakumar and I decided to meet him in the evening as it was a weekday. Siva, as usual, planned everything pretty well in advance and came to the right place at the right time - lol - am still grinning while I am typing this. The fact that he had also given proper instructions to the ‘Whizz’ studio guys to develop one more set of prints by evening was even more startling.

Anyway, we waited for around 45 minutes in ‘Whizz’ and finally collected the pictures that siva had ordered the previous day. We then reached a pretty decent chinese hotel near mg road. Didn’t give the hotel much thought as we had been there quite a few times before. After having some starters, we decided to order the main course when Abe suggested we try something new and that was the start of the things to come. Abe and Siva ordered prawn noodles and szechwan fried rice while I decided to take the safe route by ordering a plate of egg noodles. The fact that I am a vegetarian (so what if I eat eggs? ;)) also made it kinda impossible to try something else.

We had almost completed 3/4ths of our food when Abe swallowed a lump of salt unknowingly that was present in the fried rice. You might say “Big Deal” ! However, the moral of this post is, if you haven’t tried swallowing a lump of salt as is, please continue doing so. In no time, Abe’s eyes became kinda red and he was as uneasy as a fish on land (I know it’s not the perfect analogy but you got the point right?) This is where the story becomes even more interesting. To make him feel a bit better, we decided to try chinese tea - something that we’ve never tried before.

Out came a huge teapot with 3 really small cups. One more moral here - if you haven’t tried chinese tea before, I suggest you keep away from it as well. Firstly, the tea is lukewarm and not piping hot. Secondly, it doesn’t have a strong flavor - am wondering if it has any flavor. It just has some dried tea leaves floating in it and that’s about it. It could very well be that my taste buds aren’t in a position to detect subtle flavors as I am used to drinking strong flavored tea’s. To cut a long story short, we completed having 3 rounds of the same tea and left the hotel right away.

After coming out of the hotel, we realized that Abe was feeling even more sick. A sachet of ‘Eno’( to aid digestion) didn’t make things any better. Finally, we made him take an auto and he supposedly reached home dazed. He later found out that he was allergic to prawn and the lump of salt didn’t do as much damage as the prawns did. He had to stay away from office the next day due to this and he’s recovered pretty well now.

So if anyone wants to have prawns with a pinch(or even a lump) of salt, you know whom to contact !

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