Answer for question 4600.

Question:

Drink Up
What's your favorite beverage that you drink often (daily or near-daily)? Why do you enjoy it so much?


Anyone who knows me, knows that I drink green tea - well, I'd say religiously, but it is practically a religious activity in Japan, so that might give the wrong impression! It does have an incredibly soothing, meditative effect on me sometimes, admittedly. It works with practically every food I eat (although I wouldn't have it with some Western entrees, just Because. It's inappropriate, you know.)

At it's height, I was drinking approximately five pots of tea a day. Yes, that's five pots of tea, not five cups. Because insofar as it's possible, I make it with loose leaf, in a proper pot, drunk with the appropriate small, handle-less teacup (and without milk or sugar, of course, because only heathens drink it with milk or sugar to any extra condiments of any kind. Whoops, there I go again.)

I might occasionally Have Opinions when it comes to tea.

Naturally, if I'm drinking tea made by others, I will be polite and appreciative of the care they are showing. I still prefer only to drink green tea, but it's hardly fair to expect someone who usually only drinks Builder's Brew, or even coffee, to have decent tea making accoutrement. I used to be a lot more fussy about the type of tea I would drink too, but managing a professional development course and working 10-14 hour days for a week at a time in a place where the only green tea available is that awful Twinings tea bag stuff that tastes like it's been swept off the factory floor maybe a year or two ago...

Well, you make do. I needed something to get me through the day. Generally a takeaway cup every hour or two would do it. Over time I grew, well, not exactly fond of it, but at least to tolerate it. I've come to realise that there's worse green tea out there (including some of the other Twinings green teas - it's bad enough on it's own, but with lemon flavouring? *Shudders*)

But still, the first thing I do when I get home? Make myself a decent pot of green tea.

Answer for question 4608.

Question:

Sound Off
Donald Trump as presidential candidate -- what's your opinion? Among your circles of friends and family, is your opinion the norm or does your opinion of him differ from those around you?


Oh. Hell. No.

If Donald Trump ever becomes president of the US (and I would have said this was an absolutely absurd, entirely impossible to consider, totally ridiculous concept when this whole mess started), then I think the whole world is in trouble.

Like it or not, the US is a major player in the world. And, like it or not, the president of the US is an extremely powerful person, one of the most powerful (if not the most powerful single individual) in the world - certainly in the West.

I think the best that could happen if he became president (and there's a part of me that is still disbelieving that I'm seriously considering that) is that the US turns entirely inward and isolationist. No, it still wouldn't be great for the world, but is the alternative that they turn outward any better? Because Trump will certainly not just do nothing and maintain the policies of the current POTUS (not that I think he has the political ability or will to do so). He seems very much to be the type of warmonger that would encourage the US's imperialist empire-building tendencies overseas. He's not the type to reach for a diplomatic solution to anything.

I can't ever see that being good for the world.

Answer for question 4601.

Question:

What To Do
If you retired tomorrow (or in some other way no longer had to work a job anymore), how would you spend the free time you suddenly had? Would it be new hobbies, volunteering, visiting family/friends? To what age do you think you'll have to work before you can retire?


This depends on how much money I have, whilst retired.

I would love to just be able to travel around, visiting friends and partners, going to festivals (like the New Orleans Jazz Festival, for example, or the Carnival of Venice), going to different conventions around the world.

I would also like to go back to university, and learn more things. Perhaps something like culinary history, or philosophy of science, or something even more niche. I just like to learn!

And I would also learn and practice the (already too numerous) hobbies I have, perhaps whilst picking up a few more! And perhaps finally read the books on my list quicker than I keep adding to it....

Basically, not needing to work anymore isn't quite enough - if that's all I wanted to do, there are ways to manage that. I would want the autonomy to go and do the things I want, the physical health necessary for those endeavours, the time to be able to dedicate to them, and the money to be able to pay for them (and to survive in the meantime).

Considering what I'm currently doing, I just can't see how I'm even going to get to a point where I can afford to retire, even though the job I do tends to be a young person's job.