Jo Walton ([info]papersky) wrote,
@ 2009-10-26 13:32:00
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All the tea in China
I had a card from the postman to say there was a parcel for me, so I went to collect it expecting a book. (I'm waiting for some books.) However, the parcel was square and covered in mysterious Chinese writing -- honestly, the only parts I could read were my name and address. It was also completely sealed in clear tape, and therefore couldn't be opened without a knife. I do have a friend in China, but since she's an ex-co-worker of [info]rysmiel's, it seemed really unlikely she'd send something to me and not to both of us. I eventually got it home and cut it open, to find a packet of Yong Xi tea, straight from China, and a card saying it had been bought for me by [info]marykaykare, when she'd noticed me saying here that I was out of it. Thank you, Mary Kay! Wow. This tea is unfairly delicious -- I could drink it all day if it wasn't for the caffeine. It's subtle and complex and not bitter at all. I make it in my engineer's teapot that [info]hobbitbabe gave me, and drink it out of the bowl [info]jonsinger made me, and feel happy and appreciated.

Tor.com posts recently: Time For the Stars, Elizabeth Moon's Serrano series, Nevil Shute's In the Wet (with bonus conversation about some of his other books in comments)


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[info]minnehaha
2009-10-26 06:48 pm UTC (link)
What a nice story.

K.

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[info]xiphias
2009-10-26 07:08 pm UTC (link)
You've got good friends. Those are all Good People.

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[info]karen_w_newton
2009-10-26 09:56 pm UTC (link)
I think perhaps it's time to casually observe that you're out of chocolate truffles and champagne. -)

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[info]patty1943
2009-10-26 11:41 pm UTC (link)
I just read the last two thirds of the Serreno series and loved it. Glad to see it is coming out in three books. I loved the Vatta series too. One thing I love about her is she has that hardass military view down, and a realistic view of how ugly the world can be for many many people. I liked your review and was amused to see the "She's too mean," comments. Right.
That tea sounds interesting and it sounds like you have good friends. Need any little homemade bugs for Florida? (See icon for examples...)

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[info]marykaykare
2009-10-27 01:32 am UTC (link)
You're very welcome!

MKK

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[info]baratron
2009-10-28 02:24 am UTC (link)
That's a happy-making story.

What's an engineer's teapot?

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[info]papersky
2009-10-28 02:39 pm UTC (link)
Here it is, with its little feet, and you can see the lift-out basket, for loose tea, and the non-drip spout. It's a teapot clearly designed by an engineer. And mine was given to me by [info]hobbitbabe, who is an engineer...

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[info]whswhs
2009-10-29 04:10 am UTC (link)
I like your reading of Time for the Stars, but when you say that "The overpopulation is what causes the nearly-as-fast-as-light starships to be sent out to discover Earthlike planets where the excess population can be shipped. (I’m sure I’ve seen figures suggesting that this wouldn’t work.)" I'm pretty sure that you are saying something that Heinlein himself would have endorsed when he wrote the book. See the final chapters of Farmer in the Sky, written just a few years earlier, where Bill Lermer is in a campfire bull session on Ganymede, and an older man who's an expert on planetary ecology talks about shipping people to other worlds, and says bluntly that it won't solve Earth's population problem—because if you ship out some people, you reduce the strain on resources for those who stay behind, and therefore enable them to breed faster. Someone asks him, then, why bother sending people all the way to the Jovian moons, and he answers that it's insurance: Population pressure leads to war, the next big war could kill everyone on Earth, and if there are colonies elsewhere in the solar system, humanity may survive. That he doesn't say this explicitly in Time for the Stars doesn't mean that he had stopped thinking it. And it's the sort of argument that would appeal to the Long Range Foundation, I think.

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