Tea and other drugs

Bubble tea. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

Confession time. Now and again I get homesick. Utterly, irrationally homesick. In moments of weakness, I pine for the banalities and minor annoyances of home. For the damp squall of March afternoon, or a cancelled commuter train on a still-dark morning.

Above all else though, what I miss is a good cup of tea. Comfortingly warm, the bag steeped until the tea is gravy-like in colour, topped off with a liberal splosh of full-fat milk – a great brew solves a lot of the worlds' problems. And that's one of the reasons I love Taiwan. They love milky tea, too.

Bubble tea is a plastic pint of the black stuff, mixed with a load of milk and sweet, chewy tapioca bubbles. You can have it hot or iced, sweetened or not - even switch the bubbles for a caramel dessert in the bottom. I often plump for a straight-up pint of milky tea without sugar or bubbles – transporting me back to a wet weekend in London for ten minutes.

It's the most amazing culinary invention ever. Why it lacks the global ubiquity of the McBurger or the KingSandwich mystifies me, because it's heaven in a plastic cup. From the pan-Asian franchise stores with flashy logos, to the one-off stalls with queues backing down the street, I love them all. If only they did a delivery service...

 

Talking funny

In Taiwan, if you don't have a whiney North American accent, you're considered some sort of freak. 

If you're a teacher, your employment prospects are immediately stunted. Parents demand teachers who are unable to spell colour properly. Students stare blankly as they struggle to comprehend you when you say “banana”. School bosses warn you that you're lucky to have a job at all - what with that spazzy accent. You know, that British accent. That one accent we all have across the whole of the British Isles...

My Taiwanese girlfriend's polished Californian brogue is something to be proud of. I can't wait for the day when I'm good enough at another language to have a discernible accent. But, unfortunately she also takes great pleasure in teasing me about my speech patterns and vocabulary. And one night, when she told me that she thinks that an Afrikaans-English accent sounds “mysterious and noble”, well that really hurt. Surely that's the section of the market us Brits should have cornered?

So, considering the near constant barrage of abuse I receive for having a non-North American accent and vocabulary, it's probably naïve of me to pick fun at another's – but crikey, the Newfoundland accent's a bit weird isn't it?

It's a bastard mix of Irish, Canadian, French and god-knows-what-else. It sounds like a Hollywood actor in a period-piece who got stuck with an awful voice coach. A Newfoundlander I met in a Taipei bar took great pride in telling me his island's history (which is fascinating, by the way, and goes some way to explaining the accent).

Take Leonardo DeCaprio's awful lilt from Gangs of New York, add reactionary Catholic bigot and racist Mel Gibson's attempt at a Scottish accent in Braveheart and mix them together. Then I suppose you're getting close.

But don't take my words for it. Listen to some samples:

An overweight gentleman in a baseball cap speaks about something or other.

A younger man with stick-on eyebrows made of felt makes a telephone call.

A rubbish song, sung by a man called Barry Davis who made a CD of songs about Newfoundland which, presumably, didn't sell.

Matt on a hot tin roof

Taipei. Saturday 2^nd July. About 33°C, 70% humidity – feels like 38°C. Tonight, it'll be more humid, and feel like 28°C. It's been like this for about four months.

Now I'm not complaining, I've seen the bum deal London's been getting this year, but it's a fact that the weather here is pretty brutal.

So how do I cope with it? Well, I don't, for the most part. I sweat profusely and mop my brow like a 19^th century missionary. I cower in air-conditioned rooms. I wear as little as is socially acceptable. Hell, if I didn't dislike him so much, I'd peel my skin off like Robbie Williams did in that rubbish “Rock DJ” video. Anything just to get a bit of air...

And how do the Taiwanese cope with it? Well, until very recently, a large proportion wore coats. Yes, full-on coats. North Face puffa jackets stuffed with downy fur, standard issue geography teacher Berghaus waterproofs, long stylish macs (perhaps in honour of the late Peter Falk) – whatever, really, just something to keep out that terrible, sub 40°C cold.

The longer I'm here, the more I can empathise, if not sympathise. The air-conditioning on the buses and MRT is arctic. But while I take it as an opportunity to reach equilibrium, the Taiwanese view it as some sort of icy hell. There are some things this ginge will never adapt to...