Festeaval

Some people travel for work, others for beach, others for meeting people others for tea, some for tea water and some for the last three combined.

But lets start at the beginning. No not at the begin of time. Elaborating about the first Planck time would scare most of my readers away and the 11 billion years after that would make this post too long. Lets not start at my birth too, that would be too early. Or the beginning of this blog already over 5 years ago. Or at the start of my unintended break of this blog. Two years of wanting to write but not writing.

No, let’s start at the end of may this year. Or actually a year earlier. At the day I went to Utrecht and came home to discover that….

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My dear teapot

🙁 My daily teapot had an unfortunate accident today thanks to some people who induced a sudden reaction with fatal consequences. Their pleasure meant my friends end.

Rest in peace my dear friend for over 6 years.

The art of don’t go there

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The Japanese tea ceremony. You can love it you can hate it. But in many aspects it reflects life in the bigger world. Including rules of where not to go. (and of course our tendency to break those rules, like our parents ignored the signs on our doors or that restaurant named “Verboden toegang” 😉 ). Now, we are all familiar with rules of don’t go there. Don’t go into this street, don’t enter this radioactive room etc. Some of us know about the rules in a Japanese tea garden about where not to go. The Tea master prepared a route through the garden to the teahouse. Roads that should not be taken are marked by stones with a rope. And although these stones and ropes were chosen and placed to create an aesthetically Wabi Sabi image. According to my source this has not lead to a “Thou shall not pass”-art of its own, although I would not be surprised if it actually did, but they did not know about it. So leave it to a bunch of Europeans to create an art of don’t go there and of course an exhibition.

Variation of normal Dutch keep out sign (from website <a href="http://www.verbodentoegang.nl/">restaurant</a>

Variation of normal Dutch keep out sign (from website restaurant)

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Chengdu teahouses: a place to get your ears picked

Chinese teahouses give a lot of tea lovers a romantic feeling. It is a good place to drink tea, see a nice opera, have a nice discussion, have group meetings, settle disagreements, get a pedicure, get your earwax picked, have a good fight one on one or group against group, end someones life, find a lady for a moment or as headquarters for your gangster inc. So, lets zoom in on the teahouses in the city Chengdu the capital of the once independent region Sichuan.

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Tea skyscrapers

Tea sets come in various forms. Designs change over time. Some changes are gradually, others by design. Modern tea ware is not rarely designed by people that have experience in designing tea ware. But what would happen if tea ware was designed by people that usually not design tea ware, but for example skyscrapers? What would those used to design the large do when then design a humble teapot?

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