Canned tea
I survived the coding exam! 5 hours and 40 minutes with no breaks. Well, you can leave the room to use the restroom if you want to, but the time doesn't stop. This test is designed so that if you hesitate, or need to stop and think about anything at length, you will run out of time. You also get a free retake when you pay to take the test the first time if that tells you anything. It will be another week or so before I know my score, so I get to go back to being a real person again, at least for a bit.
One thing that is premium on the mind of people taking this test for the first time is hydration and snacks. You will miss lunch while taking this test. Given the lack of bathroom breaks, you also don't want to drink much before the test, and that is a problem if you like your morning coffee/tea. So I went looking for a solution, maybe some bottled tea to take just in case I needed a hit of caffeine. I didn't like the look of the big bottles of tea, and most of them had some sort of sweetener in them (yuck!). Then I took a swing through the health food section of the grocery store, and found this:
I didn't know that you could buy such a tiny beverage! 5.2 oz (155 mL)
For reference, here it is next to a single serving can of V-8.
I always thought that single serving cans of juice were small, but this is actually smaller! I bought a can to take with me for security. Notice that it is even unsweetened, just the way I like it. While it is mostly matcha and water, it also has ascorbic acid and xanthan gum in it, which is not normally found in tea.
As it turns out, I was wide awake to take the test that morning, and didn't need this. I was actually hoping that that would happen so I could do a post about it on here. This reminded me of the canned tea in Japan, and matcha is from Japan after all. I wonder how this compares to their canned teas. While I haven't found an authentic Japanese canned tea to try, we'll see what the American interpretation of this concept is. So, I shook well, and poured it in a cup to see what it looks like.
Hmm. Not the bright green that matcha aficionados say it should be (I've never been able to find matcha in that bright color, so this is basically up to the standards of the rest of the matcha you get in the states).
I took a sniff. It smelled bad. Uh oh. Well, I'm glad that I didn't need to drink it during the test.
I took a drink. It does NOT taste like matcha AT ALL! It tastes better than it smells, I will give it that. To me, it tastes like roasted green tea with a slightly chemical undertone. It didn't leave me with a bad aftertaste, so I didn't have to worry about getting the taste out of my mouth afterwards. As my grandpa would say, "you don't have to make (buy) that again."
One thing that is premium on the mind of people taking this test for the first time is hydration and snacks. You will miss lunch while taking this test. Given the lack of bathroom breaks, you also don't want to drink much before the test, and that is a problem if you like your morning coffee/tea. So I went looking for a solution, maybe some bottled tea to take just in case I needed a hit of caffeine. I didn't like the look of the big bottles of tea, and most of them had some sort of sweetener in them (yuck!). Then I took a swing through the health food section of the grocery store, and found this:
For reference, here it is next to a single serving can of V-8.
I always thought that single serving cans of juice were small, but this is actually smaller! I bought a can to take with me for security. Notice that it is even unsweetened, just the way I like it. While it is mostly matcha and water, it also has ascorbic acid and xanthan gum in it, which is not normally found in tea.
As it turns out, I was wide awake to take the test that morning, and didn't need this. I was actually hoping that that would happen so I could do a post about it on here. This reminded me of the canned tea in Japan, and matcha is from Japan after all. I wonder how this compares to their canned teas. While I haven't found an authentic Japanese canned tea to try, we'll see what the American interpretation of this concept is. So, I shook well, and poured it in a cup to see what it looks like.
Hmm. Not the bright green that matcha aficionados say it should be (I've never been able to find matcha in that bright color, so this is basically up to the standards of the rest of the matcha you get in the states).
I took a sniff. It smelled bad. Uh oh. Well, I'm glad that I didn't need to drink it during the test.
I took a drink. It does NOT taste like matcha AT ALL! It tastes better than it smells, I will give it that. To me, it tastes like roasted green tea with a slightly chemical undertone. It didn't leave me with a bad aftertaste, so I didn't have to worry about getting the taste out of my mouth afterwards. As my grandpa would say, "you don't have to make (buy) that again."
Looks like swamp water. Yum!
ReplyDeleteThat was my first thought, too. There's a reason they put this stuff in a can.
ReplyDelete