Going to Asia means getting to buy Taiwan grown and roasted beans. These beans are from the Hualien area. I definitely enjoy buying and trying Taiwan grown and Taiwan roasted coffee. They always have this faux-Kona like flavor profile which I really love in a latte.
During my travels, I had the pleasure of drinking a normal latte and a Kyoto latte from this Japanese coffee chain called %Arabica. Both lattes were very delicious.
To my surprise, they also have an outlet at The Grove. Although I made the mistake to visit during the Christmas shopping crush, the latte I ordered was just as good as the Asian latte. I also bought a bag of beans. They didn’t have any region specific beans so I had to settle with their blend. The quality of these beans really stood out when I made my latte by tasting very similar to a %Arabica made latte!
It’s been a while. It’s been busy. I’m very behind with my coffee posts. Since the new year, I’ve gone through quite a few bags from different roasters. I have taken pictures but haven’t really posted about my experience drinking them. I’ll just leave you with the picture of the bag.
As mentioned in the previous post, I put together the past experiences into a sustainable lifestyle listed below. I’ll rotate through this regimen for about 8 weeks then take about a month to stabilize the weight.
Monday is my fasting day. I drink water, tea and coffee on this day. And if needed, I’ll add mineral supplements to the water to minimize any “fasting headaches”. This fast usually lasts goes on for about 36 hours. It starts Sunday after my last meal (either lunch of dinner).
On Tuesday, I break my fast around lunch. Lunch is prepared ahead of time in pre-cooked portioned out containers. I scoop a serving of protein and 1 or 2 servings of vegetables into a separate container for lunch at work. Sometimes, I’ll bring fruit as well for lunch “dessert.” For dinner, I’ll generally eat a much simpler meal (home made chicken/beef bone soup or simple to cook vegetables or fruit) else not eat at all. I have found that fasting has curbed my appetite, controlled sugar cravings and shrunk my stomach capacity. So when I’m not hungry, I’ll skip dinner.
On Wednesday and Thursday, my lunches are generally the same as Tuesday. On Thursday, it can vary more since the pre-cooked portioned containers might have already been finished. I may sometimes have to prepare some additional vegetable sides for lunch. I’ll also transfer a steak out from the freezer into the refrigerator to start defrosting to be eaten later on Friday or Saturday.
Friday lunches generally consist of finishing the last bits of pre-cooked food. If there’s no more pre-cooked food, I’ll generally just cook my own. If I feel like having steak for dinner, I’ll hold off on eating lunch and have an early dinner instead. Instead, I’ll pull the steak out from the refrgierator, season it and leave it outside to for it to come up to room temperature. I’ll also take out some frozen veggies to eat with the steak.Saturdays are to satisfy any cravings I may have during the week.
Saturdays are also when I try to arrange to have lunches/dinners with friends. If I have no other plans, I’ll take out the steak from earlier this week to salt and cook for dinner.
Sundays are family lunch/dinner days. If lunch happens to be big, I’ll skip dinner.
For exercise, I play approximately an hour of squash 4 days a week. On days where I work from home, I’ll take at least a 20-30min walk around the neighborhood during the day. This helps clear my head from any work issues. I admit that I was consistently inconsistent with resistance training with my 25lb kettlebell and calisthenics (body weight) exercises like pushups, burpees, situps and . At least once a week, I’ll do kettlebell swings, kettlebell squats, bicep curls and standing overhead press. For 2024, I plan to focus more on resistance and calisthenics.
Another year has passed. Unlike previous years, the most important goal I set for myself has been a success. I started 2023 with a goal to discover and implement a sustainable, consistent lifestyle of eating mostly whole foods while limiting food cravings to just once a week. In previous years, I’ve tried various diets (intermittent fasting, keto, low carb) and lifestyle changes (mainly exercise more, more weight training, go to bed earlier) always with limited success (maintain weight or lost weight only to gain it back). Through these past experiences, I’ve learned what kind of eating works and doesn’t work for me, what “full and just right” feels like for me, and more importantly what are the underlying thoughts, mental patterns and impulsive habits that can sabotage progress by reverting back to the norm. This year I was able to take the past successes and other lessons and put together what seems to be a sustainable lifestyle. As a result since the start of 2023, I’ve lost 20lbs (again).
Going into 2024, I plan to continue and improve on this lifestyle.
How did I even reach this state? Unfortunately, much of the weight gain over the past few years have been due partially to COVID-19 lockdowns where minimal exercise while maintaining the same eating habits really packed on the weight. During this time, I had a chance to really focus more on the diet aspet (and less on exercise aspect) to lose weight. Identifying what type of foods, the variety of fodd, and how much and how frequent I ate helped lead me to where I am now. Ultimately, this 2-3 year time frame helped me see and adjust to a healthier diet lifestyle.
I’ll document my “lifestyle” in a separate post.
October’s Trade Coffee comes from Equator Coffees. It looks like Equator Coffee roasted this single origin beans from Kenya specifically for Trade Coffee. It’s pretty amazing to know that there’s Trade Coffee subscription to be able to have roasters roast beans. I’m curious how that worked though. Did Trade buy their own bag of beans and asked different roasters to roast on behalf of Trade?
Taking a sip of my latte, I’m greeted with a fruity berry flavors. It also has a very subtle sweet milk chocolate after taste. I find that I enjoy the latte more when it’s cold either from refrigeration or adding milk to a cooled down aeropress shot. Because of this insight, I’ve been making a 2nd cup almost shortly after finishing the first.
| Coffee Aspects | Yes / No |
|---|---|
| Intense Aroma | N |
| Balanced Aroma | Y |
| Other Aroma | N |
| Intense 1st sip | N |
| Balanced Flavor | Y |
| Chocolate Flavor | Y |
| 2nd cup? | Y |
The FTC is out for blood! First Google and now Amazon. My understanding of the case against Amazon is that Amazon has become a monopoly and abused it’s market leading status to maintain dominance and hurt the competition.
I will say that I use Amazon frequently. I used to be an Amazon Prime member but I opted to stop membership because I didn’t see any additional benefit. The 2-day shipping was a nice benefit, but with careful planning normal shipping was equally acceptable for me as well. Plus, by going with normal shipping, it not only broke the vicious dopamine reward cycle of buying and getting packages practically next day but also saved me more money since I had to think about whether or not I really needed that item. Plus, many of the percieved benefits to Amazon Prime were “Nice to Have” for me. So I cancelled membership.
Over the years of using Amazon, I have two major issues with Amazon. First, Amazon allows any/all vendors who wish to sell goods. So many of these goods tend to be low priced items from OEM manfuacturers in China that US companies source to get their goods from. What ends up happening is there are multiple “knock offs” of a similar US brand/model that flood the market. With so much choice, it’s hard to even know what to buy because sometimes the Chinese made products by these OEM manufacturers are worse than the OEM manufacturers with US partners. I try to support American companies selling through Amazon but it’s tough trying to find a proper product. Second, Amazon using customer data to also get “in on the market.” Over the years, I’ve noticed Amazon selling their own “Amazon branded” merchanidse whether it’s clothes, office supplies, common electronics and even food items. Amazon’s participation in this market pushes out the small business owners.
I believe Amazon should have a duty to promote US owned and operated companies. Companies should be forced to have a presence in US and pay US taxes if they wish to sell to US consumers. I also believe Amazon should NOT be participating as a seller competing against the other small business owners. I think it’s great that Amazon provides a platform to the business owners seeking an e-commerce revenue source. I also think it’s great that Amazon even provides the inventory and supply chain logistics for small business owners. And in return the business owners pay a fee. However, does Amazon currently pay a fee to itself to store, list, pack Amazon branded products online? I’d be curious to know.
I think Amazon is marching slowly towards a vertical ecommerce integration. First they have the Amazon ecommerce platform. They also built and market their own server and hardware services for other web based platforms. Then they introduced to small business owners the ability to maintain inventory without the warehouse overhead AND also introduce logistical/supply chain management by packing/shipping products to customers. Then they expand into making their own brands of customer goods from clothes to food to electronics. Although Amazon probably will be unable to own manufacturing companies, Amazon’s sheer size allows them to control the manufacturers. Then utilizing the ecommerce platform, inventory management and supply chain logistics, Amazon can easily outsource, outcompete any small business owner.
My solution to Amazon’s problem would be
!) Amazon should just be forced to ONLY provide the tools for ecommerce and not be allowed to participate in it. I believe that will be good for small business competition and is in line with US’s view of “capitalism.”
2) Amazon voluntarily requires foreign sellers list their US base of operations to ensure US taxes can be paid. It woud not affect current US business owners selling on Amazon nor would it affect US owners thinking about selling on Amazon. This requirement would then force foreign OEM manufacturers to spend money/time/resources on establishing an office in US so that taxes can be paid to local, state and federal governments.
September’s Angels Cup comes from Black Oak Coffee Roaster. This single origin from Tanzania smells amazing. I was also excited to taste these beans since it’s rare to get beans from Tanzania.
Making my latte, I taste a pleasant sweet caramel mixed in with a berry/fruit flavors with each sip. There’s a nice chocolate aftertaste that lingers right at the back of the tongue. I have at times gone for a 2nd cup because of this pleasant after taste. I really enjoyed this bag of beans.
| Coffee Aspects | Yes / No |
|---|---|
| Intense Aroma | No |
| Balanced Aroma | Yes |
| Other Aroma | No |
| Intense 1st sip | No |
| Balanced Flavor | Yes |
| Chocolate Flavor | Yes |
| 2nd cup? | Yes |
For transparency, I minimized using Google Search for at least 3 years now by choice. I predominantly use Duck Duck Go as my search engine for both Chrome and Firefox. I made the switch mainly to minimize any sort of Google tracking on my PC after listening to a podcast related to tracking and the amount of data we give up. I have other privacy focus extensions like Privacy Badger, HTTPS and Adblock Plus. I have thought about other ways to minimize tracking further on PC there’s this one little issue. I use Google Pixel phones. I am also incorporated into the Android/Google ecosystem. So if there’s any tracking to be involved, there’s absolutely know effective way to minimize the tracking from my mobile usage. I have also thought about other ways to minimize tracking on my phone but to adopt them becomes very onerous. So… settling for minimizing PC based tracking was the “middle ground” for me.
Back to my thoughts…. In 2020, the Justice Department accused Google for it’s monopolistic behavior in maintaining dominance in “search.” This anti-trust lawsuit is groundbreaking and I think bigger than the Microsoft lawsuit from 2001 The implications will have a long lasting effects (positive, negative, intended and unintended). Last month (can’t believe it’s October already), the trial started. Today, while going through my daily check of news, The Verge (in big bold letters) offered an interesting snippet from Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella that I clicked on to read (click bait does work!!). There was one line in the snippet that caught my attention was that…Nadella would “do anything to make Bing better.”
So why is this statement interesting to me? Would Apple switching to Bing really have made a difference? I’ve been using Duck Duck Go for at least 3 years. Before that, Google was the default search engine. During these past three years, there have been a few situations where Duck Duck Go’s search algorithm DID NOT produce the results I hoped for. These were specific search results that I knew something existed but didn’t know the actual search term to generate the result. When this happens for Duck Duck Go, it takes additional two to three subsequent page scrolls to find what I’m looking for. But when I use Google, I tend to find what I want within the first page. I think this demonstrates that Google’s search has a much better algorithm. But…. over the three years of using Duck Duck Go, there have been only a few situations where I needed Google’s search bar. That fact also demonstrates that search doesn’t have to be Google all the time. I know… REVOLUTIONARY.
I think the only reason why Google maintains its position at the top of search is not only because of its search engine being better than any thing else in market but also in some part being able to pay/maintain its position at the top of search. Admittedly, Google has put out great products that people use on a daily basis. The only gripe I have is the intrusion of more sponsored/paid advertisment that comes through any search terms across their products. Google should take a step back and reconsider how the display the targetted ads. Perhaps a two column search where one side is the targetted ads and the other is just purely algorithm based search.
My thoughts on Goole would be
1) Allow Google to maintain ads ecosystem.
2) Bar Google or any other company from paying money to be the search preference. Bar any retaliatory effects for choosing one search over another. If US consideres itself to be capitalistic, then it should allow companies to “fight it out fairly” without influence of money.
3) Paid advertisements should not be listed/embedded alongside algorithmic generated search results. At the moment, none of the search companies do a good job separating algorithm results vs paid results. I propose that a separate list be generated along side that shows the sponsored ads. This could be easily done by creating a two column search result. Search results already embed content in two columns already so it shouldn’t be that much more difficult to expand on.
Today is International Coffee Day!? There’s practically a “celebratory day” for almost anything now. September’s Trade Coffee comes from Doma Coffee Roasting Company. The beans come from the Huila region in Columbia and were incredibly aromatic when I opened the bag. Fruit and floral aromas filled the air.
Making my latte, I am pleasently surprised by the sweet fruity flavors. I taste hints of raisin and caramel… kind of like an oatmeal raisin cookie. It also has this subtle coffee, nutty flavor that rounds out the aftertaste.
| Coffee Aspects | Yes / No |
|---|---|
| Intense Aroma | Yes |
| Balanced Aroma | Yes |
| Other Aroma | No |
| Intense 1st sip | No |
| Balanced Flavor | Yes |
| Chocolate Flavor | Yes |
| 2nd cup? | No |
A Guy and His Thoughts... 