One of the cool things I've discovered is the Tea served at the Yahoo Bangalore office. After getting situated in some unused cubes this morning, Rasmus and I were just catching up on some e-mail and stuff when a guy came by and offered us tea. That's right. There's a guy who comes around to all the cubes and offers tea.
Cool, huh?
Unfortunately, the tea has milk mixed in with it and I'm lactose intolerant. But after a couple seconds of negotiation, I found that I could get "back tea" which means they'll omit the milk and drop some sugar in its place.
I must say, this tea is most excellent. I'm on my third cup of the day. That probably explains why I was bouncing in my chair earlier. That guy just appears once in a while to offer it, and I have a really hard time saying no. I need to figure out how to get this tea back in the US.
More importantly, I need to figure out who to convince back at HQ in Sunnyvale that we need a guy to come by and offer drinks every once in a while. How cool would that be? :-)
In related news, the cafeteria is nice. The food is good (and free). There's a balcony (that doubles as a designated smoking area) with a view of some of the surrounding trees and buildings (pics up later). We have a decent pool table but are completely lacking a foosball table. Rumor is that Filo promised one but it hasn't shown up yet. Perhaps some mild bugging is in order when we return...
Posted by jzawodn at December 01, 2003 03:06 AM
Jeremy, that would actually be a bad idea :). You do need to get off your chair and screen once in a while (every 1 or 2 hours), so going to grab a cup of tea is MUCH better than having it served to your desk. Trust me (and my aching back) on it.
Yeah, good point. It's funny how tempting it is to have *everything* delivered right to your desk/couch/lazyboy/bed/whatever, isn't it? :-)
Wow! In my first job, we had a guy who served tea/coffee around the office. Those were the dotcom boom days :-) Here, at Oracle (Bangalore), it's self-service all the way.
BTW, if you do get around to convincing the HQ guys for the tea-serving job, count me in for a candidate (I'll send you my resume). I have no prior tea-serving experience, but I'm a quick learner :-) Besides, as an additional skill, I also know how to install Windows :-D
You have some US dollars in your pocket right?
As the guy how much the tea costs and if he would mind getting you a small packet.
As for Manish > "Google's Tea-boy" What a great tagline :)
If that tea's anything like the tea the chai sellers sell on the trains, I agree. I love that stuff, and got through gallons of it!
You can get it in the US -- as chai, which makes sense -- in bags. Then make it strong (ie. >1 bag at a time) and sweet. yum.
BTW getting non-spiced Indian teas is a bit harder in the US; most tea bags sold in the US are less flavourful. Peet's seems to have a good variety of Indian teas though, including my favourite -- Assam -- a little pricey though.
"back tea"? It's not back, it's black. As in black coffee.
Yeah, it's "black" tea. I missed that in the first comment.
"which means they'll omit the milk and drop some sugar in its place"
I think it just means they omit the milk. The tea with milk has plenty of sugar too. Staying with a friend in Madras, each morning his grandmother would make tea with milk and sugar that could rot my teeth out but tasted oh-so-good.
Well if he was in Sunnyvale, he'd be working under US labor laws, no?
Is the cafeteria food Indian (e.g. curries, rice, breads), Western (e.g. sandwiches) or both?
So what are you doing in Bangalore anyway or did I miss a recent posting? You're not training up 50 guys only for Yahoo to announce 50 redundancies once you get back home now are you? Now that would be ironic. :)
You remind me of that awful Japanese canned coffee, it's mostly sugar and cream. IMHO, you should be bouncing off the walls from the caffeine, not the sugar. I usually went to a kissaten and ordered "American Coffee" if I wanted real, unadulterated coffee.
There are 2 tricks to making good tea - no tea bags, and spices. 3, if you count milk, but since you dont do diary...
Get tea leaves, they should be available at any Indian store for sure, and probably in good grocery stores too. Boil 1-2 tablespoons with enough water for around 5 - 10 minutes. Add cardamom (not too much! Its strong, experiment with how much you can tolerate) and maybe a little bit of cloves during the last 2 minutes or so. Strain the tea leaves away, and there you have it! If you like milk, you can use a combination of milk/water to boil the tea leaves.
Enjoy!
