January days

I've been terribly busy since the New Year's Eve and will probably stay busy at least until the end of January. As if it weren't enough, the weather here in Bratislava decided to contribute to my bad mood and tense even more, staying rainy, cloudy and cold all the time – it even went so far as to breaking the rainfall record with the biggest amount of downpours in history of many years. That basically means the sky is dark all the time, whether it's day or night and, in it's worst stage, we were continuously unable to see the sun at all for more than a week.

As weather generally tends to affect my mood a lot and I am a big fan of spring, you can imagine the impact it has on me.

What saves my sanity at such times is, without a big surprise, tea. Lately, I've been enjoying almost exclusively darker oolongs, namely various kinds of Yancha, Taiwanese Bai Hao and even one interesting Japanese oolong from Saitama (about which I'm going to write, hopefully in the near future). My consumption of Japanese greens decreased rapidly, as I need at least a bit of natural light to truly enjoy them.

Right now, I'm drinking a simple, solid basic grade of 2010 Shui Xian, that kind of tea which by all means doesn't surprise, yet definitely doesn't disappoint at the same time. Right now, it seems better than anything, warming up my body as well as mind.

Today's weather is weird. Even so, it brightens my mood more than anything – in one minute, the sky is dark and strong wind is blowing, in another, the sun begins shining and it seems like if there have never been any clouds... And it goes on, changing all the time like this, as if these two opposites were fighting in war of conquering the day.

These sunny moments are precious to me; they may be short, but even the simple fact that they showed up is really joyful.

It has just started to rain again as I'm writing this.

And yes, as most of you probably figured out, the point of this post is that I am neither dead nor did I gave up blogging. May your days be sunnier than mine, friends!