How To Check Decaf Side Effects, Flavours and Record Who Likes What

When we travelled to Utah in the USA, we were surprised to find that the Mormons are not allowed to drink coffee. Coffee, being a stimulant. A drug.

I started drinking decaf last thing at night. Then a doctor suggested I would sleep better, and not jump up in the night to go to the toilet, if  I stopped caffeinated drinks after lunch time.

More recently our son decided to drink only decaf coffee. He cut down to no more than five cups of caffeinated coffee, and gradually reduced the number of caffeinated coffees, until he ended up drinking only decaf. 

Caffeine is in lots of things. We now no more than years ago about what exactly goes into our food and drinks, and we have numerous sources of information.

I read somewhere, I believe it was on Quora, that decaf is made with different beans which have more fat. I did not see any evidence for this. If it is true, it might apply to some brands and not others.

The Nescafe site said they use the same beans, but treat them differently. 

Wikipedia describes different systems, such as the Swiss water system.

Decaf has been around for longer than you might think.

With so many coffees, and decafs, now available, how do you keep track of them? How do you remember what you liked and what the rest of your family liked? 

Recording Tastes of Groups Of Drinkers

When I had a group of workmen in my house and I made tea for them every day, I kept a list of who took sugar and how many lumps, and who took milk. I stuck the list on the back of the top cupboard door. This works if you have the same people on a regular basis. 

If you have a constantly changing group of people, such as in a restaurant, or a club, or workplace, you could make a list on a laptop, and save it for future reference. You could share it in google docs, or print it out and place it on a clipboard.

Recording Favourite Drinks of Singles and Pairs of Drinkers

Nespresso Capsules

Storage

If you have a selection of coffee bottles or cardboard packets, you can devise a system running left to right. This would also work for the short sighted or blind. If you drink the Italian way, with mild breakfast coffee and strong coffee after a big evening meal, then you would put the regular coffee on the left and the espresso at the right.

If you operate the way we drink in London, with a strong coffee to wake you up in the morning, but decaf at night, or after lunch, you place the stronger coffee on the left and the decaf on the right. 

You can mark his and hers in different colours with coloured pens, or stickers, or stars on post-it notes.

We keep capsules upright on a work surface, or flat in a drawer, with the name of the coffee written in pen on the inside of the lid of the box.

If it's just you, or a couple, such as a husband and wife, or parent and child or grandchild, you can instead mark the container or containers.

You can buy a metal rack for capsules. We soon found that, with a regular monthly order, we had more capsules than space on the small metal rack.

Useful Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decaffeination

Learn Ancestry of Frank Lloyd Wright, Van Gogh and Gauguin from movies before or after visiting art museums

I thought you’d be interested to hear that on my January 2018 flight on Singapore Airlines I watched two documentaries and two films, covering architect Frank Lloyd Wright and painters Van Gogh and Gaugin.

It was interesting to learn about their ancestry and their ups and downs. As I learned about their ancestry and lives, I kept thinking about the phrase 'into every life a little rain must fall'.

1 'Data Mining’ about the founding of Ancestry.com was the first film I watched. It covered the origins of commercial Ancestry.com and also covered the free to access site run by the Mormons and their archives in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. You can visit them in person, as well as online. No mention of Find a Grave, which is a quick source of where you can see the grave plus a short read of the life story of famous people.

Frank Lloyd Wright

2 A film on Frank Lloyd Wright, father of American / world modern architecture. I have visited two buildings he designed. It starts with his Welsh ancestry which gave him his middle name Lloyd, typically Welsh with the double l. 

Frank Lloyd Wright late in life designed New York’s much visited world-famous spiral Guggenheim Museum. The museum is named after and founded with money from the Guggenheim family, whose fortune was inherited from their ancestor who was of one of the Jewish victims on the Titanic).

 I also visited the architect’s Fallingwater, which is built over a waterfall. Tragically, he lost his second wife and children. Other setbacks included being out of work in the Thirties until he founded a school of architects he taught. But later he became increasingly famous. 

Then I watched films about Van Gogh and Gaugin.

The ancestry of Van Gogh is also important to his story. He was named Vincent after a son his mother lost in a miscarriage, and always felt he could not live up to the love she had for her lost boy baby. 

The film Loving Vincent is created from animating characters in his colourful paintings, his landlord of the house where he died, his brother, his doctor who was an amateur artist. The narrator of the film is a character, the son of the landlord, wearing a bright yellow jacket. Only spoiled by the British regional accents and Irish regional accents. I feel French and Dutch accents would have sounded better. One of the big surprises was how medical problems such as disease and madness seem to go hand in hand. Vincent’s brother Theo was dying of Syphilis, knowledge of Theo's illness could have contributed to Vincent’s suicide, and the Theo died shortly after Vincent.

In addition to the paintings brought to life, the expressions and emotional voices of the characters contribute a lot. The story has a lot of conflict and is presented rather like a detective story, chasing all the characters for their memories of Vincent, trying to establish if his death was suicide or murder. Theo's young widow published Vincent’s daily letters to his brother. The remarkable letters helped propel him into being such a posthumously lucrative creator of paintings. The haunting soundtrack 'starry starry night' quotes one of his letters.

You can visit the Van Gogh museum in the Netherlands, where is it the most visited museum after The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Many of the paintings by Gauguin are in the Wikipedia article.

Both Van Gogh and Gaugin artists spent lots of time with other artists or at art schools - they all painted each other, and were not the isolated amateurs one might imagine. Gauguin painted van Gogh.

Gauguin

The film about Gaugin was great in different ways, revealing life on the French islands. Gauguin is presented as a tragic and forgotten figure. The action starts with his life in France and his marriage to a non-French wife who goes back with five children to her family when Gaugin cannot support her.

However, he knew all the leading painters of the day. He lived with Vincent van Gogh a short while, argued with Vincent, and reconciled. Reading Wikipedia I was astonished to see the numbers of children Gaugin had from his two wives plus other girlfriends.

Dates and Times
Vincent Van Gogh 1853-1890

Seeing Paintings

You can see many Gaugin paintings in the Wikipedia article.
Van Gogh's SunFlowers is in the National Gallery of Art on Trafalgar Square in central London, England. Van Gogh intended a series of paintings of yellow sunflowers to decorate the room of The Yellow House he was renting for the stay of Gaugin. Gauguin stayed with Van Gogh over three months.

Buying Paintings
Prints and book about Van Gogh from the National Gallery of Art, London.

Visits

FRANCE
Musee D'Orsay, Paris, France
NETHERLANDS
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Holland, The Netherlands
TAHITI
Paul Gaugin Museum, Tahiti

USA

Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA

Useful Websites

Frank Lloyd Wright

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Frank_Lloyd_Wright_works

Amazon - book of Van Gogh's letters to Theo and others

Wiki Van Gogh

Wiki Loving Vincent

Wiki Gauguin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paintings_by_Paul_Gauguin

TV Series
Frank Lloyd Wright: The Man Who Built America
Data Mining The Deceased: Ancestry And The Business Of Family
Genius (Einstein) Emmy nominated series

Movies

Loving Vincent

Gaugin - Voyage de Tahiti

More on Ancestry in my next post on Einstein. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Valentine's Day and Mormons in America, Malaysia and Singapore

Problem
Why is an American man on a train station in Singapore chatting to me?

Answer
I soon found out. Or thought I did. Read on and form your own conclusion.

Story
"Where are you from?" he asks.

"England. Where are you from?" I reply.

"Utah."

"Ah - Mormons. I've been there. Twice, or three times."

"You like it?"

Yes. I first visited America on a Greyhound trip around the USA when I was a student. Then I went back on a press trip. The best organised trip I've ever been on. The PR lady had a network and fixed up every hotel, restaurant, ski slope, museum. When I sent her my newspaper article, she forwarded it to every person who'd helped with the trip, thanking them on my behalf. I'd never have had time to contact 30 people and get all the right names. What are you doing here?"

"Visiting our church in Malaysia."

"Are Mormons allowed in Malaysia?"

"Yes. We have several churches, in buildings and in shophouses."

"The buildings pre-war, from the days of the British?"

"No, some are recent ones."

"So Mormons are allowed?"

"Yes, so long as we don't approach any Muslims. But we can approach Christians."

Now I know another reason why the Muslim ladies wear head coverings. Religious symbols are a keep off sign to missionaries.

"Did you have to sign a paper?"

"No, the church told us that. They did everything for us. We are only allowed 90 days there, then we have to come over to Singapore again."

I smile, "A similar rule applies in Singapore, regarding tourist visas. You have to cross over to Singapore and come back. And similarly, you can't knock at the doors of houses, not selling, collecting money for charity, or promoting a religion. At Hallowe'en pupils at the American school were told not to knock at the doors of flats unless they knew the name and address of a parent and the unit was displaying the school poster sign, Trick or treat welcome. I believe, one reason for the ban is that the senior son performs funeral rites for his parents, so if he converted, nobody could perform funeral rites for them."

He and his wife nod.

We take the escalator down and get on the same train.

I ask, "Do you celebrate Valentine's Day?"

"Oh, yes," his wife enthuses. "Because Jesus loves us very much and we want to spread the love."

The train pulls into their station. Off they go, back to Malaysia, to spread the love. But not to Muslims.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormons

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

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Creating A No Smoking Table In A Restaurant in The USA

Several years ago when no smoking in restaurants worldwide had just become a controversy I was on a large press trip for travel writers. We were visiting  four states in America where the four states meet. The four states are Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. On my trip were two other non-smokers, one from Europe, one from the USA.

At our first restaurant stop at breakfast the hotel had a table with a no smoking sign. I chose that table and my two non-smoking friends joined me. The non-smokers came over, saw the non-smoking sign and went away.

During the trip I sat tat the front of the coach to see better and hop off the coach and back on again in a hurry to take photos.

At our lunch stop I was first of the coach into the restaurant looking for a non-smoking table. I could not see one.

I asked. They did not have a policy or a sign. The girl serving was new.

I sat down, sighing. Why don't they have sign, I thought. They are not that expensive. They could even write one out by hand. If I wrote one and gave it to them and asked permission, maybe they would put it out.

I reached in my bag and got out a piece of paper and wrote non smoking.

Before I had time to go and as, one of my friends arrived and said, 'Oh - you found a mob-smoking table. Great.'

He sat down. 

In came the non-smokers. They looked at the sign and moved away.

All through the meal I was waiting for one of my friends to comment on the fact that I had written my own sign. But nobody guessed. They assumed the restaurant had done it.

***

How much is a sign?

I just went online and found a series of ads immediately. From pubshop.uk £1.47 (depending on whether you buy with or without VAT) plus postage. You could buy your own sign and carry it with you.
  Or just write your own!