Rosy Thoughts

Shows how busy I have been. Dear countingpigs have been home for a week and I just saw the packets of Twinnings Rose she left me!! Thanks gal, really loved the rose tea. Kept me going strong till this morning. The tea is light and soothing, body tastes like Earl's grey but instead of the lemony fragrance, it has a tint of rose in it. And as I sipped the tea, a familiar and homely feeling came over me but I couldn't quite pin down where that deja vu feeling was coming from. So my mind wondered over my associations with roses over the past few years and here are some memories that have stayed with me.

- Receiving my first rose patterned jewellry box from my uncle.
- 1st champaine bouquet for my 15th birthday
- Ceramic Ballerina figurine with tiny roses on tutu. It was given to me as a thank you gift from a school friend whom I've unknowingly helped to run away from home for 1 night. I naively thought that it was a simple stayover but my mom sensed otherwise. Her parents were going through a divorce and she didn't want to go home. She was coping well when I last saw her in school but sadly we never kept in touch.
- single red rose from WF. Actually I was more attracted to the natural country style wrapping with strings and all and i even dried it but didn't bring back in the end. Maybe I didn't want to.
- Barbara Rose KJH. Intellectual class joker. Famous in S7. Came up with funny names for our bio teacher on several occasions and didn't stop even when she started calling him the names he had suggested. There is supposed to be another prefix that was added during our 2nd year plant reproduction lecture but I can't remember what it was. Anyway Barbara Rose stuck cos that's the name our teacher used to call him.
- NYP Biotech competition. Used rose extract to facilitate visual identification of soured LHT milk. Won 2nd prize, lost to an egg membrane filter system. Luckly we didn't pursue the idea of breaking down hair proteins. Most enjoyable part was actually joining the competition with my secondary school girlfriends.
- Favourite rose window in Notre Dame. Went back to see it twice.
- colour coded roses from MX, 45 and counting :)

Anyway, memories aside, I finally figured out where the wave of familiarity came from.
The rose flavour tastes like the pink bandung drink I used to have at home! Basically it's just concentrated rose syrup mixed with suger, water and carnation milk (click on link for more complicated recipe) and it tastes great when served chilled. So I was having tea with bandong. I quite fancy hybrid drinks hah? Let's see, coke-sprite-lemon, tea-coffee, soya-chocolate-coffee, honey-camomile-lemon-chestnut, milo-hollicks, hollicks-white chocolate mocha. I wonder if I can simply add rose syrup to my tea from now on to UP the flavour. Hmmm.... got to find the syrup first. And it wouldn't taste the same if I add it to earl's grey coz the citrus will ruin it. So got to find a proper light tea that tastes just like tea.