Yeti — Blog — Healy Chen

Immigrant dad

On a visit back home to my parents’ place, I noticed my father’s coffee mug has a large piece of gaffer tape at the bottom. I thought to myself: that it’s obviously broken! Why not buy another one? Then I realize my parents have that mentality that they won’t replace an item unless it’s absolutely broken. It’s that working-class, immigrant Chinese mentality. They wouldn’t dare to spend extravagantly on themselves, even if it’s just 20 bucks on a new coffee mug.

All (what little) of that disposable income go towards the children, and the future. Even if said children is fully grown (that’s me!) and the monthly paycheck isn’t so tight anymore.

So I had to step in. I went straight Amazon to buy a Yeti-branded coffee tumbler. The same one I’ve been happily using for well over a year. No more generic mugs from some random store in Chinatown for my father. He was so excited (in the Chinese immigrant dad sort of way, which is to say, not overtly) when I gave the Yeti to him. He immediately went to clean off the product labels, give it a solid scrub, then make a cup of coffee.

Finally. A proper mug.

A week later, my mom mentioned to me that father was very impressed with how long the Yeti tumbler kept the coffee hot. He’s really enjoying his cup of morning coffee these days. It wasn’t lost on me that it was mom who told me this, instead of father directly having a conversation with me. Some things don’t change! That’s fine, though: it makes me happy to be able to buy him something he wouldn’t have otherwise. A mere $30 dollar mug can do so much.

All tea all the time

Ever since I returned from China (pre Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, mind you) mid-January, I’ve been drinking lots Chinese tea. One of my uncles gifted us multiple pounds worth of the stuff, so it’d be disrespectful to not consume it. I’ve always been a tea drinker, eschewing the sugary stuff or anything with calories, but lately the habit has gone on overdrive. My relatives in China drink tea constantly (coffee is way expensive over there), day through night, so I sort of kept up the practice back in the States.

The great thing about tea is that I can drink it the entire day and not have it affect my sleep like coffee would. Drinking coffee in the afternoon would keep me awake all night, but the caffeine from tea surprisingly doesn’t have the same affect (must be the thousands of years of tea-drinking tradition of my ancestors). I can have a sip right before bed and still be able to fall asleep quickly, which is wonderful because honestly who likes drinking plain water other than after a hard session of exercise? SodaStream exists because people crave flavor and texture in their daily liquid intake.

The logistical problem with drinking lots of tea is one of keeping temperature. Tea obviously tastes best when it’s hot and fresh, and it’s quite involving to make enough tea to drink while maintaining the appropriate temperature. Because if I make a large batch, and the tea will get cold before I’m even half way through the (large) mug; make a small batch, though, and I’ll have to constantly make more, which is time I rather not spend. Mind you I’m not talking about instant tea bags here: I use actual tea leaves and proper steeping techniques.

Due to my laziness, I’ve been making big batches and simply deal with the lukewarm tea towards the end. That is, until I bought an obvious solution: a thermos. I’m ashamed to say it’s taken this long to arrive at this answer, because of course we’ve long had the technology to keep liquids at the desired temperature. I’ve heard good things about the Yeti brand of outdoor products, so I went to the local REI and bought a 26 oz Rambler bottle. Now I get to enjoy my tea all day at the correct temperature, using a French press to make a large enough batch to fill the bottle.

Yeti products aren’t exactly cheap, and I still can’t say whether it’s overpriced or not. That said, the thermos I bought works tremendously well. I’m sure there are cheaper versions out there that perform the same function, but hey, the Yeti Rambler keeps the tea hot: that’s all that matters.