Would you believe that in this day and age and with thousands of East Asians coming to our shores each year green tea is difficult to find in it’s usual form?

I am a fan of jasmine tea. When I was stranded by rain one day in Asia, a waiter made me a pot of jasmine-tinted green tea and as I sipped it I knew I’d found a little piece of heaven. It was just what I’d needed after running around all morning. So now I associate jasmine tea with peace, warmth and happiness – it’s no wonder that a few weeks later, after looking for authentic stock, I bought a pack for home.

Browsing my local supermarket, after a brief sojourn from the leaves, I could find no loose tea, nothing. Everything was bagged and I have a couple of problems with jasmine tea being bagged. One – it doesn’t taste any good. It’s likely more processed than the loose leaves and half the joy in Chinese tea, I find, is in the making of it. I love dipping the spoon into the leaves, measuring out the quantity I want for that particular time, and brewing it with a strainer. The aroma is exquisite and you just don’t get that with teabags, the bag and the processing get in the way. Two – I feel I’m being duped into paying more for less. With loose tea you get so many more servings, perhaps 70 or so versus the teabag limit of 20. You can choose how much or how little to use. Of course if you wanted to you could rip open teabags and use it loose but it isn’t the same.

I like green tea because I don’t “need” milk with it and it has numerous health benefits. It’s proven to dissuade cancer from advancing and lessen blood pressure and while “usual” tea may have benefits in adding milk I’m taking away from that.

Do you drink tea? What do you drink and do you prefer loose tea or bags?

So let’s say Heaven exists, because I certainly hope it does. How would you like to be greeted on your arrival? Call me sad but I wouldn’t mind seeing my soul mate waiting for me, say just by a tree, or, to be really gooey, right by the gates peering out in earnest.

This assumes a fair few things. One, that I have a soul mate and that they’ll be there before me (let’s forget that second part, it’s not nice to think about). Now that is almost a completely different topic to discuss but I’d like to think I do have one, that everyone does. I remember once broaching the topic with the boyfriend as a discussion (rather than an exercise in pressure) but I think I freaked him out so I keep my thoughts on the subject to myself where we’re concerned. But I do believe in soul mates, in fact I believe a person may have more than one but that only one will be romantic.

Two, that I don’t want to meet God and/or anyone else first. Knowing me and my history obsession I’m likely to spot a famous king or queen and run in a fan girl rush, and if my soul mate were to stand in the way I might accidentally knock them over. This could be funny or it could be the end of our relationship, after all we don’t know what happens to us when we die, maybe our souls turn into something else and my soul mate’ll decide to sever ties with me at the transitional phase.

Three, that my soul mate will want to wait for me. Are there a lot of jigsaws in Heaven? Can someone join my Love for a game of I Spy to while away the days/weeks/hours/years? (I might add century to that if they irritate me). Of course here I’m talking of waiting by the gates. Though a more general kind of waiting might make me jealous. If my soul mate got accepted into the Cloud Riding Society before me I might get a bit upset.

Here’s to that special someone being there for us with roses and a date to the Celestial Films Awards (where all the A-Listers from all the eras give everyone autographs because eternal life means they can take it easy and not rush off – and are, incidentally, never grumpy). And champagne. That’s if champagne is consumed in Heaven. Maybe that should be the question rather than is there a god. The presence or not of God is something we can’t change – but perhaps we can sneak some champagne in unnoticed?

Usually the evidence that one is a student can be found on their desk; piles and piles of textbooks and reference books and note books and this-that-other books. It’s true I have those, but what makes me a student right now is that I am poor. And for the most part it is perhaps a lack of money that people recognise with being a student in general.

Students have little money, a well-known fact. They tend to be studying more than working and my god do those books cost the earth. So it confused me then when the salesman clocked me as I walked in the door, and upon leaving, accosted me with his products.

He asked if I were a student and I said yes. There, that one word should have been enough, but he goes into this quick-as-lightening speech about the product he’s selling, that costs £30 no less. Oh but it’s good, he says, because if you buy it you get £100 worth extra free. These were cosmetics, expensive cosmetics, so while £100 free sounds brilliant, in reality it doesn’t stretch far. And for something you’ve never used, £30 is a lot to spend at once, no matter the free extras. If it turns out to be rubbish, £30 has been wasted.

After his speech he was clearly expecting me to buy it, so I had to paraphrase the “I’m a student” phrase a few times. “I have no money to spend on something I’ve never heard of that is so ridiculously expensive”.

When I first signed up to my course, I felt like I was pretending, that I wasn’t really studying. But three weeks in and I can truly say that I am one of thousands upon thousands. And even though I’m still working out how to pace myself and making myself ill through too much study at once, I love it, I really do.

But cosmetic counters are out. I’ll walk the long way round the store to avoid them if necessary.