Warm Orange

It's winter here in the US. Blustery wind, falling snow, overheated heaters. Not a good combination. Anyway, winter is the time for my annual cough. I'm not sure why, but every winter I start coughing bad.

The solution? Cough drops (candy) or warm tea ($1.70 for a small cup at starbucks). I miss cheap indonesian tea. Maybe I should get mom to send me a box of tea. I like malaysian tea too, and it tasted good (it was flavoured), but I digress.

You know what isn't available here? A glass of warm orange juice. Well maybe juice is not the right word for it, since the 'juice' usually consists of a couple of spoon of orange and warm water. Hmm.. and the most important ingredient: sugar, and lots of it. It's impossible to get warm drinks besides coffee and tea in the US.

Well, there's a market to be exploited ... warm drinks. I want warm orange juice!!!!!

You know what a popular drink here is? Soda. Coke, pepsi, root beer, even lemonade soda. But it's all soda. It's always iced too. If you ask for drink with no ice.. they look at you funny. Ice or no ice, the drink is still cold.

Yesterday we had a talk about the problem of children obesity in class. Part of the talk revolved around the vending machines which are usually filled with fatty food and soda (which are also fattening).

Digress mode:
Vending machines in japan

Okay back to the topic at hand. We had a lively discussion about whether vending machine should be outlawed at schools (meaning no more vending machines at school)? One good point: let children make their own decision, but teach them how to make good decisions (Indonesian parents ... listen up :P). Another interesting point is that soda company has a contract with the school to install vending machines. By putting vending machines in those school, the soda company will give other benefits such as build a stadium for those school. A small price to pay for a lifetime of buying pattern that particular soda.

What about Indonesia? Is obesity going to be a problem soon?
Probably.. especially among the rich. Even now it is probably a problem. Of course when you average it with the undernourished children, Indonesia's children are just about the right size.

Hmm.. this article doesn't have a single unifying topic. However let me close this article with this little story from yesterday. We were talking about how normal weight is correlated with height. My friend stated "Hmmm.. that means I'm not overweight for my height, I'm just short for my weight."