If you can get someone in China to send you airmail (instead of EMS) periodically, taobao is a good source to get free puerh samples. Only puerh sellers give out free samples like there is no tomorrow. Most samples are small factory, arbor tree puerh. The good sellers would give a set of 5 or so samples and sometimes a small cake of 100g.

I buy more non-tea stuff than tea stuff on taobao. I don't have much of "that itch" for puerh, but currently I have some "itch" for some Mongolian cheese candy on taobao :D

I have a book that's sitting on the mind, by Charles Wu, called "How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe". It's fairly Proust(y) via Douglass Adams. It uses science fiction terms and conventions to explore the role of memory in our personal relationships--Memory as a time-machine (not only that--it's a great book).

I've now read this blog twice, going back from the most recent entry to the zero post, and then reading them forward from the zero point. Going back, it felt like you were a fairly persnickety fellow, like Anton Ego, and then going forward, it seems like you were a pretty cool guy who finds interesting things to be obsessive about. It's much clearer to me why you feel a certain way, especially far back in time, because one could make a visual representation of likes and dislikes (venn diagrams and all) and kinda sorta see a feedback cycle that propels you into liking such and such a tea. Not that I'd ever think I would know what to bring you for a present, of course.

And reading this blog-that-feels-like-a-diary, I just kinda think that genuine friendship is inherently about time travel, in a way that I didn't think when I read "The Time Traveler's Wife". You spend your time with that person always traveling into the past in some form or fashion (because the past is just so goshdarn important!) even as you sit and chat and drink tea in the here and now. At some point, you know the person well enough that you travel into the future (because the future is just so goshdarn important!) even when you're by yourself, holding a memento. The wierd thing is, you don't really know that you've time traveled until you stop to ask why is someone so important to me?

Reading all these blogposts, though I must mention, I winced every time you complained that a tea was sour. I happen to enjoy tea that is sour (for some brews) very much, and I was drinking *something* or other that was sour while reading it. I think though, that the sour you were complaining about is probably much more offensive than the sour stuff I was imbibing.