This Coffee Shop Rocks!

And of course you know what I mean by that title! 

Yes, a little aftershock (4.6). I was getting into my pre-conception nutrition reading, camellia sinensis in hand, when the building started to jiggle and shake. This had a bad effect on my concentration.

I made nervous eye contact with the girl beside me and we both held our breath for a few seconds wondering how freaky it would get. I was thinking pretty intensely about the stupidity of seating myself directly under an upstairs gym.

I'm not sure that diving under the Coffee Culture window-side bench would be much protection if a Smith Machine came through the floor! Luckily, it didn't come to that.

I'd already been thinking about things quaky, having stayed up late fretting for all those people in Indonesia. Ugh. 

I'd even snapped a few quake related pics (below) before settling down to a pot of what, to me, is camellia sinensis. I can't help it. A side effect supplement development immersion is that my brain works in botanical names. This is very useful when ordering herbs from overseas (these names are the same everywhere), but sometimes inconvenient. Green Tea? camellia sinensis. Red Clover? trifolium partense. Honey, can you pick up some zingiber officianalis powder on your way home?

When I cut back on coffee rather dramatically, I made an effort to increase consumption of camell.. Green Tea. It's very good for you, full of antioxidant polyphenols. Studies have also shown that it enhances weight loss through stimulating thermogenesis and fat oxidation. Although the compound epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) is considered to be responsible for this effect, some studies suggest that it is the interaction of EGCG with the small amount of caffeine in Green Tea that does the job.  There is an interesting open access review here if you want to learn a bit more about how EGCG might work.

Today, I wasn't really in it for the EGCG, which was fortunate because my pot was a bit wimpy, even with the impressively large tea bag (sack?). 

I was more there for a change of scenery - sometimes this helps when my research-reading mojo is flagging. Plus, at the Coffee Shop, there is no distraction of the internet kind, so I don't see emails coming in or have cause to wonder if any of my favourite bloggers has posted a must-read.

Right before sitting down, as mentioned, I took a couple of eq piccies. The 'before' pics I swiped from the interwebs.

Beckenham shops: Before. This is after the September 2010 earthquake, which was not the biggie, but bad enough to 'munt' these old shops. One of the shop owners told me that when they finally came down there was virtually no mortar left between the bricks. Those things were a death trap.

Source

Beckenham Shops: Now. Nothing to see.

Beckenham Baptist Church: Before

Source

And: Now

It's now what you might call an 'open air' church.

So that was my midweek excitement! I hope yours is slightly less shaky and I'll be back in a few days with an online survey (hopefully) about pre-conception nutrition.  Let's see what you know! 

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Question for Commenters: Green Tea. Are you a fan?