What is your favourite soft beverage?
My answer:
I wrote about it many times so I guess if you’re a regular it’s going to be predictable: kefir! I really love kefir! That being said, what I drink most often, in-between meals, is usually water. Kefir is very refreshing and quenches thirst very well, but I think water does even better and in our family we generally drink a lot of water.
You? 🙂
What are three things you like that other people don’t like?
My answer:
I like liking things that other people don’t. One reason is because it feels kind of quirky, and since I’m quirky anyway it comes to me without even trying particularly hard. Another one is that I like and have a strong tendency to personalise things or even abstract concepts, so my mentality is like if no one likes them, they must be really sad. 😀 And since I am an (overly, as it seems) empathetic person, I feel a genuine need to compensate for that.
One such thing that I like but very few other people seem to do as well is the beautiful Dutch language. The funny thing is that I also used to consider it quite an unattractive language when I was younger, but everything changed as I started to listenn to Cornelis Vreeswijk when I was 17 and got a faza on him (he mostly sang and wrote his music and poems and everything in Swedish and lived there most of his life since he was 12 but he was born in the Netherlands and also had some sort of a career in his native country however much less impressive from what I understand and it’s like he’s sort of known in his country for being famous in Sweden). Fazas can change one’s perspective quite a bit, and while it took me quite a while to take a liking for this language, at some point it was just like something randomly switched in my brain and suddenly I was like “Awwww it’s actually such a really really beautiful language!” and my brain was all melting with delight as it tends to in such situations. It feels weird these days that I could ever have not liked it. I’m not one for the Romance languages and the like. One reason is that they’re “over-liked”, everyone wants to learn them and considers them beautiful. Aside from that, I often say, and have said on here as well, that I believe a language is similar to pasta in that it needs to be al dente. Swedish is a perfect example of that. Perhaps Dutch is a bit undercooked to be considered al dente, but that’s still way better than overcooked, I totally don’t mind the former and as a kid even used to eat dry pasta or noodles, but I can’t stand the texture when it’s overcooked, ewww! Like a dish, a language also needs to be spiced just right, and not be bland or wishy-washy. I usually don’t like things that are aesthetically, as my Mum calls it, “farting sweet”, or cloying, unless it’s genuinely cute. Dutch is really hot and I guess not everyone has high tolerance for spicy food so perhaps it’s the same with this language. Anyway, most Dutch natives I’ve talked to seemed very surprised whenever I mentioned that their language is on my list of languages that I want to learn and that I love. They’d usually find it difficult for some reason to understand why I’d want to do it, and many would admit that they actually don’t like the language themselves, and that they prefer English. 😀 I love English too, but it’s everywhere so it’s a bit boring, why limit myself like that? And some would even tell me how their language is actually quite difficult. I mean, I don’t speak it just yet, but I don’t really see how it would be extremely difficult for me, when I already know two Germanic languages (three if you include my kinda sorta making friends with Norwegian since about a month). Perhaps I’m overly confident here or not aware of something but it seems pretty straightforward and I find it very encouraging that I can already understand small bits of vocabulary with the languages I know, so it feels like one of the easiest languages on my list, if not THE easiest one. Some things about the sentence structure, like sticking the verb at the end of a sentence, is fairly odd to me, but I suppose it’s just a matter of enough exposure and practice until it will no longer feel odd. Swedish sentence structure in some more elaborate cases, especially where time is involved, is also different from the Polish (which is quite loose really or at least not permanently fixed) or English one and felt slightly intimidating to me at the beginning and difficult to understand, but, while I still do make mistakes with it, overall it feels completely natural that that’s how Swedish works because it’s Swedish, if that makes any sense to anyone other than me. Or it’s amusing what I sometimes hear Dutch language learners say, that they visit or move to a Dutch-speaking country to be able to practice their target language, but it often turns out impossible because as soon as people figure out they’re non-natives, they speak to them in English. 😀 Some of my Sweden experience was very similar, and it was kind of confusing because it made me feel like my Swedish must be really shitty if they find it easier to communicate with me in another language rather than their native one, even though I theoretically know it’s because people want to be helpful. Anyway, I myself am quite a patriot and love my own language and country so every time I’ve heard Dutch people being so underappreciative of their language, I honestly felt really shocked and also kind of sad, and that gave me just another reason for wanting to learn that language, to give it some love it totally deserves. I also love and plan to learn Frisian, which also gets some really interesting reactions sometimes. 😀
Another thing I love truly and deeply but everyone uninitiated seems to hate, or at best just not get my love for it, is kefir. I drink loads of it, so does Sofi, it’s very healthy and yumilicious and very refreshing, and is good for your guts so a perfect thing to drink if you’re emetophobic and happen to need to take antibiotics or something. It’s also okay for people who have lactose intolerance like my Mum. Obviously there is kefir and kefir though so you have to find the right one which has some better quality if it’s really important for you that it has the health benefits it’s supposed to have. Aside from water, I think this is the best drink when you’re properly thirsty. I rarely drink it on its own, unless I’m very thirsty and happen to crave kefir, but I drink it with most meals. I also used to get bad culture shock in my early days of penpalling when I’d mention kefir to my British pen pals and they’d be like: “Uh, and what is kefir?” I have an impression though that it’s become more popular over the last few years in regions where it hadn’t been previously known.
And another such thing are olives. I guess it’s not like everyone dislikes them but there seem to be two camps, people who love olives and people who dislike/hate olives and hardly anything in-between. I much prefer the black ones, but the green ones are okay too, certainly better than none. Olives weren’t a thing my family would eat when I was a kid, as we’re not very fancy with food really, and I remember the first time I ate them was on the train station in Warsaw when my Mum and me were waiting for a train to go home from my school. We were ravenously hungry so we bought one big Greek salad for us both, and that was how I discovered olives and immediately fell in love. Even though I have always loved them, I think I get why people wouldn’t, they really do have a very particular taste, and even I wouldn’t be able to eat a lot of olives without something that would complement the taste, it starts to feel weird pretty quickly. Since my Mum loves olives too, when she found out that so do I they became a regular ting in our house, even though everyone else here hates them. I also love capers, which seem to be even less popular with normal people.
How about you? 🙂
Today, after a long time of not doing this, I’m linking up with
to list some things I’m grateful for, as a sort of follow-up to my earlier post about ways of showing gratitude.
Here’s the list of things I’m thankful for.
So, these are the ten things I’m grateful for this week.
What’s on your list? 🙂
Hey people! 🙂
My question for you today is:
What’s your favourite cold drink?
My answer:
Kefir, kefir, kefir, and more kefir! I love kefir!!! It’s my favourite drink. If I don’t have kefir, or if it doesn’t go with whatever I’m eating at the moment, I also love orange juice and Pepsi and chocolate flavoured milkshakes, though the latter definitely not too often because it’s so sweet and I just like to have it once in a while. And I drink a lot of water too, not because of any lifestyle/wellness thing and that it’s getting so trendy and everyone is trying to drink more water even those who don’t like it but simply because I’ve just always liked water, and I’m lucky that we have good enough here that I can drink tap water.
You?
What is the last thing you drank?
My answer:
Kefir to lunch. Lots of kefir. I love kefir (if you don’t know it yet, I am afraid I said it too many times already). If you haven’t ever tried kefir, you definitely should, if you’ll get an occasion. I just feel with my whole brain for all those people who haven’t even drank kefir, and even more for those who have, and like it, but it’s not available in every single supermarket as it is here so they have to do a big research any time they want kefir. It wasn’t long ago that I’ve learned about this cruel reality in some countries. And that’s one of those big big reasons for which no matter how many favourite countries I may have, Poland will be always my MOST favourite. 😀 Swedes have fil mjölk, which is nice, but only a meek alternative to kefir. I couldn’t live like that. Am I a kefiroholic? What are the side effects of it? Well, to be honest, I don’t particularly care. So that means I probably am already addicted.
And you? I mean not whether you are addicted to kefir of course, but what was your last drink. 😀 Although if there are any fellow kefir addicts, I’ll be more than happy to read about your experiences. 😉
Now we’ll start a bit of a lifestyle questions series, hope you’ll like them. 🙂
Name three things you consume because you believe them to be beneficial to your health.
My answer:
Olives, black and green – I love to eat them (I NEVER eat anything strictly for health purposes if I don’t like it, unless I’m somehow very ill and it’s like the only option to help myself) and I’ve heard they are helpful for our brains, which is very important for me, as I am a freak in this matter, both because I’m simply interested with the brain and am afraid of neurodegenerative illnesses like Alzheimer, Parkinson and others, any dementias and anything capable of destroying human mind. I eat quite a lot of almonds, nuts etc. for the same purpose.
Kefir – as much as I believe milk isn’t the right choice for other people than babies and I don’t like milk and often feel a bit weird after drinking it even though I don’t have any allergy to it, I do like many other milk products and believe they are good for people. Kefir is my favourite. I just love it. It has a lot of calcium apparently, as well as probiotic bacteries. I always use it as a probiotic when I take any antibiotics and it really does work for me. Plus it’s just yummy and refreshing so you can just drink it when you’re thirsty on a hot, summer day and not have any water with you and it quenches thirst really well, just like water.
Lots of spicy things, like chilli, Cayenne pepper, piri piri peppers, garlic, onion, ginger, etc. I’ve heard it all, or some of these products have in them something called… capsaicine? I hope I spell it right, actually I only know for sure how it’s spelled in Polish so just guessing, but it can’t be much different. Anyway, this capsaicine or capsaicin or capsaicinum or whatever it is, is very popular recently, I guess especially amongst people struggling with overweight, because it apparently speeds up the metabolism. I’ve never struggled with any extra weight, actually, I’ve been pretty much underweight for most of my life, but I have hypothyroidism and hypopituitarism which are generally said to slow metabolism down pretty much. Other than that, I love garlic for its antibiotic properties. I hate antibiotics for one reason – actually there are a few, but they all come from one major thing – I’m emetophobic. And if you are emetophobic and on an antibiotic, you might have quite a few reasons for being anxious, the biggest one is simply that vomiting/nausea etc. are one of the most common side effects of such therapy. So any time I feel like I might be sick with something more than a cold, the first thing I do is eating deterent amounts of garlic. Deterent both for the bacteries – at least in some way – and for people around me as well. 😀 Well it may not cure me totally if I’m particularly sick, but it does help usually. Another reason why I love to eat healthy spicy things is that they help our bodies get rid of extra mucus. As you may know our so called modern lifestyle and modern diet affects us in many negative ways, among others we eat a lot of mucogenic foods and too much mucus isn’t good for our bodies. I have an issue with it after my Mum that I have a tendency to have a lot of mucus in the respiratory tracts whichi is a bit shitty in combination with allergies and asthma and which I definitely don’t want, so I need to somehow clean of it and spicy foods, along with some others, are fantastic for it. I eat especially much of them when it’s winter, ’cause it’s my life long ritual to get some nasty bronchitis in early winter, it can linger for weeks or even months at times and a few years ago I saw that when I eat a lot of spicy things it helps my bronchi to clean more effectively. But even if spicy foods wouldn’t have all those fantastic properties, I’d still love them, I couldn’t live without them, at least since I got out from the boarding school and can eat whatever I want, people even often look at me like I’m crazy or frenzied when they see how much of them I can eat at once, but somehow I can tolerate it and my limit seems to be higher than most of people around me. 😀
What are your three things? 🙂
My Inner MishMash 