u/nyviola

Looking forward to lots of Wagner in my summer office :) This is the first viola stand in Bayreuth, and yes, that was Wagner’s own chair!
My menu for the summer : Rienzi, Rheingold, Flying Dutchman

The GS 9FGMT has to be the most convenient watch in the world. It‘s comfortable, not too heavy, and quite an understated watch. It doesn’t get attention, unless someone already knows what it is, but it wears unbelievably well and fits into that relatively small area where it looks premium without being in any way obnoxious or trying to hard. Say what you will about most new watches out there, but at this point I feel like most things are either flashy, obvious Homages to other watches (looking at you faux-tropic Niveda Grenchen Super Antarctic 3/6/9), or not up anywhere near a comparable standard of qc/finishing.
I‘m still not sure why this is such an unloved reference, but I think it‘s got to be one of my favorite watches of all time on the wrist, regardless of price.
Replacing the battery every 2/3 years and simply setting the time once makes it an extremely easy watch, and I don’t miss the sweeping the second hand when this simply ticks so crisply.
I do really like citizen’s „the citizen“, but they are all somehow flashier, shinier, and wear significantly larger on the wrist, though the eco-drive makes it tempting. If they were ever to release a relatively plain dialed version, I’d be very tempted, but I just like the look of this more.

I’m currently on a work trip in Bavaria. Lovely places, and a nice group of colleagues. I didn’t know how much I needed a travel gong fu set until whipping out this gift from a tea seller this morning. With an hour to kill, and a nice view of the river from my hotel room, I can’t think of a better place to relax for an hour with a nice, simple lapsang souchong. This is coming with me everywhere from now on.
The tea set is from Tianshin Tea City in Shanghai, room 2053 on the 2nd floor. A Lovely shop, with some unbelievable green teas, and excellent Pu Er. We bought 50 Euros worth of tea (250 grams of various first flush specialty Anhui green teas) and a 100 gram Tong of 2011 Xiguan Ancient Tree Sheng.
The lapsang souchong is the absolute cheapest tea on Taobao, and was sent to me for 5 yuan in addition to a tea purchase. Maybe I’m just a neophyte, but it’s a delicious, sweet, slightly smoky red tea. I wish I could get more, because it’s good for 8-10 infusions and is delicious, but I won’t be in China for at least 6 more months.

I saw many, many taxi drivers with this exact style of infuser bottle in China, so I thought I needed on for myself. It’s very easy to brew grandpa-ish style here without having to deal with leaves everywhere, and the control due to simply flipping over is surprisingly good.
I was wondering if anyone else has one of these, and what their favorites for an all day fill and refill use case are. So far I’ve had some lower grade lapsang souchong and some Wuyi wild Oolong. Was thinking about trying a nice sheng pu’er of which I have a new cake. I’m assuming if I put in hot water, infuse, and then flip, that the heat from the water will keep in some way steaming the tea still in the infuser on top. Will that change the flavor or over steep for a future infusion?
The convenience of having hot tea ready to drink, and able to resteep is amazing, and with black and oolong it’s worked well, but I’m assuming the sheng might get super astringent if oversteeped.
I’m drinking Yoshi En Wuyi Felsentee (Rock tea) from the first flush in 2025. It’s tasty, minerally, roasty, and I’ve done 4 infusions at about 250ml each. Not Gongfu style, but I think this infuser lets you get closer to that than other thermos I’ve seen, which is what I like about it.

Just put the Warchal Timbre viola strings (CGD) on my 42.2 (16 5/8) Erdesz. So far so good, super fast tuning stability (20/30 minutes) with a warm, resonant sound, and lots of ring. They respond very well, and don’t seem to overpower easily. On fast on the string notes there seems to be a slight delay to the response, leading to a bit of “noise” I’m not used to with Pirazzi Gold, or Spirocore and Pi, but it may only be under the ear, or go away as they get played in.
I’m actually quite curious how these will work, as the tensions seem very similar to Pirazzi Gold, which works well for me, but don’t last very long.

Under the fingers they feel very soft, significantly different to the EPG, but the tension may be the same despite the feeling because the strings are thicker. They’re comfortable to play, so I’ll see how they hold up over the next few weeks of work, and eventually transitioning to tons of Wagner all summer.

I’ll update this a few times as the strings develop. Of the sound holds for more than a month or 6 weeks, they may be a consideration (depending on price), as EPG die quite rapidly, and though they don’t ever seem to sound or feel bad until the three/four month mark, they don’t have that same brilliance and variety of Color for long.

I hope these do!

I was on a work trip to China for 2 weeks, mainly Shanghai and Suzhou. My wife came along, and she saw tea pets in person. Now we have the beginnings of a zoo!

All jokes aside, we tried some fantastic teas at Tianjin Tea City in Shanghai, and came back with some very particular green teas from Anhui. My wife drinks mostly Japanese green tea, but these, all from the new crop in March/April, were pretty phenomenal. Whenever I manage to visit again, I’ll definitely buy some more pu’er. We were also gifted what seems to be some amazing Taiwanese Oolong, travel tea sets, and other wares. All told, we came home with over a pound of tea, and a lot of stuff!

The tea pets were at a bunch of various stores at the tea city, and a few other shops. I’m sure we could have found them cheaper on taobao, but we liked finding them. The tea tray and cabbage gongfu set were, however, taobao acquisitions.

Our first tea in the new set was a duck shit oolong (ya Shi xiang) we picked up in a shop in Tianjin last year, now that we finally have the right gear!