(1122) Bubba Tea

Remember the neighbourhood girl at risk of being groomed as a drug mule? She is working in a Bubba Tea Café. In fact the tea mania started in Hong Kong, permeated to Taiwan and I think it multiplied in many places as a craze!

I personally have not had any. But back to my youngest daughter's teenage years, she used to share her classmate's tea after school whenever their Bus stopped and waited in front of a famous boy's school which is within walking distance of a shopping centre. That boy school is famous for producing many doctors trained in Malaysian universities. The shopping centre, however, is notorious for students spending their days there playing truant. I used to know the item as pearl milk tea in Cantonese.

Now, the craze is such that in a student area, there are five such shops on one short street doing roaring business. A typical plastic tall container of Bubba Tea on average contains fifteen spoonful of sugar. Grand mothers and aunties fall in love with it and it is the coolest drink of choice around town. If soft drinks caused diabetes in youngsters, then "teh tarik" might be the cause of diabetes for the middle age. "teh tarik"  is hot, sweet milk tea being poured from one metallic container to another many times. The air that dissolves into the tea gives it a smooth taste. Then Bubba Tea may become the culprit that caused the aged to become diabetic.

There was at least one teenage girl in some part of China that landed in hospital after her entire digestive tract was occluded with the "pearls" which was made from sticky tapioca flour. She was sick enough to be termed critical but her addiction to the tea is going to survive the hospitalization.

Such a cup of tea costs between M$8.00 to M$20.00 ++. In a famous café, the average wait is 1 - 2 hours. They are usually taken away to consume at the aficionados' leisure.