Tag Archives: Vietnam

How can we improve our postures while drinking coffee?

In Hanoi, Vietnam, there is Cafe Giang, a famous local cafe known for its egg coffee. Last year, this place was introduced by CNN travel with the title of the egg coffee in Hanoi: where to get your caffeine fix.

(CNN) — Everyone at Hanoi’s humble Cafe Giang however, is after something more than just a caffeine fix. They’ve come for “cà phê trúng,” or egg coffee, a Hanoi specialty in which a creamy soft, meringue-like egg white foam is perched on dense Vietnamese coffee. While destinations across the city now serve it, this cafe claims to have invented it.
There are hot and cold versions. The former is served as a a yellow concoction in a small glass. It’s consumed with a spoon and tastes almost like a coffee flavored ice cream — more like a dessert than coffee. The hot version comes resting in a small dish of hot water to maintain its temperature. The strong coffee taste at the bottom of the cup seeps through the egg — the yellow layer on top — and is quite thick and sweet, though not sickly.

A tasty coffee with creamy foam impressed me. However, I was more impressed by the low stools. In this cafe, people bent their knees and pressed their hips back on the stools, much like doing a squat exercise.

Squats are a mainstay in about every program for trainers. The strength, power, flexibility and balance that can be gained from squats make this exercise a staple in any routine. Some people claim that we should do squat exercise everyday. Others argue that the forgotten art of squatting is a revelation for bodies ruined by sitting.

I believe, we are not only what we eat but also “how we move.” I learned this only after having gone through painful days to form a new habit such as moving computer mouse using left hand or doing computer tasks at standing desk. I suspect Vietnamese people, at least, look healthy because they develop a healthy posture habit. I may need to import their low stools to improve my bad posture habit.

Break: take a rest vs. get inspired

We need breaks from our everyday work. Although they have a single objective, breaks have at least two different forms. For instance, some of my friends want to take a rest without having interactions with others. They turn off mobile phones, go to an all-inclusive hotel, and then spend time on doing nothing but reading casual books. Differently from these tranquil seekers, others want to get inspired by having more interactions with new things or strangers. They go to a city and then eat a wide variety of local food, visit museums and shops, and do not sleep at night but enjoy nightlife. They do many things.

Interestingly, my Asian friends tend to prefer the former option, taking a rest, probably because they are overwhelmed by meetings and schedules. In contrast, my European friends want to get inspired by exposing themselves with diverse stimulation probably because their everyday work is stable. There is a chance that the way I separate my friends or the way I understand their works is biased. However, what is important is that we need quality breaks to see the big picture of our everyday work. I recommend you to go to Vietnam and take a rest at an all inclusive resort at Da Nang and then have one-day local tour at Hoi An!

 

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