W-Buntu is Nothing Linux but completely Windows

 W-Buntu is Nothing Linux but completely Windows without a single application except EDGE browser.

I am posting this in a live session, and it did sign in with the Wireless.

I have no reason to recommend it to a Linux Newbie.

Without my Gmail and Google Account, I am practically nonexistent under Microsoft Hood.

Thank you, Google.

By the way, Microsoft takes my entire desktop as a web page.

Well at my age the large font was a bit of a help.

I am erasing the USB to mount ARCH-Gnome-BIG with lot of applications.

By the way, it has Calamara Installer.

Arch-Gnome-BiG-N-Iso

Arch-Gnome-BiG-N-Iso 

I am glad to report that I managed to mount or boot Arch Image with Gnome desktop. It is 3.3GB and has over 90 applications.It is not a torrent download and I had to download it point to point direct through FOSS Torrent site.

Arch is usually for install and I could not find a Live Iso.

Majararo of course I have tested but this is first time I am running Live ARCH distribution in 30 years.

Thank you guys and girls.

At the same site, I found Wbuntu and I am writing that image to a USB.

It is Windows over Ubuntu image.

I hope it is live.

I will never install Windows in my NUC.

Pendrive Linux, Textbooks and Gambling

 Pendrive Linux, Textbooks and Gambling

Even though I spent nearly 9 months investigating (could have been 3 months if our Telecom provided Express Highway- 3 distributions a day in 3 hours) Live CDs my single interest was carrying a Flash Drive in my pocket (not more than 4 to 8 GB) in my retirement and that is the only thing,  I can afford then with the government expecting me to kick the bucket sooner than late.

It is easy as plugging a Flash Drive to boot a Pendrive with Linux utlity called UNetbootIn.

It does the job in four steps and the it is a graphic and not command line utility.

1. Download the Iso image to a tmp / file

2. Extract and copy iso file to USB

3. Install the boot loader which we call GRUB (Grand Universal Boot Loader)

4. Reboot and enjoy

Only a few Linux distributions are supported by this utility as at present and I use Puppy (100 MiB) for my work.

Remember DSL, Backtrack, PCLinux (not Knoppix) and a host of Linux distribution now can be mounted on a Pendrive.

This is just to let you know that I have booted Puppy Linux 4.2, the first of all the Puppies I used (now it is Puppy Lupu 5.2.5) on a Flash Drive and configured the internet and edited this page on seamonkey (while I am doing this see monkey is telling me a new version is available) web browser.

Puppy and UnetBootIn

Puppy and UnetBootIn rocks the Linux World which is 20 years young.

Now that it has become easy to install,         I must fetch all the USBs with Linux installed by me with various other methods universalised by the UNetBootIn.

I do not need to carry heavy luggage (means a laptop or netbook with various power devices) when I go out abroad on a holiday now with this utility doing the honours.

I will certainly have few Pendrives around by neck instead of the specks (which I often forget) on vacations anywhere.

Of cause when I return I will have a netbook (tested with my Pendrives before buying) in my hand without Microsoft and sell it at half the price to any prospective buyer on the spot.

If he wishes he can spend enormous amount of money and install Microsoft or he can buy few of my Pendrives at three times the cash value (extra payment is for the time I wasted downloading Isos with Sri-Lankan Telecom which boots my electricity bill high in the process).

Even then it is around $50 to 60 dollars (per item) but Linux is free as is always.

UNnetBootIn-How I did it?

If you have an old computer which does not boot from USB Flash Drive I have a solution for you.

This applies to the third world and perhaps to the guys and girls of the developed world who are going through rough times and cannot afford a USB booting netbook or laptop or desktop.

If you have a device which boots with USB, most of what of I state below may not apply to you except the principles.

If you are buying anything new do not buy ones without USB booting.

I of course use old gadgets and my 233 speed with 128 RAM and 4 MB graphic is still working but painfully slow.

Also for the guys and girls of the developing world who have gone abroad looking for better pastures with all your parents' saving and the parent no longer can support you on the second or third years.

All what you need is a Flash Drive and if you cannot afford that it is better you start looking for a menial job and rough out till times get better or they chase you out without extending the visa.

Once those universities sap all your money they have no use of you and start recruiting new batch for their own survival.

Education is money and money is education now in the developed world.

However world has not got better but worse with plenty of geeky gadgets around you, even I cannot afford them in my retirement age.

That is why I am turning to bare bones of computing and Linux utilities are there to get expensive work done with minimum of expenditure but lot of learning to do.

One must get out of the Microsoft plug and play mentality (i.e. even monkeys and dogs can be trained).

And nothing is plug and play even for Microsoft with so many new gadgets hitting the market and D.I.Y is one of the best ways to put your neck and nose ahead in the game of computing world.

Lot of time is necessary and risk taking is essential and above all experimenting. At worse you may ruin the partition table of the Flash drive which I have done.

Linux guys and girls are not there to spoon feed you and they are mostly doing it as a hobby with lot of work and midnight oil burning for their own survival.

But there are few professionals not many of course who are out there willing to help.

I am not a GuRu but an ardent supporter of Linux and a daily user of few outstanding Linux utilities.

UnetBootIn in one of them even though it has lot of teething problems.

For two years I have not looked at my Flash Drives with Live Linux distributions which were booting with my laptop but with none of my computers without USB booting facility.

Since my old IBM is ready for junkyard and power pack and mother board needing a rest period before the junkyard experience I went and bought a secondhand IBM in good working order with little amount of USB support but SATA hard disks.

As the testing period was over and it is doing my daily work and downloading at night, with the extended New year holidays I decided to go for the Acid Test of USB booting while doing lot of other things around the household.

This is my Final Report on UnetBootIn, may not be comprehensive but how I got it to do my work and used all my Flash drives for USB booting with or without USB booting facility of the other computers I have.

Ignore the top preamble and concentrate now.

I have no idea of how it works but this is how I figured it out with some basic idea about Linux booting practice with GRUB.

How I did it.

1. Its kernel is less than one MB

2. Its init file is the biggest which is less than fifty MB

3. It has ID file

4. It has GRUB Menu (slash.msg for Pendrive Linux)

5. System configuration file

6. Two text files names ubnfilel and ubpathl

These seven files are necessary for its booting.

Rest of the files are distribution specific out of which livecd.sqfs file is the heaviest and the most important that boots up after initial GRUB sequence.

It has a boot folder and isolinux folder which are basic essentials for Linux booting.

Process has 3 essential steps.

1. Downloading

2, Extraction

3, Booting (grub) sequence.

Most painful part is the downloading which can break at any moment because of the poor downloading here.

So I choose DSL my yesteryear favourite (50 MiB), Puppy 4.2 my very first USB Linux and PartedMagic (158 MiB). Unfortunately gnome's gParted one of my favorite utility is not there in the listed distributions. I hope gnome will come out with gparted enhanced with UnetBotIn in it's 128 MiB distribution in the next revision.

Knoppix is not there but it is a different kettle of fish altogether with nearly 4 GiB of compressed files and the best heavy weight category and I am here with the light weight category, for now.

All three worked in the first instance but not PCLinux and Mepis.

Then I wanted to try PCLinux (could not get it because all iso files are now torrents at Linuxtracker) and Mepis (broke at once at 200 and the second time at 850 MB out of 925 MB).

Tried PCLinux from my hard drive but some important boot files were missing.

Failures on several occasions, I went into the experimental mode.

Prepare DSL for booting as usual or copy the files listed above to the intended Flash Drive.

Then go to the graphic item and distribution source and give the path for the file in my hard disk and click OK.

Before that one should delete the sqfs file of DSL or Puppy (or overwrite only this file when prompted).

Then say NO to overwrite for all the files except the sqfs file.

Before booting it is better to see whether all the files I mentioned above are copied correctly to the Pendrive.

If so shutdown the computer and reboot and the live CD is now in your Pendrive and you do not need to have a CD or DVD to boot your favorite Linux distribution onto the RAM. With this Pendrive you can install Linux to any worthwhile computer without a CD or DVD you may have.

In my case I did install PCLinux-2010 from the Pendrive I prepared on my laptop which I formatted to install Knoppix and record World Cup Cricket (quality of the USB TV card was poor).

Now I am looking for a netbook (my daughter would not oblige) to try my wizardry like wizard of OZ.

Only downside was that one cannot boot the DSL (you have overwritten or deleted in the process).

If you have brains you may even install another sqfs file and edit the boot menu and boot the second one too.

I have no time to try it but I hope UnetBootIn will add that facility in future and access to iso files in my hard disk so that I can bypass the downloading bit and boot any of the 100 odd Linux live CD /DVDs I have.

PCLinux USB creator was hopeless to say the least and it does not do the job properly like UnetBootIn and also needs Linux partition and not fat partitions.

Go and enjoy Pendrive freedom that come from Linux Developers of repute.

I must say special thanks to MCN (Mandriva) group which started the ball rolling in 2007 with the first Penndrive Version I got to work on a Pendrive in Singapore in 2009.

However Singaporeans have no clue about Pendrive Linux or Linux in general.

This is something Indians would have invested (prepare LIVE PENDRIVES for sale) during World Cup but missed it in toto and now doing IPL cricket instead.

Anybody can come to me but I charge for the time especially the download time which is painfully slow and I value my free time which is devoted for rants like this.

Edited on the 20th

How to get new Puppy into your Pendrive (It is easy as eating cheese cake and dogs love cheese).

Easiest method is to is to boot the Live CD and used it as a base to make a Live Pendrive. This was how I made my first Live USB long before Pendrive Linux and at a time when I did not have a computer with USB booting facility.

Puppy was my entry into Light Weight Distribution Version and I have not looked back on that experience.

Then I went into PCLinux and its many versions including PCLinux Mini Me. I am not impressed with the record of USB booting with PCLinux even now and that was the one that took the longest time and method (Thanks to UnetBootIn) how to figure out making a USB drive. It failed miserably with my USB hard drive in spite of me getting it into a Linux partition and I finally gave up because I do not fancy carrying a heavy SATA disk in my front pocket.

I prefer a Pendrive around my neck instead of a hard drive.

Mind you I use the hard drive to carry all my favorite iso images some of which are 4.4 GiB and Supreme Games Linux is almost 8 GiB.

Getting Puppy into a Pendrive was the easiest with UNetbootIn but with a problem.

It only downloads the 4.2 version (the first version I used before Dingo-most number of Live CD I have is with Puppy) from the internet.

So I set about to get a copy of Puppy lupu from my hard disk to Pendrive.

1. Plug in the Pendrive with Puppy 4.2

2. Start UnetBootIn and selected Puppy for install but rather copy

3. From dialog box gave the path to my lupu already downloaded and click OK

4. Said NO to all overwrite messages

5. Check the Flash Drive to see production OK. Both Puppy 4.2 and and lupu 525 sqfs files were there with only 250 of the 140 MB used.

6. Booted the Flash drive to see it only boots the 4.2. Could not get F2 to change boot option since it configures the keyboard in later stages (Puppy bypasses even the BIOS) of booting.

7. Mounted Flash on my desktop and changed the 420 to 422 and lupu 525 to 420.

8. Booted again and got the kernel panic message (in early days when I get this message I go into panic mode, almost a heart attack but now wait for a few seconds and switch off the computer making sure RAM is not in freeze mode and fully flushed like toilet bowl after a wee, wee.

(I get a message from South Africa where water scarcity is a serious problem and asking me to put bricks on the cistern to reduce the capacity and fill it with waste or used water. I think they way we are chopping trees and the Coal Power Plant functioning at full speed we will be near that fate before India. Please excuse me on this diversion if I blog this separately nobody will read it and hence the inclusion here)

9. Booted again but again kernel panic mode

10. UnetBootIn again and and copied lupu 525 and this time said yes to all overwrite messages including uninit and unkernel.

11. Booted again presto the lupu was running.

Summary in 4 steps

1. Format the Pendrive with FAT 32 partition

2. Install Puppy 4.2 using UNetBootIn and check booting of the Pendrive.

3. Download any of the latest Puppy, lupu, quirky or wary (you can rename the iso image with your dog's name if you are a dog lover. I believeBarry Kauler an Australian is a Dog Lover.

Note, unlike cricketers Australian are nice and normal guys.

4. Repeat Step 2 to with overwrite mode on (manually) and boot it up.

I think I have said enough of UnetBootIn.

I hope the Developers got the message and in its next update of UnetBootIn it is sweet as honey.

Thanks Guys and Girls you are doing some excellent work, you should make sure that you have some rest in between and play some Linux Games like me.

Postscript

I get a message from WiN 7 guys that they also have developed a Pendrive utility but it is painfully slow and need a huge Flash Drive with all the viruses included in the processing.

So before any one using it do a virus scan first using a Linux Utility called Medi Linux!

How can a pensioner who spent over          40 years serving the average masses could have his or her head above water with cost of living showing an upward spiral?

I do not know.

My old professor in sick bed could not afford the expenses having served over 40 years service.

I used to bring him medicine from abroad and hecould not afford a good English detective novel.

That is the only thing he wanted me to bring from abroad.

Thank god he is no more and not suffering but he taught me a few lessons which I carry to this day.

Honesty, integrity and above all outspoken and confident in all what he did.

I hope he is in heaven for the way he changed my outlook, in life and matters of importance and integrity.

So, Pendrive not a Laptop that I carry in my old age and to my grave and they should be sealed, for a century for historians to study our way of life if human race could last that long.

It was over one year I prepared number of Pendrives with various Linux distributions but unfortunately I cannot use then in the University since none of the computers can be booted from a Pendrive. They are pretty old and some of them we purchased just before the bomb blast at Katunayake.

We have not had an upgrade since then.

We could not afford to network the rooms and the cost was prohibitive.

What we did was get some help from Lion's Club and bought all the equipment for networking and trained a few of the guys in networking and got the work done.

We only paid them over time and that was also stopped abruptly.

This is the way the University functions.

This job would have cost us 2 millions.

I knew the price very well.

Just before joining the University I was in private sector and we wired the entire hospital and we had to get some things from Singapore since our IT industry was not even considered existing, then.

All the rooms were networked except my room.

You may wonder!

Why?

I was fed up.

I did my own network at home (very simple one-I climbed the roof and wired it myself) and my network is faster than the University.

Even now I cannot download a Linux distribution in the University even at night.

So why bother leave the University, if one wants to upgrade oneself.

That was what I did I left the University in my youth and I was earning my professor's salary on a weekend locum in London, England.

Unfortunately. things have not changed much for the younger generation.

Now that the Government has legalised betting it is imperative the internet access should be fast and open to everybody.

I saw an Indian betting gentleman was inquiring from Indian Express whether online service is available, in Ceylon.

Come Cricket World Cup, everybody will be betting except watching and enjoying cricket.

My impression is that this is going to be the Worst Cricket World Cup (Referring to 2011 World Cup and not the Last World Cup).

You wait and see.

Weather, grounds, umpiring and betting going to be diabolical.

Now that I was off the target a lot but not without any reason.

Instead of me talking about Pendrive Linux please visit the home of Pendrive Linux and see it for yourself.

I have copied part of the page of introduction of their website below.

But my last comment is that if I am the Minister of Education, I will have a distribution of Linux on a Pendrive with all the dictionaries and and texts for them.

The children do not have to carry a gunny load of old outdated government text books on their back. Not worth reading with the fast changing and expanding Universe of Knowledge.

Copied from Pendrive Linux

Easily install your favourite Linux operating system on a flash drive or USB key no larger than your thumb (Thumb Drive). Your Portable Linux operating system can then be taken with you, and run from any computer that can boot from the Pendrive device. Bring your entire operating system, desktop, applications, files, email, personal settings, favourites, games and more with you.

It’s your own personal operating system you can carry in your pocket.

The Pendrive Linux focus is to provide simplified portable Linux flash drive installation tutorials and custom USB Linux installers, making is easy for anyone to install, boot, and run their favourite Linux from a flash drive.

Cup a Tea and University Education

Cup a Tea and University Education

I decided to update this with minimal (there were lot of spellings and grammatical mistakes, which I do not care now) change to the contents, in the name of Nirmal.

Intellectuals are persecuted for telling the truth like what happened to Hippocrates. 

This was what happened to Nirmal in broad day light.

Pol Sambol, Kiri Bath and and cup of tea were the standard diet of a student, outside the university residences.

Within the university residences we were served, with cheese, butter, Pariipu, beef, fish and Cadju (for the pure vegetarian students from Jaffna) on a regular basis.

No wonder most of the non-resident student would come for Gajai and Wala on weekends when many of us go home to tell our parents that the food in the campus was horrible (a big lie) to supplement our liberal pocket money which were spent on cigarettes, alcohol and once a year gambling during the Perahara Carnival.

One should not take that we did not go to the cinema. That was my addiction to save the time on reading (Godfather, French Connection, English Classics-not my favourite though)

I used to hit the first day first show since, if somebody tells me the plot I never use to enjoy the film and fortunately most my friends used to find a boarding place near a theatre / cinema and would be in the queue well before me and jumping the queue was not an issue or offence.

This was the time of decline in English Education in in Ceylon, including Kandy and the crowd that hit the cinema was selective and would accommodate minor idiosyncrasies of out time.

Swooping a seat to accommodate a girl friend was a done thing but they used to go to the balcony and we visited balcony only for our beer during the interval.

Unfortunately some of our professors also used to hit the show on the first day, my professor in particular.

But our modus operandum was changed and skipped the first two days and go to the 9.30 show and that also was only to the gallery for 60 cents and the money saved was well spent on beer and if the show was bad we would leave after a round of beer sometime well before the interval.

Suffice is to say the back row was reserved for us by default for English shows and when we start to move in for a Sinhala film "Market Somes' (city thugs) would move forward leaving the back row empty.

We used to command respect from even these guys those days and that was the respect for an undergraduate of yesteryear.

To recap good quality Pilsner Beer (we could not come to halls of residence drunk, though--now even booing, smiling and even cracking a joke of political nature is prohibited by Chinthanaya) was Rs.1.80/= and two of us could enjoy a round meal or mixed grill for Rs.10/= which included a liberal tip for the waiter.

I would go home have a little nap and have a run round the lake with my dog till all the smell of alcohol is dissipated to fresh air around Kandy City and I never wondered what my friends would do-may be they went to the gym).

This is the way we kept our friendship and never got involved with private life of others .

We were fiercely independent.

I promised our team which I captained that I would throw a party (lunch) if our team wins the inter-university championship and that was the only encouragement that was needed to lift the cup, beating Colombo on a Penalty shoot out.

I never liked the way Colombo guys reacted to the defeat and they turned down my offer for a round of refreshments on my account (not University).

I still wonder what happens to people when they migrate to Colombo from far away villages and many of them become monsters (or is it ministers), in no time including village politicians.

The cost for the lunch for the entire team wit beer was Rs.110/= and that was raised by me on one day of gambling at the carnival.

Thank god we did not have Casino then but Tombola only in Kandy Lake Club and I never told the guys how I got the money but I made sure I got some extra cash from my mother too, in case guys would double my expenses on beer.

Now my mother is no more, it is more than enough time I kept all these secrets from her which she would only know from heaven.

I believe she still won't believe that her small brat was capable of such feats.

Extra Rs.10/= was the tip for the waiter with left over beer.

What was obvious none of us had the gene for alcoholism unlike our politicians, even when the prize of alcohol was very cheap.

We soon graduated to VSOA (Very Special Old Arrack) and the price was Rs.7.50 at Union Place Grill (with full birds-this was the time cats and dogs meat were substituted for chicken) in Colombo.

Soon afterwards, I was baptised with           6 rounds of beer in a Pub in London and that was the last time I had a drink with that crowd and told to myself, I would never have in excess of a glass of beer and that is also with good company and never with a crowd of drunkards.

But I could not resist myself half a chicken for lunch and another half a chicken at night       (free from NHS on days I was on night duty) and liberal amount of fresh milk instead of beer (half that from the NHS).

Now to the present moment and cup of tea in Sri-Lanka.

It was only today, I went out to buy some bananas and the Muslim guy who sells me good banana and runs a tea shop round the corner got little chatty now the Vesak fever was over.

I asked him how many cups he makes from a Kg and told him unless his raises the price of cup of tea he has to close the shop for good.

He was not convinced.

I told him tea has gone up in price even before the election by 100%.

I told him if I put two good blend tea bags in a cup (without water or sugar) it costs Rs. 90/= and the cheapest brand costs Rs. 75/=.

(Needs little explanation here to see how simple arithmetic is used. Two tea bags will cost only Rs.7 to 10 but when it is made in to a cup of tea it is called value added and it is rounded up by ten times-in other word value added means a profit is 10 times.)

It used to be Rs.25/= if one bag is dipped (dipping a tea bag into hot water costs, 10 times) 10 years ago but 50 if two bags were dipped. Now the price of tea has gone up by 100% and if one asks a cup with two bags it costs Rs.100/= or more.

Two years ago, in a reasonable hotel in Kandy (not 5 Star-one needs a decent swimming pool for that classification) the price of tea pot for two was Rs.175/= (before the election-the last time I went there- mind you not Mesna).

I met one of my colleagues (freshers at the campus) who was a director in an education institution (after about 20 year lapse) and we went for a chat and some tea (the waiter refused to serve a tea pot) and I had to go to the manager to make my order placed.

I tendered Rs. 500/=, my friend almost got a heart attack, and left the balance as the tip, since then the waiter who served us was almost slavish after my little intermission with the manager.

Kandy already has lost the trick of the trade, the Kandyyan Hospitality.

Now my friend is retired but works as the vice principal in a private school in upcountry, and his kids are abroad doing well, whenever I meet him with his wife, he used to remind this 'Tea Episode' and I retort, if the president can have a Hopper for Rs. 200/=, I am just helping out our tea Industry.

Gods only know how much it costs now.

But I can assure you that the take away prices of food items have doubled, in this city.

I give a break for my family members (all adults) and stay at home with the dog (cannot afford to hire a watcher and thieves have increased in numbers even in our neighbourhood and practically every house had been broken into either in day / or in night.

I do go for 'take away' regularly and spend and eat out once in a way when friends from abroad visit me, since thing have improved security wise in the night.

The cost of a meal for my dog (including fish for the dog) and me which was Rs.450/= will cost now over Rs.1000/=.

That was my experience last time round.

Strangely enough in Majestic City in Colombo a tiny piece of fish is Rs.250= (10 times value added) and a buffet that costs over Rs.650/= per head was so horrible (another place in the Colombo City) none of us finished the meal and went to an American take away and had ice creams of all sorts to satisfy our hunger and drown the anger with delight.

There is something horribly wrong in our hospitality trade.

There is no exaggeration here.

This is the miracles happening in broad day light.

I have to spend Rs.100/= for cup of milk tea (if somebody else make the tea for me) and from 6 cups (in 10 years) I have come down to 2 or three a day and very soon I will stop drinking Sri-Lankan tea.

I have cut it down to one but mind you that cup is virtually a beer mug and my daughter estimates it to be an equivalent of (minimum) 750 milligrams of caffeine derivatives.

In other words three (3) cups of tea.

I went on to say for the last one year I do not drink tea in my office, and he was more than convinced.

He still sells his plain tea for Rs.10/= and he has to have 100 to make Rs.1000/= his turn over for a day.

I do not think he gets 30 even though he works 7 am to 7 pm (12 hours).

In my case, I have to make my own cup of tea and stay away from drinking tea while on work.

I told him to make as much tea as possible from his bulk tea strainer for him to stay in business and display the price one (1) Kg tea in a prominent place in Sinhala and let the customer calculates the number of tea one can make from a kilo of tea.

They are very poor in arithmetic's and would blame the Gods or Tamil State Worker for the price but never the present government to which they are immunised and anaesthetised.

Coming back to University, the teachers and students should do their teaching and studies without a cup of tea.

We must teach students that tea is addictive and it is good only for foreigners.

For teachers who are asking a pay hike should stop drinking tea and coffee and should drink the miracle water the government promised them before and during the elections.

The miracle water in the university is none other than 'Pol Arrakku'.

If they go for an audience with our            ex-president I am sure they will be provided with a different type of miracle drink that would make them to think that the miracle will come in two years after the predicted end of the world and with new world order taking shape where intellectuals are persecuted for telling the truth like what happened to Hippocrates.

History repeat itself!

That is a normal phenomenon.

Making a good cuppa TEA

Making a good cup of tea has become a big problem.

1. All good tea is exported.

2. What is given to the local market is the left over dust which was used as subsidiary manure in good old days.

3. Retailers take 50% of the profit.

4. There are so many brands but no brand can boast  that they give us the best tea (knowing very well they dispense the unworthy to the locals who have lost the idea of how well to protest as a customer /right now).

5. Milk has gone up in price and the quality of the milk is poor.

Cannot compare with the milk what I had daily in Manchester, UK.

6. Deficiency of quality of tea cannot be made good with good dose of milk or sugar.

7. I decided to experiment with TEA BAGS not leaves.

A.Tried Green Tea - no susses

B.Tried English Breakfast Tea - no luck.

C.Tried Earl's Grey Tea - not as good as tea leaves.

8. What next

Try A with B and B with C and well over 9 combinations.

Still not happy.

9. Decided not to have any tea on Sunday.

10. Situation was worse I drop to sleep even standing (not reading any Sunday paper now) even though I got up well past midday.

11. Heavy meal with visitors (very rare nowadays) and a good desert to accompany.

Still not happy.

Tried Earl Grey first, till I squeezed out almost 80% of the flavour but the colour was light.

Touch of English Breakfast Tea.

Plenty of sugar.

That did the trick.

Mind you my cup is not a cup and it is almost equivalent to a Beer MUG.