Tea

The concept of "tea" is something that I think I've gotten the hang of. I'm not talking about the warm beverage, but rather the social and gastronomic experience of taking a moment to refrain from one's normal course of activities to relax and fraternize with one's peers. Often this seems to involve a fairly impressive, and unexpected, spread of food and some accompanying coffee and, yes, tea. Something tells me this is a trait Australians inherited from their ancestors, so any of you who are well versed in British lifestyle probably know exactly what I'm talking about.

My first experience was 2 weeks ago when my boss, whom I had yet to meet at the time, invited Tara and I to Brisbane for tea on Thursday evening after work so introductions could be made and we could get to known each other prior to my first day of work the following Monday. On this occasion "tea" meant a 3 course supper. In the office environment, morning tea usually means I scrounge together a sausage roll and/or meat pie, while at afternoon tea I'll manage to scarf down a cookie or other pastry. And there is almost always a cup of tea that accompanies these savory delights.

Just to emphasize how much tea these Aussies consume, my office building orientation went something like this when we got around to the kitchen: "These 3 fridges are for employees to use for their lunches...well, actually, these 2 fridges are for lunches. This fridge is the milk fridge." No matter what time of day or day of the week, this fridge seems to always contain about a dozen 2 L jugs of milk (of various varieties) for employees to use as required to lighten up their warm beverages.

Don't even get me started about coffee...