Jasmine tea, Dumpling Plus, City

This started out as a blog about chai at Mr Tulk. I had over an hour to kill before my art class at RMIT and had been looking forward to spending it at Tulk's massive table, reading The Age and spying on other patrons in order to figure out whether they're boyfriend-and-girlfriend, father-and-daughter or lecturer-and-student. I arrived at 4.45 and was told that they were closing in 15. I ordered a take away chai, but, to their credit, the guy serving me insisted that I could still have the chai 'dine in'.

Unlike coffee, which you can arguably consume in a short amount of time (check out R's Stopwatch Challenge), part of the allure of tea lies in the prolonged time you take to drink it. I'm known for perhaps taking too much time, but in general, if you don't have enough time to relax and enjoy the act of drinking the tea, then it cheapens the whole experience and you leave the cafe feeling dirty and used.

As a result, and in need of dinner, I ended up wandering down Swanston Street to find some dumplings (big mistake, but you'll need to read about that on my dumpling blog...). With an hour to kill, I ordered $1.50 Jasmine tea.


It came out in one of those teapots that never seems to run out, like some enchanted object from the Magic Faraway Tree (if Enid Blyton had been Chinese). Try as I might (and did) to reach the bottom of the teapot, I just couldn't. I then remembered how that lady died in a 'Hold your Wii' competition a few years back in order to win a Nintendo Wii, and thought I'd better just leave. I already have a Wii.