I take my own lunch to work. Seems healthier. Less expensive.

A couple of aspects of it …

Green tea from Asia.

Carrots from California.

Go figure.

I have never been a tea drinker. Just seemed boring. And then I reached a point where I didn’t need the caffeine,  and that was that. Till I got here.

Here, tea drinking is a sort of institution. Beginning with its round-the-clock availability,  at the office. Hot bottled water, free tea … and the presence of several “tea boys” — men from the subcontinent hired to bring us tea and run other errands.  But mostly to bring us tea.

My tea is delivered to me by Abdul Wahid, a 40-ish man of great dignity and style who reminds me of a sort of Jeeves-like character. Quite dignified. Well-groomed, painfully proper. A man who makes you feel as if you are lucky he is dealing with you at all.

So, sure, you drink it. Green tea. Straight. No sugar. Gets some fluids down the hatch. Keeps me alert. And Abdul Wahid is bringing it to me and it would be rude not to drink it,  right? Wouldn’t want to disappoint Abdul Wahid.

Not even sure I like tea. Still. The Brits in the room drink it out of cultural solidarity, I do believe. In my case, I drink it because it is there.

I have had more hot tea in the last five months … than I have in the rest of my life. And it isn’t close.

This doesn’t really follow, except in terms of “something I consume while editing stories at my desk” … but it amuses me because it is fairly ridiculous.

The loose peeled carrots I eat … are a brand by the name of Bunny-Luv. And yes, that is the same brand you can buy in Southern California. The little carrots in the plastic bag.

That you can buy them at your local supermarket is no surprise at all. Because they are packaged in Bakersfield, California, by Grimmway Farms.

What strikes me as queer is that someone here in the UAE decided that it made good economic sense … to import li’l carrots from halfway around the world.

What?

No carrots cut the mustard from somewhere a bit closer? They couldn’t find any edible little carrots within, oh, 5,000 miles of where we sit? Europe not up to it? India couldn’t handle this?

It just seems a bit nutty that these carrots traveled as far as I did to get to Abu Dhabi. Not some top-end luxury item,  like some exotic nut or even a Napa Valley wine. But carrots … which even I could grow in the sandy soil in the backyard of my childhood home.

Anyway, just about every day I find myself smiling or shaking my head at the idea that I am 1) drinking tea by the quart and 2) still eating carrots from California though neither I nor the carrots are within a 15-hour plane ride of the Golden State.