It’s very easy to make friends quickly when you have a passion in common like tea.

May King Tsang is from London and she’s www.maykingtea.com @MayKingTea 

We met at Taka Tea http://www.takateagarden.com.au in Double Bay and enjoyed some High Mountain Oolong. Afterwards she brought out a canister of warm Mountain Oolong from her bag, which is from her tea collection and it was delicious.

Tea lovers talk and deal tea like drugs. We carry a thermos or flask and a collection of leaves in special bags to bring out when necessary. She brought out a silver canister and I smelt some of her collection. She spoke about the Organic Peppermint tea she sells which has been grown on a family owned farm in South Tyrol. She stores it separately from the rest of the teas because it's so strong. 

We soon found ourselves in the David Jones Food Hall tea section. We met an equally mad obsessive tea fanatic who was buying a South African Taylors of Harrogate Ntingwe Kwazulu Leaf Tea. You suss each other out to see how sophisticated their knowledge is. We were soon talking the lingo before he went to his Tai Chi class.

At T2 we tasted, smelt and it was fun doing a quick tea tour with a certified expert. The average Australian doesn’t know that you need to brew green tea at 70-80 degrees C. It was nice to be with someone who knows far more than me on the topic.

One day we’ll have fantasy tea houses in Sydney where we can sit for hours talking to friends. She's been to a tea house in Shanghai which I’m going to visit and we’ll be going to a Japanese Zen tea ceremony. May King brings with her a wealth of knowledge from throughout the world and is settling in Brisbane with her husband who works for Microsoft. The internet is allowing the brain drain to come to us. Bring it on.