Coffee Please, and Hold the Sex

the runaway palate — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 00:39:10 +0000

I used to love tea, and nursed a four-cup a day addiction since I was 13 years old. By the time I became a young adult in university, I had progressed to stocking different varieties and specialist tea blends in my room at Thwaite. At times when the craving was great and the stocks ran low, it called for a desperate escape to London, a three-hour train ride to the south, to Whittards Tea Shop for more of the addictive leaf, a mind-blowing luxury for a student on a budget, not to mention the mad foreign exchange rates then. I was going to blow it, and thus was the draw of tea.

Then one day in my mid-20s, I ended up working at US newswire Dow Jones as a sub-editor in the equities newsroom, and the pantry had nothing but coffee. And so in a matter of months, my tea addiction was changed forever to coffee. The stronger brew tied me over screens and screens of clinical corporate numbers, stock exchange developments and even through the harried news days of the 1997 financial crisis, and not an image of food in sight.

I tried to return to my old love recently, but just couldn’t. Tea was too weak now. The hands shake, the mind’s creative juices just refuse to flow and I am a wreck by mid afternoon. I knew it a long time ago, but never quite admitted that I was a coffee addict.

But one is not alone. According to a study by Le Méridien Hotels, more than half of the world’s travellers feel the same way. To the point that coffee even gets in the way of our most primal and basic need – SEX. Apparently in their global survey, 53% said coffee surpasses sex as the ideal wake-up call, and 51% say they can go longer without sex than without coffee. What’s more, 78% said they would rather give up alcohol, social media or sex for a year rather than forfeit coffee!

While travelling, people – from UAE and USA to China and India – mostly do the same thing while having their morning coffee: over 64% go online into social media. While staying in hotels, 73% of respondents would give up television and internet for the perfect cup of coffee, while 63% would give up alcohol.

This survey was released by the hotel chain as they announced they are adding 100 master baristas to their properties worldwide. While we know that these surveys are often skewed to supporting their PR message, I tend to think this paints a pretty credible picture…unless I have George Clooney or Robert Downey Jr in bed with me. Then coffee’s out the window. (Yes I know….dream on!)

By the way, this picture was taken on a recent trip to Melbourne, Australia – the capital of coffee culture in the Southern Hemisphere. It was taken during a walking tour of coffee joints within the CBD, and indeed, one had no sex before the coffee.

The Runaway Palate » Travel

Coffee Please, and Hold the Sex