Not thread drift at all, CM, but the very essence of good PPRuNing I'd say.
The whole business of 'exchanging' has always seemed to me to be both underrated and yet almost the West's secret weapon. Treaties that combine the Forces of different cultures, languages, and customs, need a fair amount of glue to ensure they work in harmony. Much of that glue I seem to recall could be found at happy hour in various bars and clubs around the world.
Always strange how what seems commonplace to one half of such an exchange is special to another, guest nights and pub crawls down terrifyingly narrow and windy roads, compared to very modern infrastructure and systems, and bar crawls where the beer became suspiciously weaker as the night wore on (turns out it was).