There are places that don’t give me comfort, like plush hotels and restaurants. I beg your pardon! Hey, what does being civilized have to do with that! Yes, yes, no need to remind me that those locations aren’t in my league. But for one reason or another you find yourself in one of these places.
Believe me, the moment you enter you feel like a hundred pair of eyes are fixed on you digging holes on every square inch if your anatomy. It is the strangest feeling! What the hell are they thinking about me? Am I so out of place! And what is more is that they look at you with alarm. They give you that cold, almost evil stare. One question that will definitely not on their mind is “Who’s this guy?” It is rather, “What is this guy doing here?” Well, ‘this guy’ might have windfall money in his pocket which will allow him to have a couple of beers. Well after all ‘Happy Hour’ is all but we the non-regulars. Who cares about your windfall or whatever? Go buy your wife a diner dress.
You don’t fit in! Get this into your thin head of yours. You don’t belong. I have a friend who because of the nature of his work goes to such places several times a week. And he says there is this “What’s this guy doing here?” stare even though they know why he is there!
And while we’re at it the way this people settle their frames in those seats! Now that might sound the most bizarre point. But then it seems there are some styles of sitting positions tailor-made for those places! You might even suspect that geometry is in play!
Dining in such places is not as easy as it is in those ‘Shiro Bets’ filling up the city. (That Shiro has joined the culinary ‘Premier League” is a groundbreaking development of sorts! Yep! I shot up at the speed of the latest ICBM! Of course, getting even further from us commoners! So, dining in such places deprives you of the freedom to be as you like; you know, like throwing away all those knives, spoon, fork etc. ‘gadgets’ (Ha!) and use your good old hands. The guys handle the forks and the knives
with such ‘precision’ you think they must have had some serious training! Not you! Chances are you worsen your hunger trying to figure out how to handle the chopsticks. We really are lucky that we get most of our traditional foods with hands! No fork, no spoon, no knife, no whatever. Just good old fingers serving as drilling machines or excavators. I mean when your belly is rumbling the correct use of chopsticks is the last thing on your mind. After all, the main goal is sending the food into your stomach.
So if things come down to the wire and I have given the last choice between ‘Shiro Bet’ and a plush hotel, my response, as they say, is engraved in stone; Long Live ‘Shiro Bet!’
The Ethiopian Herald August 8/2021