DISCLAIMER

People often ask me what it's like being an expat in Dubai. Actually they don't but like the rest of this blog, let's just blindly assume people care what I think and go on from there. Dubai is beautiful, it's a sun-drenched tax-free paradise, with a wise and benevolent ruler. There is no real winter to speak of and the roads are beset with outrageous supercars. If your eyes ever tire of street level gawking, there are thousands of kilometres of sky scrapers to develop neck trauma to. Yes, in many ways it is paradise, but what is paradise without a little trouble? In the Wachowski (formerly) brothers movie trilogy: The Matrix, a sentient program called 'Agent Smith' describes the failure of our robot overlords to captivate and pacify human minds in a sensory-fed utopia: "Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world where none suffered, where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed that we lacked the programming language to describe your "perfect world". But I believe that, as a species human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. So the perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from". And that's where we are with this blog: a long whimsical stare in to the bathroom mirror wondering what would have happened if you took the blue pill, intended as nothing more than a (sincerely respectful) bit of probing in to the more bizarre side of living in the UAE.

Tuesday, 14 July 2015

Steak Guilt

Steak guilt. Like catholic guilt, but best served with sacrament on the side.

I'm a grown adult human man - but am completely incapable of walking in to a restaurant and ordering something that isn't than steak. It's not that I don't like other things, I love other food things - but when I'm reading other food things on a menu - "strewn on a bed of this" "delicately layered with that" - what I'm actually seeing is "steaky steaky steak steak, where is the f**king waiter and why is he not bringing me my f**king steak".


I quite often externally toy with idea of ordering something else, "hmmm the duck sounds nice", "I haven't had fish in a while" - my wife rolls her eyes in a perfect non verbal communication of: "this again, must we endure another cabaret of bulls**t, before you decide on the steak as if born of some moment of inspired craving". The waiter comes over and explains the specials - I might be saying "oh hand selected, really?" But he can read the look in my eyes, he's seen it a million times before. It's a scientific fact that corneas can't dribble, but you know what science? You patrol around a fancy steak board, dress it up with slutty veins of fat and talk dirty with words like 'marbling' and 'rump'... just watch my peepers drip.

I eat so much steak, I'm sure I've started hearing Hindus audibly hiss at me when I walk by. There is no internationally approved hand gesture for "I'm sorry for being a human conveyor belt of oblivion to your holy animal". I know it's not healthy, I know that variety is the spice of life, but I can't help it - and with the frequency of visits to restaurants that seems to be inexplicably mandatory in Dubai, I'm racking up the score count on the worlds least vegan friendly live action videogame.

I'd like to write an open letter to the vegetarians and apologise for my conduct during meal times, but I can't because I'm not sorry - it would be as hollow and transparent as your presumably osteodeficient bones. Cows evolved to be tasty and delicious - a brave but ultimately perilous niche to occupy in a world based on consumption. It's dog eat dog, I'm just not that comfortable eating dog.

I'm not saying I don't feel bad that something has to die so I can eat something tasty - it's just that I don't feel bad enough to not eat it. Besides, If we get too tangled up in the metaphysics of food, I'm sure there's a convincing case to be made on the ethical treatment of Haribo. So I'm left in a limbo of irresolvable insoluble guilt.

If the, by now enraged, eyeball popping, mouth foaming, though almost certainly lethargic, vegetarians want some crumb of karmic justice: I'm the only person that I know of to have suffered gout at the age of 25. So yay cows, boo me. Gout really really hurts.
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