Since most of us can’t leave the compound, we love to complain about the food. Even more, we love to complain about the people who complain that the food is too expensive. Sure, $2.50 is so much to pay for breakfast when they have to bring it all in under sanitary conditions and hire Filipinos so that Osama bin Laden isn’t cooking for us. Sometimes, the mess hall shows sparks of greatness. Everyone remembers the day they had rainbow trout with garlic butter. But mostly, it is what a friend calls “food martyring”.
Food martyring is basically this: You go to the mess hall and look everything over. You don’t want to eat any of it, but at the same time there is no other option, and you have to eat. So you order the grilled cheese sandwich with purple Gatorade… again.
This being a government compound, we also love our acronyms. My current favorite is CAFÉ, also known as Hoochville. CAFÉ stands for Compound Across From the Embassy. I don’t know if I’m more tickled that they felt they needed an acronym for “across the street” or that they added the accent aigu.
What no "red drink?"
Posted by: Andrew | August 10, 2007 at 03:50 AM