A man's world
Most of you figure I'm female: I probably am. Sometimes I wish I were in a man's world.
To satisfy these needs, I love sitting in common cafeterias from time to time. I listen to common conversation going on around me as I nibble my bites, dressed in common clothes, trying to keep a low profile, though that's hard, having certain assets males don't possess. The wonderful thing is that the men who run the cafeteria respect me as a man. I speak nothing, I eat, I pay, I leave, I get good service for what I pay. In reality, I'm way out of the league of the streetside cafeteria scene and its associated ramblings, but we are all human beings after all. This is something I do in secret when I find time off. No one knows about it. Normally, I wouldn't be seen dead in one of these places but I couldn't care less. I need to satify my urges for the quest to understand the human race. I need to associate with the world, and this is my escape: being more-than-accepted by the underclass.
While I dirty my fingers in oily, unwholesome food, I find it challenging to comprehend the pointless conversation that common cafeteria-goers indulge in, that has so significance in terms of changing the world or contributing to world issues, but all words interest me. What men say interests me, especially when they think women are not listening. What the common folk say interests me, especially if they are men I would never meet socially. Does that make sense without sounding too prejudiced?
Cafeteria conversation: one needs to understand what the common folk are saying in order to understand life. Cafeteria food: one has to eat it in order to understand common life. How I love common men.
13 comments:
Ah.. never thought of that.. a new pickup place :)
so what did u listen to?
i fear ur becoming much more philisophical.. hmm tis a slippery slope
LOL hardly a pick-up place! *jim_sullivan commented I might be getting more 'philosophical'= no way. Am just living life and proclaiming it in public. Beats sheep-shagging land ;) You're excellent @ photos, pls could you post a pic of some green hills on your blog? Not being sarcastic. If I ever visit Isfahan, you'd be the only reason. Now please post some pix on Wales. I need to see your pix xx thanks :)
"What men say interests me, especially when they think women are not listening."
True, it makes a lot of difference to the content in a man's conversation to another man when women are not around. IMO the best way to find out what kind of a character the man has is through such conversations.
Another place would be the public buses. The conversation that happen there are quite interesting. I usually try listening to conversation around me, it informs me about the happenings in dubai & what people think about it....
I hardly eat out except when I'm hungry for Nick Tahou's Garbage Plate Special.
Princess, I stand by my 'philosophical' endorsement.
hmm.. dunno what to say.. i guess i should be flattered.. btw.. sheep-shagging land is a lovely place.. does it make you homesick? from your posts i can see that you might have lived in the "island" for a while.
i'm not a good photographer, but sometimes i just happen to be in the right place at the right time. i'll dig up some welsh fotos.. i took loads in 2003.. and will publish, who knows, it might give you a reason to visit Wales.
I wasn't aware you checked out my Isfahan pics. Glad you liked em. I loved Iran I wish I can live there for a year or so, and get to know the Iranian toungue a little better.
"dressed in common clothes"
That has got to be one of the most telling sentances you have ever given us into your lifestyle.
LOL oh yes, tell me about it! I was on SZR today, having quick lunch before I headed to a meeting and unfortunately, my table was very close to a Lebanese guy who had three guests. The entire time he was so loud and kept talking about Dubai as if he built it with his own hands. In the end, his friends and him had a gel fight--throwing hand gel at each other.
Ughhhhhh.
I totally understand what you mean by the 'commoner' thing. I do that sometimes--wander off in some supermarket or get on a crowded bus (I did that only once--my first and only time in a bus). Of course, all this while I would be freaked out as hell thinking 'what if my parents or some remote family member saw me?!' :)
Princess, I tell ya no such thing as a man's world. There are some weirdo nincompoops out there that're totally assholes that give men a bad name. You know what I say, fuck em all except us. Why? We're the good guys.
Msybe if you keep listening, and are lucky, you'll find the street cafes are home to lots of folk who just can't afford to go into the malls and hotels and a few more who can, but wouldn't waste their time there. I agree with j-t though - there's no man's world. There's just a world that some societies choose to segregate more than others. You're touchiong on the Jane Austin dilemma - how to write realistic male conversation never having heard any. Fortunately we've moved on.
Jane Austen was a man :-)
I find it endlessly interesting to quietly eavesdrop on casual cafe conversations.
Being a man, I do think men talk a lot of nonsense when in fellow company.
Sport, women, money, sport, women, sport, money
*Stained, I agree that men's conversation is different when women aren't around. As for the bus thing, I can't do that here...just can't! At least in a cafeteria one can pretend one is really hungry - you can kill two birds with a stone by having your cake and eating it too, eating and eavesdropping, I mean. Bus = too hot and uncomfortable, and do people really talk?
*j-t I'll click on the link after I finish typing my feedback ;) OK fine, I'm philosophising, you win. It's because I'm thinking more than doing these days, babe...OK, OK, you win!
*buj, in keeping with the post title, my response to you is 'no man is an island' ;) I don't have anything against sheep. In fact, I may have one cooked for lunch tomorrow but that's a different story. No, you have wonderful pix. When I first discovered your blog, which was ages ago, the first posts I saw were about Isfahan and I was like OMG who is this dude who's been there? Your pix made me wanna visit and I hope to, soon. Tounge? lol, need to look that up ;)
*taunted, it wasn't telling. It only shows I own common clothes, i.e. jeans, and I had to underdress to frequent the establishment in question. ;)
*md, LOL (big, wide smile) Lunchtimes on SZR, eh? OMG that place is packed with kind of hmmm... strange ppl who you'd never see anywhere else in DXB...posers and idiots who you just feel like approaching to teach them some manners or two, but you don't have enough time coz you're on your lunchbreak too, and you don't want to be put off your lunch as well, by looking at them!!
Bus? Where the heck is the bus-stop? ;) the cafeteria is the most I could handle personally.. I wouldn't try any new ones, the one I go to is fine for now...Yeah it's difficult for us ladies to do wotever we want, we just have to take a risk and hope noone will find out!
*j-t, re-reading your comment made me reconsider my opinion that all men are the same. Perhaps they're not. That cheers me up! But this post is nothing to do with assholes, it's about being in a man's world, like cafeterias, and the neighbourhoods in which they are found, where women will very rarely be seen...It's about being in a man's world, as such.
*paraglider, I figured these people didn't go to malls not because they lacked the cash, but because they lived near these cafeterias and didn't have the time to go to malls, besides, the eateries in malls prob wouldn't satisfy their pallettes. Yes, they 'wouldn't waste their time' there for those reasons, and they'd certainly have the cash to go there if they'd wanted to coz if they'd order a good serving, it'd prob cost the same as eating at a fast-food outlet in a mall! The cafeteria I refer to is automatically segregated coz it's just not a woman's place, therefore it becomes a man's world. As for J-Austen, I'm flattered you bring her into your comment referring to my writing. I can't remember the last time I digged out one of her novels from my bookshelf, but I was thinking about it and logic prevails: I could simply never have heard 'men's conversation' because it simply could never have been as such, if they had known of my presence. Agreed! (Damn, was that an essay? I need to improve my summary skills!)
*Adam LOL, yes, perhaps she was a man trapped in a Victorian corset. I guess she was just trying to understand men. Your view applies to the majority of Western men; the majority of the conversation topics that prevailed in the cafe I was in referred to how much they missed their wives' cooking, and work. No sport - that was what was interesting: the contrast between the cultures!
You're too kind! I've collected a few pics in a folder called "sheepland" which i hope will metamophasise into a post very soon!
Hallo, touching post. Seems to me you`d prefer to live in a more female civilization, where men compete in a romantic and some more ways to win the favor of their beloved one.
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