I gotta tell somebody..
So as some of you know, I'm an oilfield engineer. I worked on oil rigs in the middle east since I graduated college to 2012 when I got transferred to an office job within my company in the U.S. until I got laid off during the oil downturn of 2016. Now I'm back working on rigs again, the difference is that now I'm working oil rigs in the U.S. and the contrast has been a somewhat entertaining, sometimes tiring, journey. But this a broad wide sea of shit to talk about, I'm here to share one specific aspect of it; food.
See back in the middle east, oil rigs had catering staff and a mess hall, doubled with the fact that I really don't like cooking or being in the kitchen in general for more the 5 minutes a day, resulted in me, at 36, being completely helpless at the craft, I basically never needed or had any interest to learn.
On U.S. rigs, there's no catering. You're in a trailer with a couple other guys and you're sharing a kitchen, everybody brings their own food to last them their hitch duration, usually 2 to 4 weeks. I started out bringing shit food like ramen noodles and microwave dinners and -to make a long story short- within a year evolved, forced by necessity, to be able to make pastas, rice and fry pre-breaded chicken or grill a burger, but these are not just examples, that's actually about all I can make. Both cause they're easy and cause they don't take paying attention/remembering that something needs cooking for more than 30 to 40 minutes.
The dilemma I've been facing is that all the guys out here cook, all of them and they all enjoy it, the food and the cooking. And every once in a while they offer to share, my problems with that being:
1 - I'm not accustomed to accepting generosity that I can't repay with a similar one, there's absolutely nothing that I can cook that would impress these guys or gain their interest, they've been doing it their whole lives. BUT they often ask and expect that I know how to cook something exotic from my homeland, which in their minds looks like the Arab countries from Indiana Jones or The Mummy movies, and I constantly have a disappointing answer
I'm willing to try and learn how to cook a native dish or two but I know I'll botch the cooking and the food will suck. There's a fucked up show called Chopped that people watch here where a bunch of people cook food and present it to 3 of the whiniest ungrateful impolite motherfuckers this earth has ever carried, they would stand the cooks there and tell them why these think their food sucks, "the sauce flavor was weaker than expected" or some other "Douchebag statement of the century award" comment, just eat it and shut up you fucktard, the cook is standing right there! you're being rude you dipshit! Where was I going with this? I guess I don't wanna be in these cooks shoes, is the point here.
2 - Here's the worse one, throughout my whole life I found the idea of eating food that an (A)
unprofessional (B)
man cooked to be repulsive, I have no exact explanation why but it might be cause in my weird mind I think their arm hair would fall into the food, also in that same mind a man is naturally and by default less hygienic than a woman. I love eating at restaurants and I know most good chiefs are men, tell it to the weird mind; it firmly believes that men who cook professionally are clean and men otherwise rain arm hair. It cannot be a sexist thing either cause when I worked in the office, there was a great Mexican family-run restaurant near by that I drove to at lunch sometimes, one of the waitresses was aunt Lolla. Aunt Lolla had arm hair. Needless to say I've always tried so hard not to sit in aunt Lolla's section.
Now these are things about myself that I never ever assumed would have any reason to come to the forefront or that I would have to articulate them, until I worked on oil rigs in the U.S.
I make friends fast and I have a lot of friends now on these rigs, people who call me even when I'm not there just to chat, when someone offers to share their lunch or dinner on the rig, I made up excuses. "I just ate!", "Busy day!", "I'm on a diet" and the most helpful one "I don't eat pork", that last one is true but it's never been helpful until now. Sometimes the offers came multiple times from the same people, that's when awkwardness arise and I get the impression they're starting to think something sinister is behind my declination of their offers. But I've lived with it and moved around it swiftly for the last year since I started working here.
My mom was visiting recently from Egypt, she made some food and a great idea was befallen on my dumb head to take some to the rig as such chance won't come often, I did it. And today I got the counter offer that I couldn't refuse; have dinner with the dudes.
It was painful to say the least, I watched a guy handle bread and make food with his own bare hands, put lettuce and tomatoes in there, I watched in horror as he grabbed a handful of shredded cheese to spread it on top, WITH BARE HANDS I TELL YOU! A CREATURE THAT OWNS A LIVE DICK AND WIPES IT AFTER PEEING, MADE ME A SANDWICH WITH THE SAME HANDS!
But I had to act normal and suppress my senseless phobia and eat. I did. Pretty glad too cause these guys make some mean burgers and whatever that delicious Venezuelan stuff they fed me was.
At the moment I'm wondering if I beat this silly thing and I'll eat with everybody from now on, I hope so, but it's unlikely.
There it is, I leave it on DTF, where I can shamelessly share my inner most stupidity