One menu to rule them all...

Lanky: On the Thursday we decided to take Nashwaan and Aruf for a business lunch. Aruf, ever the culinary connoisseur, took us to the romantically named Food Bank. All four of us sat down and were promptly brought our menus. Well that’s not entirely accurate. Ricky-boy and I were brought menus while our colleagues were conspicuously menu-less. I remarked on this as it wasn’t that unusual an occurrence since most Maldivians seem to be under the impression that being of a white-skinned inclination that we clean our noses with fifty quid notes while we expel pure gold out of our behinds. I certainly do don’t you?

However it was when we had a glance at the prices that we thought something was fishy. It seemed the prices were considerably greater than when Aruf had last been there, which had only been a few days previously. We decided to challenge the waiter. Well I say challenged because before we could say ‘listen here old chap, these prices do seem awfully…’ he’d whipped the menus out of our hands and brought back four slightly more well-worn menus whose prices were a third of those that we’d been not so cunningly or effectively duped into considering moments before. The excuse from the cheeky chappy was that the portions were bigger in the first menu but my calculations for the price of the steak in the first menu I would have expected an entire cow’s butt cheek to sink my teeth into. Then it might have been value for money.

Hayday: Now the above sounds all very amicable but Lanky has been a bit selective with his recount of this truly epic event. After being brought the non-western menu by the head waiter, Lanky took it upon himself to ask the right honourable fella “Is it coz we’s white?” A truly amazing moment when the whole ‘Food Bank’ went quiet and I found myself ready to join my brother in his fight for freedom, democracy and a fair transparent menu system for western people. If it were not for the fact that we were in the midst of a ‘business lunch’ I would have broken out with my rendition of Michael Jackson’s ‘Black or White’. But alas I composed myself and re-engaged with our colleagues in the deep and meaningful discussion of the interactions of young youths in British society today.