Bless me livejournal, for I have sinned.

[corivax]

Since my last confession, I have eaten at an acronym-titled American chain restaurant in Kyiv. I just couldn't take it any more, livejournal, the "pizza" made with monomolecular layers of tomato and dry goat cheese over flavorless lavosh, and there was this acronym American restaurant, with air conditioning pouring out the door. I had an oreo

Comments

[twoeleven]

Feel free to assign me a suitable act of contrition. :)
my child, for your sins, you shall make a pilgrimage to a distant place and provide charity to those you find there. your heart will tell you where to go.

on your pilgrimage, you shall eat only of the local food, that your body be cleansed of its taint.

you shall record your pilgrimage in word and image, that others may know the path to virtue.

that you already desire these things suggests great hope for you in this life or the next. visiting friends in distant locations shall bring you greater merit.

let it be done, my child.

[thewronghands]

I have compassion for you -- after two weeks in England I was so happy to see a Subway that I almost cried. (And then I got into an argument with the guy behind the counter over the meaning of "extra" in "extra pickles".) I don't think it's particularly awful to have an occasional moment of cuisine backsliding; it's the people who do nothing but that are missing out.

If you do feel the need for an act of contrition, though, it's got to be something native. Get someone to teach you a traditional dance or something of rough cultural equivalence. [grin]

[rosacanina]

No stones to be thrown by me. I, myself, must confess to frequenting Star*ucks and Tully's when in need of a coffee-ish beverage/pastry fix. Not for the superior goods, mind, but because I wish to enjoy breathing while there. Japan is a smoker's paradise, and if local coffee shops even have "non-smoking" sections, they consist of a back corner table or two which all the smoke is somehow, magically, supposed to avoid.
On the other hand, most Starbucks and Tully's here are completely smoke free. In the ones where smoking is permitted, the tobacco addicts must use their own little glassed in, sealed off fishbowl somewhere at the back.

Completely unrelated- the rhino thing is really rather odd. I wonder how such slang terms originate. Horns, yes, but rhinos are not among the horned fauna native to the Ukraine(since the last major ice age, anyway).Seems isolated-not regional/East European? so maybe punning or language play?