At Sea Day

I have a couple of observations. As we travel around the world, I have decided McDonald’s is getting a run for their money from Kentucky Fried Chicken. (I didn’t say they were astute observations.) I don’t think we have been in a single country that didn’t have a KFC. Strange, although I suppose chicken may be the cheapest, most commonly eaten meat in the world. People in the states associate KFC with “fried” and many people are trying to move away from fried foods. Maybe KFC, seeing the trend in the states, is slowly moving overseas to new markets with modified menus. In many places they serve it mainly grilled or baked, although many of the signs do show fried chicken. People we talked to said they mainly buy the grilled chicken as many people in these countries find “ fried meat” a little strange. The McDonald’s Chain failed miserably in India and had to close all its restaurants. Obviously, they didn’t do much market research before opening up - offering beef burgers to a predominantly Hindu country – is like asking them to eat their ancestors. (The sacred cow thing should have given them a clue.) They opened back up 6 years later offering a veggie burger – to a vegetarian, Hindu country … and now it’s a booming success. Like the states, people in India say they don’t think the veggie burgers are all that great but it is a cheap, easy meal and the kids want to go because they love the toys in the Happy Meals. Kids are the same anywhere in the world. Another store that has turned up repeatedly and in the most unexpected places is the old 7-11 mini markets – remember those? I am not even sure if they are still open in the states. Anyway, with these insightful observations duly noted I will move on to the next topic. Since we had a couple of seas days, I thought that last night, for a change, we would attend “ShowTime”. I checked the “Princess Patter” and the entertainment was going to be a “Harmonica Virtuoso”. Hey, I can skip the resident sing and dance troupe or the belly dancers, but I thought this really ought to be good for a story. In the end, I couldn’t take the bullet for the team. I wanted to, I really did – but I just couldn’t make myself sit through an hour of harmonica playing, no matter how good of story it might have generated. As for today at sea, no pirates, no Iranian gun boats as we pasted back through their territory – all and all, calm sailing on day one to Oman.