Food

Food varies from the sublime to the ridiculous. During the day I work on a US Navy base and so to all intents and purposes we are living in America. This means that all drinks must be at least 30% sugar, vast amounts of sugar and salt just must be added to anything and meat and cheese (cheese must go in everything as well!) must of course\be as processed as possible. So beefburgers, 'Taco Bell', chips with everything type meals with pints of coke are the order of the day. This contrasts rather spectacularly with the 5 star food available from eight different restaurants within th ehotel complex. The truth is that you cannot live indefinitely on either - normal food is definitely required even though finding time to cook it is not trivial.
At work I have at least now found the 'Deli' counter within the NEX (a sort of worldwide US Forces supermarket) and though they need some encouragement to not throw all sorts of rubbish into their rolls they can produce a straight-forward common or garden beef, lettuce and tomato roll - you are of course looked upon as some sort of backward species for not wanting BBQ sauce, mayonaise, processed cheese and extra bacon but that is a small price to pay for preserving one's heart. Off base we have now started cooking and the saviour here is the fantastically normal (well, up to a point) Al Jazeera supermarket within walking distance of the hotel. The food options are a little strange but on the whole the things you can recognise are good quality and indeed good value - looks like my culinary skills will be sharpened up over the next few months!