Saturday, January 01, 2011

'trickle trickle trickle' or The Price of Vice

New Year's was a movie followed by an elegant hotel dinner. You could tell it was elegant by the plate to portion ratio: at no point was less than 2/3 of any plate surface visible around the food. Planning at the last minute had left us with the choice of ordering pizza or investing in a meal with an intermezzo course of champagne sorbet. And this is sort of how I've come to think of Jordan: grubby low-end hostel, or ritzy 5 star hotel. There's very little in between the two available.

Final cost of the meal per head: 90 JD. 60 percent of Jordan's monthly minimum wage.

To give you an idea, that's the equivalent of paying 696 dollars for a meal in the U.S., where a minimum wage job will net you 1,160 USD a month.

I haven't decided if I feel exactly guilty about this or not. Just because others aren't able to live the same way you can doesn't mean that you should throw it all over, hole up in a barrel, and only ask that people don't block your sunlight. Still, I wonder a lot about how it impacts my sense of normalcy. I wouldn't spend 700 dollars for a meal in the U.S. even if it came with a free mermaid. (I doubt I'd even spend 130 dollars for a meal, which is what it actually cost me based on the exchange rate.)