McDonald's

McDonald's are like real-life "save points"* for travelling tourists. I don't know how to stress hard enough the importance of these establishments when you're on another part of the planet. Here are the usual issues of travelling in another country when you're alone and well, underinformed regarding local culture:

- You can't read anything.
- You can't talk without being misunderstood.
- You can't wander around too much because you might get lost and since you have the first two problems in hand, chances are you wont be able to do something about the "being lost" part either.
- Ordering food is always something akin to Fear Factor, since you'll never know what you're getting yourself into.

The two most common problems a tourist usually encounters when in another country is the same problem the neanderthal encountered when he appeared on earth some gajillion million years ago: lack of food and lack of porn. I was just kidding about the latter - man will always be inventive enough to overcome that (google: cave paintings). So anyway, here's the problem: you're basically hungry and you dont know where or what to eat, and if you do get the chance to order, the food might be bad for you or your finances or your reproductive system (maybe, who knows).

That's where McDonald's comes into play. Here are the benefits a foreigner gets from having a McDonald's branch near him:

- McDonald's has the universally recognizable symbol. The golden arch logo is a beacon that's more easily recognized than the red cross. To prove that it's more universal, if you go to the middle east, there's no red cross. It is replaced by a red crescent. Meanwhile, the McDonald's logo stays the same. So if you're travelling in some godforsaken alien country and you see it, you can say to yourself "Ah yes, McDonald's. Now I can rest." You don't have to know how to read in a foreign language. You know it's McDonald's just by the logo.

- The menu items and taste almost always never changes. The Big Mac in the States will more or less taste the same as that in Saudi Arabia. There will always be a Quarter Pounder on the menu (except in India, where it's forbidden to it beef. So they put human flesh instead - but they go out of their way just to make it taste like cow, which begs the question why cow is such a hard meat to eat in a country where half of it's population is already starving to death.) And the fries will always taste like fries. So as long as you're eating in a McDonald's, you can at least guarantee your tongue that you're not going to be playing hit and miss with the taste. Sure it won't taste too good, but at least you know how bad it gets already. Note that I did say "almost always" because when I was in Japan, McChicken became Chicken Tatsuta Sandwhich, which is basically seaweed, kelp and dead, undercooked chicken in a sandwich. Those sick people. Why did they have to call it something else when it tastes the same?

- The food items almost always are called the same. Well, not really. The pronounciation can be very different all over the world. But it's most certainly easier to order at McDonalds than to order a "lopangkauratatingpaktol" in the nearby thai restaurant and get the head of a dead moose on a soup bowl. The accents are not too different anyway. Like Mexicans call McNuggets "McNogads" or Arabs call Cheeseburgers "Yisberger yalalalah! Jihad! Yalalalalalah!" (just kidding, they dont yell that twice) but you get the idea most of the time. You already know what to order and they understand you. I said "almost always" again because of the Chicken Tatsuta example.

- Lastly, McDonald's almost always has restrooms. Unless you fancy peeing on the streets with your trousers on and you're zipper zipped up, this is always a blessing for the desperate tourist. I cant count how many times I've seen people saved from embarassment because of this feature.

McDonald's is a save point because it saves.

Now I'm not sure about the solution to world peace. But if ever there's a call for a unified government that transcends all borders of colors and ethnicity, I wouldn't be looking at the United Nations for a working pattern. I'd take a look at McDonald's and say

"Sig Heil! Sig Heil! Sig Heil!"


*In case you're old, technophobic, old-fashioned, amish, or just plain stupid, a "save point" is a term used in video games where you are able to save/store your the progress of long games such as role playing games so even after you have switched off the console, you will still be able to fail where you last failed. In some games, this is also where you can get your game life replenished. Public Static: Saving the world one idiot at a time.