Food and drinks

After an hour I am going to attend the international food festival organized by International club of Trondheim and Erasmus students’ network. I hope it will be fun. Therefore I thought that i should write about food now, as it is one of the most important part of my life. Lolz

I remember when I moved to Karachi from Taxila cantt, the biggest problem for me was the food. The quality of food at the canteens in NED University was not good and there were no cooking facility around. I got sick in the early months. That was one of the reasons I wanted to quit my studies, but i survived. There was a ranger’s mess nearby. One of our friends talked to them and they agreed to provide us food on a subsidized price. The only problem with the rangers mess was the timings. I used to eat dinner around 8 or 9 PM and they were eating dinner at 6PM. And also the whole country eats lunch after 1 PM and they used to eat it before 12 PM. Anyways it was a good deal and survival. Later on I got used to the food in Karachi and did not face much difficulty, except in the final year of my bachelors. I started buying the drinking water that resolved the problem.

The food in the Middle Eastern countries like United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia is also very cheap and good. During my stay in these countries I never cooked.

Cooking came to my life when I moved to Sweden. In the early days everyone was really careful about the ingredients of the food they bought. No one could really read Swedish and they were consulting the students living there for a longer time. I have a funny story about this. One of the guys who was also new, claimed that he know everything made us buy some food, that was not ‘right’ to eat.

 The typical Pakistani food was our first choice and the search for the cheap ingredients was an adventure for all of the guys. The written advertisements called Reklam were distributed by different stores and the people used to read them carefully. If they see an offer they used to buy and stock a lot of the stuff. Halal food was the main focus. Therefore everyone was checking all the ingredients. People were keeping their cooking and eating utensils on a separate place if they were sharing the kitchens. Before moving to Sweden I got the tip that I should bring my own spices, they are not available in Sweden on a reasonable price. So I packed some spices and most of the guys that arrived brought their own spices. In earlier days cooking was a lot of experimentation. Some of the guys had their mothers on board. Skype was a big help. The cooking experiments were success sometimes and sometimes they were a big failure. Everything was being multiplied by the prices in the home towns and it made it very difficult to eat outside. Even in some welcome parties, people was either not going or if they went they were not eating or drinking.

Drinking alcohol doesn't exist in Pakistani society. It does exist somewhere but not legally. So the way people do networking is kind of different. Therefore people from Pakistan consider it a terrible thing to do. In start some guys were going to the welcome parties and with the time they reduced going and the ones who were attending the parties were criticized by others. Anyways some people stopped partying and some of them continued doing that.

After the first year many things changed. Due to jobs people started eating outside. Some were still conscious about the halal food and they preferred to eat vegetarian or sea food. And some were not that conscious about these matters. The cooking utensils and plates etc. was not a big deal to share. In start I used to hear that in café they wash cups and alcohol glasses together so we should not drink anything outside. But it changed. There were still some people who never changed. One more thing that some people start drinking a lot, some occasionally and some of them never try it. 

I myself did not like cooking therefore instead of eating ‘roti and salan’ I started eating pasta, potatoes, fish, kebab and other kind of food. Since I had some good friends from Pakistan they also fed me for a long time. I am really grateful to all of them. I was lucky to work part time in different restaurant and ate really great food. Still whenever I relocate to a new place, eating is the first problem for me. It took me almost a month to start a little cooking at home when I moved to Norway.

Eating habits are quite different all over the world. Especially among international students it might be something really great of delicious for some people and for some other peoples it might be the terrible one. Everyone has different choices but in the end they agree on some similar approach when they eat together. A lot of students spend the money for food on drinking alcohol. Some people really like healthy food and some don’t care about that as well. Your food habits are somehow affected by the people around you.