Corned Beef

As long as I remember, for the last 27 years of my life; I consider that the corned beef is one of the luxury foods that we can have, or at least the expensive one. Not every person in the place where I came from can afford to have that kind of food in their table everyday.
Suddenly, shocking comment come to me from my close friend. When I was holding the corned beef tin, trying to find the halal label, he looked at the tin and says: “that’s a dog food.”
Hoping that he was wrong, I try to reply, and I said: “No, no, this is not a dog food; this is a corned beef.”
He tries to convince me and said: “Yes, that’s a dog food; the corned beef is a dog food.”
“I used to have that and I just throw them away” he emphasized.

I was thinking maybe it’s not really a dog food, but the way it was packed: they look alike, similar in some ways.
I have another thought: maybe because the food is easy to find so it’s not a favorite food anymore.

Long before this mate says about the corned beef. A friend of mine has said that in Holland, mangos (Indonesia: mangga) is very expensive fruit. It’s not easy to have mango over there. They have to be imported from Africa, South America, of even Asia. This is totally opposite situation that we have in Indonesia. Even though mango is not the cheap fruit, but when the season is come to get mango is very easy, we can find almost in every corner of the street. Nevertheless, some people have mango tree in the yard, so when the season is come, he just have to pick up the fruit, no need to buy or spending much money to have it.

If I offered a salty fish (ikan asin), sardines, and corned beef to Indonesian people, I’m 100% sure that he/she will pick the corned beef because we think that a corned beef is the best food amongst them. But if you try to offer them to the other people, like my mate that I mention above; maybe he will pick sardines or salty fish. For him, the corned beef is the last choice.

This kind of thing makes me think that something could be different from one to another, it depends on the cultural background, how we raised, where we grew up, etc.

This is not about the corned beef, and this is not about the dog food either. The reason I write this story is because the thing that I think is good, maybe not good at all for other people. So, I will start to understand why somebody else has different choice, different preferences, or different kind of decision.