Plastic and other chaos. Why I may not go to this restaurant again.

This country is in chaos. At every level.

At the risk of been labelled xenophobic, I still need to point out that I don't even know anymore who's running our affairs. Maldivians? Foreigners?

On Saturday, I went to Coffee Ground on Chaandhanee Magu in Male' for a takeaway.

There was a cashier and a helper who were not Maldivian although the law states that only locals can act as cashiers, a factor which seems ignored by law enforcement agencies.

Just like the law which states that cigarettes can be sold only in their packs and not separately as sticks, a law conveniently ignored by some shops.

Just like locals, expatriates, and foreign tourists visiting Maldives who blatantly ignore the law that tobacco smoking is not allowed on the streets.
 
I wonder why the government bothers making laws that cannot be implemented.

I went to Coffee Ground for a chicken package: one Tandoori full chicken, three parathas and in addition, sauce and gravy. The package costs MVR 135.

Of course I was carrying my own bag, folded and put in the back pocket of my pants for convenience: the government recently started implementing the law which allows establishments to charge MVR 2 per plastic bag if customers don't bring their own bags.

Before I could present my bag, the helper told me to wait at a table for 5 minutes until he can get my order packaged.

I didn't give it much thought because it was only MVR 2 that I was going to lose.

When the helper brought my package, in a plastic bag, he asked me to pay MVR 140. He said the additional MVR 5 was to cover the cost of the bag. I wondered why he should charge me an additional MVR 3 for the bag.

I should have then and there presented my bag and asked him to remove the restaurant's bag and put the food into my bag instead. But I was not in the mood to go to all that trouble for just MVR 3.

But perhaps I should have. May be it was because too many people were compromising too much which was causing havoc in our society.

Although this plastic bag incident may appear as a deceptively simple debacle involving only me, after I deeply thought about it later, I realized that it was symbolic of all this lawlessness and everything else that were now going wrong with our society and the resulting anarchy that is taking over our whole country - if not that has already come to pass.