I never saw any Ugandan person drinking a Pepsi, much less one with ice in it. In fact, it was explained to me that the locals didn’t drink any cold beverages, of any kind, for a variety of reasons that are still hazy to me. So, it was unclear exactly who that giant Pepsi sign was intended for, but my best guess would essentially be, ME.

I love ruminating on the smaller, less publicized customs of a given place. For example, without fail, every time you order a beverage in Uganda, the very next question they’ll ask you will be, “Cold or room temperature?”’

“Who would want to drink a warm coke?” I rhetorically asked.

“Everyone in Uganda,” was always the server’s response. “The cold ones we just keep for tourists.”

Huh. Good to know. I guess we all learn to like what we are given, what we grew up with.

Although I don’t think I’ll ever stop preferring my fizzy beverages be served cold, I am proud to say I’ve come a long way in my feelings about ice. When I first moved to Italy for school, my obsession with needing ice in all my drinks was unhinged. From small tantrums, to all but boycotting establishments that had no ice to offer me, I believed myself incapable of enjoying any iceless beverage.

Even when I did find places that served ice upon request, I’d find it exhausting when, every single time, they’d ask me how many cubes I wanted.

“I don’t know,” I'd say, “Can you just fill up the glass, please?”

“So…. Like, three?”

“Again, without knowing how SMALL YOUR GLASSES ARE or how big the cubes are, I really have no way of knowing.”

“So, four?”

“Is the recipe different here or something? It’s still just ice and coldness, right? But everyone in Italy acts like it’s a rare, precious thing, this ice.”

“I’ll bring you five.”

“Fantastic. Thank you.”

Sometimes I’d mistakenly conjure up a number that ended up being more cubes than their glasses could hold, at which point, the extra cubes were often brought out to me and placed on the table, half melted, in a small side dish.

“Thank you," I'd say. "This is nice.”

For a while I dated a guy from England. He regularly came to Dallas on business, and once I tried explaining my frustration to him about the ice situation abroad.

He scoffed and said, “Oh yeah? You should try being on the flip side of it. Imagine if every time you tried to order a nice hot cup of English tea, the waitress brought you an enormous glass of freezing cold, watered down tea, filled to the brim with ice cubes! It’s maddening!”

“Yeah, if you say “tea” in a Texas, you’re gonna get it iced, and most likely, loaded with sugar, too. I don’t care for it that way either, but I’ve definitely come to expect it.”

Again, it’s all about what you grew up with and what you became accustomed to, isn’t it?

Therefore, I absolutely love the idea of a giant corporation, like Pepsi, erecting some gargantuan sign here in Dallas—looming above the local businesses like in the photo above— asking us to all enjoy something they know damn well we would all hate.

“Isn’t it time you settled for a hot, flat cup of Mountain Dew?” it might read.

Or,

“Choke on our chicken! We didn’t take the bones out, even though we serve it already smothered in a thick, stewy sauce that makes the bones almost impossible to see or remove!”

(If this one seems oddly specific, it's because I happen to loathe meat with bones in it, yet this has been my recurring experience the world over...)

Or,

“Ice is best when it comes to your table melting in a little bowl and you have to figure out how to transfer it to your drinking glass using either your fingers, a spoon, or some small tongs, isn’t it?!”

It sounds crazy, but how ironic is it that even here in Dallas, there would always be a small bowl of melting ice cubes on the table when my English boyfriend and I went out to eat.

Why, you ask?

Well, it’s because he would ask the server for an empty dish every time he ordered a cup of tea, so that he could then systematically fish out all the ice cubes with a spoon and place them in the bowl.

Again, it all comes down to what you’re used to, doesn’t it? Whether at home or abroad, I eventually became accustomed to there being small bowls of melting ice on our table.

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Want to read more about ice? How about a few stories from it's mother ship?! Read about Iceland HERE and HERE, and this exceptionally sexy, icy-hot Icelandic ice-licker, HERE.

Or read more about my Englsih (ex) boyfriend HERE.