That Wasn’t Chicken

Insanity is found hidden in the hairy reality of our decisions.

If there are, we’ll all be dead.

American Germaphobe India Saga (part 12)

This is an ongoing true story (that starts here) of a work trip to India where I, a spoiled, frightened, American germaphobe, desperately cling to my waning sanity by finding humor in the fear.

In the previous account I shared my valuable insights about how not to apply contact lenses while in India. As you might imagine, in threat-rich environments such as India, good eyesight is an indispensable asset given that most of the threats to one’s health are subtle and hard to spot, especially when hidden under the thin veneer of a hotel’s pretense of sophistication.

MEASURES OF A HOTEL

There are many ways to assess the quality of a hotel. My top three are:

• Appearance: the best hotels are often impressive in their bold architecture and decor. However, one must not assess this only from the exterior and lobby areas lest one be deceived. Indeed, if your grandma ever told you not to judge a book by its cover, odds are that she also stayed at the Deceptive Orchid hotel.
• Smell: the best hotels are subtly fragranced with welcoming scents of flowers, spice and fresh citrus that are not overwhelming, as though the hotel is trying too hard to cover over its true funk. I confess that this quality was not in my hotel quality checklist until I stayed here at the Odiferous Orchid.
• Hygiene: the best hotels take care to keep bugs, rodents and germs at bay, creating a safe (-ish) haven for the traveling germaphobe. Admittedly this is one of the harder qualities to verify, except when evidence to the contrary is easily uncovered. (I’m talking about you, Hairy Orchid!)
• Spelling.

Yes, you read that right. Spelling. And grammar, too. Mustn’t forget that, but, as the old saying goes: spelling counts. It’s that attention to detail that demonstrates that the hotel truly cares about quality.

And, as you might anticipate, the Cacographic Orchid also fails on this point. (Cacographic, for those unfamiliar with the adjective, means “bad at spelling.”)

To its credit, the Futile Orchid tries. It really does.

Upon checking in, the hotel clerk wrapped up my room key cards in an nice little envelope after carefully inscribing upon it my room number. He then held it out to me in both hands, bowing his head, imploring me to do him the great honor of accepting such a humble gift.

Which I did. I then looked at the room number in a vain attempt to keep it in memory while I walked to the elevator, knowing full well that I would look at it again while waiting for the elevator, then again upon exiting the elevator, and once more upon reaching the door of my alleged room as a final check, knowing that my brain refuses to remember a three-digit room number for anything more than 10 seconds.

But I’m not telling you this to brag about my forgetfulness. No, it is my observation skills I wish to extol.

On the back of this humble package given to me by the venerable clerks of the Royal Orchid Hotel, written in a fancy script-like font, is the following. I truly regret that I did not take a picture of this, so you’ll just have to trust me as I quote it to you verbatim:

Walk into any Royal Orchid Hotels today and you’ll never find what you ecpect

So true. In this regard, the Disappointing Orchid hotel is quite successful. I’ve been here now 6 days and I have yet to find any of my “ecpectations.”

THE HAIRY ORCHID

To wit: as is my habit, last night I walk into the hotel restaurant and am shown to a table.

The Ginseng restaurant at the Suspicious Orchid hotel. Kudos for their fancy napkin presentation. (Source: facebook.com)

Nothing unusual about that.

I sit down and take the artistically folded napkin off the table and open it up to put on my lap.

Again, nothing unusual about that.

That is, until I see the beige-gray spot in the middle of the napkin. Hmm, ok that’s a bit unusual, but so what? It’s dark enough in the restaurant that I might not have noticed were I not so paranoidly observant.

I look closer. There is an odd… fuzziness… to the edges of this spot.

I play with the angle of the napkin so as to get the most out of the tired lighting.

It is rat hair.

Apparently I need to try harder to keep my “ecpectations” low enough to avoid disappointment.

Well, if it’s not rat hair, then I must conclude that the person who so meticulously folded this napkin has (or recently had) rat-like hair and is suffering from radiation poisoning, shedding clumps of hair as he works, unable to stop and address his health concerns out of a sense of duty and obligation to his honorable employer.

Either way, the score is now: Bangalore 7, Scott 2.

Now, I’m sure that most people would back away from the table, ignoring the crash of the chair falling over behind them as they stand up in shock and disgust, cast their arms to the heavens and cry out their frustration, letting their rage overwhelm their sense of rationality.

I feel you, bro. (Source: knowyourmeme.com)

Me? I’m generally cool-headed, calm and rational — albeit in a paranoid and anxious kinda way. As I see it, my choices here ultimately boil down to the following options:

• Option 1: Complain and generate a huge amount of attention and endure the resulting attempts to placate me that will inevitably make me even more uncomfortable and extend the time I’ll have to spend in the restaurant.
• Option 2: Leave immediately. This would leave me even hungrier than when I started because there’s no way I’m stepping outside the hotel to find food. That way lies certain, funk-induced death.
• Option 3: Grab a napkin off of a nearby empty table and toss the ratty one on the floor when no one is looking.
• Option 4: Come to my senses regarding option #3 and realize that a floored napkin will quickly be discovered and put back onto my table — possibly even put onto my lap — by a waiter thinking he is doing this poor American slob a favor.

So what did I do? I tossed that furry doily onto another table, leaving it unfolded so as to serve as a warning to any future unsuspecting guests.

Problem solved.

Next problem: deciding what to order without thinking too much about what just happened.

I know, I know. That dent in the bun looks suspicious to me, too. (Source: bugzapperpestcontrol.com)

THE HEN AND CHEDDAR, HOLD THE HAIR, PLEASE

I ordered my usual: the Orchid Club which amounts to a chicken, cheese and what I desperately hope is a squashed layer of fried egg sandwich. I have to scrape off the onions they hide in there but I’ve been doing that for 40 years and am quite skilled at doing so, plus it also serves as an interior inspection as a last defense against the unexpected (like, oh, I dunno, rat hair?!?!).

Now, one might ask why I didn’t make a point by ordering an “Orchid Club, hold the rat hair.”

It’s a reasonable question.

Special orders here are risky. Asking for my sandwich to be sans-onion, much less sans-rat hair, is a futile pursuit that, at best, will result in getting something even more mysterious and “unecpected”.

I have found that I must keep the interface protocols between myself and the wait staff as simple as possible. While English is fortunately understood here, understanding words does not equate into understanding meaning or intent, and when your dialog ventures into areas outside of what is expected to be heard, confusion ensues.

As an example, my few attempts earlier in the week to ask for a Coke Zero put the waiter into such a profound state of confusion that I fully expected he was going to seize up like a stymied robot caught in a logic loop.

It was just like this. Only my waiter was not quite as attractive.

Changing my request from “Coke Zero” to “Diet Coke” was like voicing a magical incantation over the befuddled face which immediately breaks the spell, yielding a look of relieved comprehension, and, within minutes, a Diet Pepsi, which in the grand scheme of things is close enough to call a victory.

TIPPING THE SCALE

It is important now to bring up something I hinted at earlier. One of the waiters here knows me by sight now. In fact his way of saying “Oh, hello Scott, how are you today?” is to come up to me with a look of jubilant expectancy and ask “Diet Coke?”

How can I say no to that face?

Since I don’t know his name, and have had enough encounters where I did not ask his name such that I am now too ashamed to ask, I’ve mentally named him Bob. (Yes, like Bob from the office. No, it’s not confusing.)

Well, all week Bob has been eagerly serving me and all week I’ve been not tipping this guy, and so now here I am, last night in the hotel, at my last dinner and he is doing his best to treat me like I’m his favorite customer. Even before the food arrives I can feel the guilt mounting, in spite of my attempts to remind myself that tipping is not expected given the restaurant service charge.

But this time I have a plan: once dinner is complete and I get the bill, I begin stalling for time. I can’t sign the bill until the time is right, since my signature is like yet another magical incantation which will bring the waiter to my table faster than standing in front of the urinal in the Bangalore airport restroom brings the malaria-carrying mosquitos. I wait for Bob to head into the kitchen area, and then I make my move. The total cost for this dinner is somewhere in the neighborhood of 2000 rupees which is around $30 USD. I throw a 500 rupee note into the bill folder and run away before I have to face any kind of gratitude.

Best of all: since he works the evening shift and I leave tomorrow morning, my escape means I will never have to see him again and face the consequences.

For the currency-exchanged challenged, that 500 rupee note amounts to about $7.50 USD, a 25% tip which given the experience I’m having here in Bangalore’s Hairy Orchid Hotel is a rather generous tip, if I do say so myself.

And to those inclined to call out the foolishness of me tipping at all in light of the ratty napkin incident that started this whole dinner adventure, I have to say “really?” That’s what you’re getting all riled up about? Maybe you oughta re-read the beginning of this account.

With that, I head off to bed for my last night in Bangalore, feeling proud of this good deed combined with my clever escape, and at the same time ashamed and horrified that my mental state has deteriorated to the point where rat hair in my napkin is not enough to deter me from risking my remaining health and sanity on a meal that was most likely riddled with rodentia.

Point: Bangalore.

Score: No longer matters.

Although my last Bangalore dinner adventure may be behind me, there still exists between me and departure from this land of exotic threats one more day of adventurous potential until my evening flight takes me out of the frying pan and into the fires of the Orient.