Munden's Bar

I just went to get myself a coffee. Only, instead of using the fancy coffee machine myself, I had to wait while the 'boy' whose job it is to make the coffee for people fumbled with the controls.

On the way back to my desk I pass the entrance to the floor where there are usually at least two security guards, One of them seems to think that he has to stand every time I walk past.

I continue down the hall to the room I work in and I see that one of the cleaning boys is waiting at the other end of the hall for me to exit it, presumably because if he used it too he might get in my way.

Once I get with the programmers, life is more normal, though even there the younger ones are far more deferential to the old guy than young programmers are in New Zealand.

It's lunch time, and I head to the canteen on the ground floor where there are several servers. One, wearing plastic food handling gloves, places chapati n my plate. Afterwards, when I go back up for mapaur and more cold coffee (like iced coffee but not quite as cold), I only just manage to pick up the serving tongs (which everyone else is using, BTW) before a server does it for me. Lunch finished, I take up my dirty plates, and there is another boy to take the plates and put them in a plastic bin for washing.

The lunch, BTW, is free. I have yellow dal, a veg masala, basmati rice, and the aforementioned cold coffee and mapaur, which is basically pikelets soaked ( and I mean completely and utterly saturated!) in honey. Though the TANSTAAFL principle seems to be being violated, I'm sure there's a cost somewhere!

I will be driven back get back to the hotel tonight, a guard will examine the underneath of the taxi and another guard will run some sort of electronic detector that beeps around the boot. Once we reach the hotel the dhurban will open the door to the car, and probably the outer door of the hotel air-lock, and every hotel employee I happen to catch the eye of will wish me good day or something similar.

Hmm. I suppose if I was a National supporter I could say that if similar things were instituted in New Zealand, it would solve the unemployment problem.

But I have to say, it can be very annoying having people do things for you all the time. Especially when waiting for them to complete a task which you could have done for yourself in less than half the time.

I think I now understand a phrase I heard once, can't remember where, which was about someone wanting to "escape the tyranny of servants".

And that's even without the distaste I have of being served by people who are only doing it because otherwise they'd starve, with that being reinforced by people, mainly kids, actually starving everywhere you go.

They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
For trying to change the system from within
Leonard Cohen - First We Take Manhattan

The US has a holiday. And no-one replied to emails on Friday, perhaps because they'd all gone on holiday early. Thus I won't have any work until Wednesday morning, when they'll probably realize they've forgotten something important and I'll have to work like buggery to get something done on short notice.

I am therefore planning on working on Game and potentially other things while at work as well as updating my LJ a lot. I will also be carying out various financial arrangements with banks and insurance companies based on the fallout around my marriage break-up. I should probably also study toward my next industry qualification, the Sun J2EE Architect Certification. Not that I can really be bothered, but it will keep people off my back. I will post a weekend update soon.