The Good, The Bad, The Funny

What do you do with a gal who has waaaaaaaaayyy too much time on her hands? Why you give her a blog assignment of course. Mine is to write about the church services here, but since I don't feel like it right now, I won't. **I'll tell you about how it boosted our immunities later**

What I do want to tell you about, are some of the services that are offered here at the hotel. I'm sure Mike already posted a photo of the hotel so I wont bother with that.

A typical day.
The guy that comes to clean the room. First of all, you know how in the states the hotels are always leaving those little notices in the room that basically say. "Save the world and don't make us clean your room". Well...maybe it just says "we're lazy butts and we don't want to do your laundry'...'so think of our natural resources and don't make us wash your towels". Something like that, you know what I mean. India laughs in the face of such nonsense!

EVERYDAY the guy comes and completely strips the room down. I mean it. Everything, off it comes to be replaced with the new (not the fluffy white down blanket) sheets, pillowcases, towels anything that is not nailed down. If its movable and washable, it goes.
Next he remakes the bed so quickly and so tight, it would make any drill proud. Bouncing quarters off that puppy.
Next dusting, EVERYTHING gets dusted. Down to the legs on the chair at the desk. No shamming here, everything gets picked up, cleaned underneath and then neatly placed back down in dress, right, dress. Seriously (can I take him home with me??) Even our shoes are put in order. (Jame..He's your kind of organizer)
Next vacuuming. Self explanatory
Next the bathroom. Lets face it..We are all pigstys in the bathroom, esp. @ hotels. Mainly because there is really no other place to put all of our bathroom junk. Somehow it just meanders across the vanity doesn't it? Imagine my surprise to see a little neat ultra white (reminds me*) hand towel on the right hand corner of our vanity with ALL of our bathroom supplies organized in perfect order (I'm positive he's in med school) according to size and shape. I'm NOT kidding. I was scared to use my stuff cuz it would mess up his neatness! ha
He of course cleans everything in the bathroom, dumps the trash, opens our paper(The Hindu, hanging on the door every morning) and puts it neatly on the end table. Then he cleans the floor down on his hands and knees. It's marble. I see him backing out of the bathroom and into the little 'hallway' and out the door. All of this is done very fast of course. I bet he's out of here in 10 minutes max. But it always perfectly done.

The second person to come is the head of housekeeping. Let me tell you something bub, I know why those guys knock themselves out cleaning the room. She goes to all of the rooms and inspects them to make sure that the rooms are to the hotel standards. By the way, I noticed that the sheets have a little color coded mark on one edge, so it had better be the right color on the right day! I guess there is potential job security on the line.

The 3rd guy to come is the 'fruit guy'. He comes everyday and says the same thing: 'good evening Madame, would you like your fruit changed?' And I say WHAT?! How dare you! And then I slam the door in his face. Just kidding. I say 'sure'. And everyday he comes in with a fruit basket (full of fruit of course) and walks over to the little table (that has the fruit on it of course) looks at me in disgust as barely any of the fruit is missing and changes perfectly good fruit for more perfectly good fruit. I guess it doesn't occur to him to take the 'old' fruit out and put it in with the new. I did say 'no thanks' to him once, but he looked so disappointed I decided to not do that anymore.
He looks like he's in a tux. Now that's service!

The 4th guy to come is the mini-bar guy. He's caught on to us by now and realizes that we are not going to drink the kingfisher beer in the little fridge, so he only occasionally checks that. However a look of sheer joy did come over his face when he realized that 2 chocolate bars were missing! I confess...It was a moment of weakness. He hasn't come today YET,but he'll be happy when he sees that I did have peanuts last night while watching Life is Beautiful. And it is, isn't it?

The 5th guy to come is laundry. Ahhh yes, laundry. What can you say about those guys? Well, at first I was in heaven, realizing that I didn't have to do laundry for 2 months! Bliss! Remember me telling you about that ultra white hand towel? Yes, unfortunately I think everything in laundry undergoes....the bleach treatment. tahh dumm (said with scary music in the background) sigh...I can't say we weren't warned. Mike had a friend that told him that the laundry service is really hard on clothes. Not sure why, but its true. Mike had bought this really nice shirt and it underwent 'the treatment'. Sorry to say its a tad smaller now, and a few shades lighter. Perhaps we will have to repurchase right before we leave. That or I'm going have to do laundry in the tub. *there is a line there*
The amazing thing is, when we get our stuff back, all of the shirts are in those little cardboard things. I mean ironed and folded and looking like you just got them home from the store. We have lots of cardboard in our room, I'm thinking of offering it back to them. They even cardboard his undershirts!

The 6th and final guy..And my personal favorite++Room Service! For the life of me I couldn't understand why this guy came by our room EVERY night and asked if we wanted room service. ??? EVERY night I would say 'no' and just look at him. He would look at me then hand me a chocolate and say 'very good Madame'. I'd look at the chocolate, look at him,then shut the door. Every night this goes on "...Good night Westly, sleep well, I'll most likely kill you in the morning.." Sometimes (if it was late enough) I'd make Mike answer the door and HE would get the chocolate. :) Finally one night (we actually HAD ordered room service) and sure enough, right on schedule. Ding dong. He said 'good evening Madame, room service?" And I said 'actually we've already called room service, thanks'.(with a smidge of sarcasm in my voice) He just looked at me and burst into laughter. He said..."No, do you want your bed turned down?" OHHH for those of you with no couth, no class, no... sigh. whatever.
He did manage to get in here last night though. When Mike and I got back from dinner both side of the bed were folded down into neat little triangles, and there were TWO chocolates by the bed.
Got one on me I guess! heh heh

Of course these are just the regulars. There are various and sundry (I've always wanted to use that word) others who have some kind of agenda. One day I asked for a safety pin, so about 5 minutes later a guy brought up 2 sewing kits (hence 2 safety pins) about 5 minutes later, another guy brought up 2 sewing kits. About 5 minutes later the head of housekeeping came up and wanted to know ...did I get them and was it enough? Why didn't she just bring them herself?

wow. what can u say about the service here?

That's obviously the good, the bad is the laundry :( and the funny is that I try to 'hide'! I've found that the only way I can have any peace is to either leave the room, (and let them do their thing) or to use the Do Not Disturb sign. It's my protection. In fact I'm using it now or I'd never get this posting done.

Well..(oh yeah)..I kept hearing this "ppffttt" noise. And I could not figure out what it was. Thought maybe it was air in the water line or something that. Mike never heard it, so he was no help. Then one day as I was standing in the bathroom (admiring my vanity) there came the pfft. Air freshener! What a unique place. ;)

Well seriously. I mean it this time.. gotta go.
later,
Mary