<p class="bodytext">I had a good innings as a lecturer in a private engineering college after I had hung up my boots following a long service in the Air Force.</p>.<p class="bodytext">About fourteen kilometres away from my house, the college was more accessible by autos and taxis than buses that stopped about a kilometre away, entailing me to walk a long distance to get to it every day. Working on a nine-to-five designation, the faculty was given a tea break from 10 to 10:15 am when the staff would be served tea, but as a regular coffee drinker for decades, I would take my scooter to a hotel about a kilometre away from our college, quickly have a tumbler of piping hot coffee and return riding pell-mell along the virtually traffic-free road leading to the college. At the very sight of me parking my scooter, one of the waiters would place a tumbler of coffee on a vacant table and gesture at me towards it. On the dot at 10:15 I would enter my class without being late.</p>.<p class="bodytext">That day, as was my wont, I took my seat around a vacant table. A waiter – as likely as not–a new face relatively younger than all the others in the group of waiters in the restaurant, drew near me and started reeling off the menu for breakfast, being absolutely unaware of the fact that I was a regular customer coming to that hotel every day for a tumbler of coffee at ten in the morning. By then another customer, one of my acquaintances in our residential area in our neck of the woods, took a seat next to mine when I was asking the new waiter to bring me a tumbler of coffee.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Quick off the mark, he queried, “Sugarless”, splitting the word with a short pause and uttering “Sugar, less”, going towards the counter and looking at me with a simper on his face. Quietly but a tad abstractedly I said, “Yes, yes,” probably due to my sight of a man from our locality on the next table coupled with my disgustful experience of drinking overly sugared coffee in some of the hotels in the city. In a matter of minutes I noticed the same waiter bringing me a tumbler of coffee over a plate and placing it on the table before me. My very sip of the stuff shrank my facial muscles in repulsive distaste stemming from its utter bitterness without sugar. Tout de suite, I asked him to get me another cup of it with a moderate amount of sugar added to it.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The incident taught me to be very conscientious in ordering coffee in hotels and restaurants.</p>
<p class="bodytext">I had a good innings as a lecturer in a private engineering college after I had hung up my boots following a long service in the Air Force.</p>.<p class="bodytext">About fourteen kilometres away from my house, the college was more accessible by autos and taxis than buses that stopped about a kilometre away, entailing me to walk a long distance to get to it every day. Working on a nine-to-five designation, the faculty was given a tea break from 10 to 10:15 am when the staff would be served tea, but as a regular coffee drinker for decades, I would take my scooter to a hotel about a kilometre away from our college, quickly have a tumbler of piping hot coffee and return riding pell-mell along the virtually traffic-free road leading to the college. At the very sight of me parking my scooter, one of the waiters would place a tumbler of coffee on a vacant table and gesture at me towards it. On the dot at 10:15 I would enter my class without being late.</p>.<p class="bodytext">That day, as was my wont, I took my seat around a vacant table. A waiter – as likely as not–a new face relatively younger than all the others in the group of waiters in the restaurant, drew near me and started reeling off the menu for breakfast, being absolutely unaware of the fact that I was a regular customer coming to that hotel every day for a tumbler of coffee at ten in the morning. By then another customer, one of my acquaintances in our residential area in our neck of the woods, took a seat next to mine when I was asking the new waiter to bring me a tumbler of coffee.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Quick off the mark, he queried, “Sugarless”, splitting the word with a short pause and uttering “Sugar, less”, going towards the counter and looking at me with a simper on his face. Quietly but a tad abstractedly I said, “Yes, yes,” probably due to my sight of a man from our locality on the next table coupled with my disgustful experience of drinking overly sugared coffee in some of the hotels in the city. In a matter of minutes I noticed the same waiter bringing me a tumbler of coffee over a plate and placing it on the table before me. My very sip of the stuff shrank my facial muscles in repulsive distaste stemming from its utter bitterness without sugar. Tout de suite, I asked him to get me another cup of it with a moderate amount of sugar added to it.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The incident taught me to be very conscientious in ordering coffee in hotels and restaurants.</p>
