Has it ever happened to you that you see a photo of someone or something and feel irresistibly drawn to it? Once, on a gloomy rainy day quite a few years ago, while I was working in the office, I came across a photo of the infinity pool on the roof of the Marina Bay Sands hotel in Singapore. I felt it pulling me in, and I was certain that one day I would celebrate my birthday in exactly that pool.
A few years later, when I can finally afford to “splash out”, that’s exactly what I do. I book flights to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur for a period that covers both my birthday and the Singapore Marathon. Emil and I sign up for the 10 km race at the Singapore Marathon too.
By the way, the “splashing out” on the hotel wasn’t nearly as expensive as I’d expected. One night at some luxury spa in Bulgaria actually cost MORE than one night at Marina Bay. A rooftop pool at Marina Bay Sands, with a bird’s-eye view of Singapore by night, for less than it costs to eat “cheese-imitating product” from the all-inclusive buffet of some spa restaurant in Velingrad, strikes me as a blessing.
I promise myself I’ll tag myself “feeling blessed” from the infinity pool.
The only thing that struck me was that the hotel blocked an extra 200 dollars on my card. As they explained, it was a guarantee that I wouldn’t cause irreparable damage to the hotel.
I work out that if we damage the room and they keep the 200-dollar deposit for it, THAT would finally bring the price of a night at Marina Bay Sands level with the price of a night at one of the Bulgarian spas.
For the days outside our single night at Marina Bay, we book some cheap little flat, which turns out to be in Singapore’s Chinatown. The flat was in a huge communist-style block. It was there, mostly thanks to the stench that hung over the whole building and had soaked into our flat as well, that I finally discovered the secret behind the Asians’ fountain of eternal youth.
It was hidden in the collagen they consumed in the form of roasted pig snouts, stewed chicken feet, boiled duck beaks complete with the duck teeth and tongues inside them, and a whole range of similar delicacies. Every one of them unbearable to the white man’s eyes and nose alike.
Much as I’d like to look younger, I couldn’t bring myself to eat a bit of collagen in the form of a duck beak or chicken feet. Not so much because of how they looked, but because they smelled as if the only heat treatment they’d ever undergone was two weeks of rotting in direct sunlight. Of course, you get used to anything, and after just a few days, once our stomachs and noses had toughened up a bit, we were no longer shy about treating ourselves to another local delicacy. A wine whose taste was a clear indication of what had been preserved in it – the sex organ of a male deer. Judging by the aroma coming off the wine – an unwashed one.
What you see in the photo is the attribute in question. After it’s dried like a herbarium specimen, it’s cut into pieces, which are put into the bottle of wine.
It reminds me of a randy version of those Bulgarian souvenirs – a bottle of rakia with bunches of herbs soaking in it.
I’ve noticed that every single food or drink the Asians have is good for something health-related. The collagen-rich foods – for taut skin. The bottle of wine with the stag’s whatsit soaking in it – an aphrodisiac, naturally, which is why I allow Emo one small glass, max.
And what happens when the collagen eaters meet the aphrodisiac drinkers, you ask? This, but more on that later.
First, Marina Bay.
On my birthday we pack our bags, leave the stinking squalor of Chinatown and head for the 24 hours of luxury awaiting us. Being a practical family, though, we think ahead. Swimming in the crimson sunset of the infinity pool against the backdrop of Singapore on my birthday simply wouldn’t be a complete experience without a bottle of chilled white wine to go with it.
And Emo and I are not the kind of people who’ll buy a glass of wine from the ridiculously overpriced bar at the infinity pool. We’re more the kind of people who’ll stock up nicely on two bottles of white from a supermarket in Chinatown, buy a corkscrew and smuggle them into the hotel in our luggage.
At reception I hand over my passport for check-in, and the receptionist sees that it’s my birthday. She tells me to expect a surprise in my room tonight. Emo feels short-changed. He cuts into the conversation, claiming that he has a special occasion today too. “What occasion?” asks the receptionist, surprised, having just opened his passport and glanced at his date of birth, which is seven months away.
I learn that Emo has the best occasion in the world. He married this wonderful woman precisely on her birthday, and today is a big round anniversary of their wedding. I gather that this is about me, because he puts a protective arm around my shoulders. So, would they kindly prepare a separate surprise for him too.
The first thing we do when we get into our room is take all the alcohol, chocolates and so on out of the minibar fridge and put our wine in their place to chill. We want the bottle to be nice and sweaty at the pool tonight. Of course, not for anything in the world would we eat anything from the minibar.
As soon as the wine is chilled, we take it out of the minibar and put all the original contents back where they were.
In the evening, it’s pool party time. We fill our backpacks with towels, bottles of wine and glass wine glasses from the room, put on our swimsuits and go up to the pool. A light, warm rain is falling over the infinity pool, but the air and the water are just as warm. I have the best birthday of my life in that pool.
Emo can’t relax and make the most of the pool. Every 30 minutes he goes back down to our room, all tense, because he’s terribly excited about what our free surprises will be – for my birthday and for the anniversary of “his” wedding. At one point he comes back with a chocolate cupcake with a little candle in it, which had been left on the bed. This sparks a small dispute between us – is the cake for my birthday or for “his” occasion? The candle on the cake settles the matter in my favour. Emo runs to the room a few more times, but finds no second surprise there.
“A guilty conscience needs no accuser,” I think to myself – since the anniversary of “his” wedding, or at least the only one I’ve been informed of, is on 27.05, not in December.
The wonderful evening comes to an end, and it’s time for it to turn into one of the many days in my life when I have to pay for things I never consumed. No need to wonder what I mean. You’re customers of Bulgarian mobile operators and utility companies too.
Emo and I are just leaving our room at Marina Bay when a hotel employee of Indian origin comes in to start cleaning. The first thing he does is touch some device to the minibar/fridge, which beeps and spits out an invoice. The employee hands us the invoice, according to which we’ve consumed 240 $ worth of things from the minibar. But not to worry, we’ll only pay 40 dollars – they just won’t give us our deposit back. I open the minibar and show him that everything in it is in its place. He shrugs, uninterested; objective facts are none of his concern.
This kind of attitude towards the customer feels somehow homely to me and gives me a sense of familiarity and cosiness. I smell a rat: the Marina Bay monetisation department must have taken lessons from the Sales Department of one of the Bulgarian mobile operators. Most likely the one I, through no fault of my own, am a customer of.
At reception we ask a question:
Why will they not only keep our deposit, but also make us pay on top of it?
The receptionist looks up our room number and informs us that we had consumed EVERYTHING in the minibar. Down to the last crumb and the last drop.
It was a bit like déjà vu from my experiences with “my” mobile operator, which, for the purposes of this story, I’ll call E6. It has happened that I signed a contract with E6 for 40 leva a month with unlimited minutes and so on included, and then received a bill for 200 leva.
On the bill I was charged for services such as “home internet”, a “BlackBerry package” and all sorts of relics I hadn’t used since 2010. I went with my contract to the E6 office in Paradise Center (for some reason they couldn’t find their copy of the contract, which is stored in their system, and I had to bring my own paper one).
It was then established that neither a BlackBerry package nor a home phone was listed among the services I had chosen. My case was passed on to the heavy artillery. I was taken over by an employee who, if we could judge his origins by his appearance alone, was a cross between Mon Dyo and Behemoth the cat from “The Master and Margarita”.
Just as he couldn’t find my current contract in the system, somehow this gentleman managed to find two of my EXPIRED contracts in the very same system.
Here – my contract from 2014, which ended in 2016, had home internet. And... well, well, look at that... “Whoooops!” – his voice trembles with pleasure – my contract from 2010 had a BlackBerry package too.
So!!! What????
“Well, madam, it’s like this,” said the half-man, half-cat, his cheeks gleaming. “It’s like turning off the central heating in your flat.”
I don’t understand.
The E6 version of Mon Dyo shoots me a look. It clearly says that this is subject matter that cannot be grasped by people whose minds, unlike his, fit within the modest scale of a standard IQ test. He starts explaining patiently, in a tone meant for the slow, stressing every word.
“When you walk through the common areas of the building, you still get warm, don’t you, madam? Even though you’ve turned off the heating in your flat. Don’t you, madam? Well, that’s why you’ll still pay the full amount. What the current contract says doesn’t matter in this case.”
After this brilliant line of argument, he dismisses me with a pretentious wave of the stubby little fingers of his fluffy little paw. Faint offence radiates from his horn-rimmed glasses at having to waste his time on customers with the intellect of a hen.
I sorted out that smart alec by writing a letter to E6 headquarters, copying in the Competition Protection Commission and the Ombudsman, with the service contract between me and E6 attached. They refunded the amount by deducting it from my future payments.
So something similar happened here. Only, instead of unwanted, uncontracted and unused services, I had to pay for the untouched contents of a minibar. The only difference is that here, at least, they treat us extremely politely and don’t make us feel like nobodies.
Emo, who’s like a broken record when he wants something, brings up the matter of his missing surprise yet again. I suppress everything human in me to stop myself from telling him he’s free to accept the minibar bill as his surprise for his made-up occasion and finally shut up about it.
Reception sends someone up to check the minibar stock.
The man says that everything is untouched.
They ask us whether we took anything out of it at all, and we remember that we took out all its contents for a very short while, just to chill our wine. But we put it back almost straight away.
When I wrote above that we’d been charged for the “untouched” contents of the minibar, I wasn’t right. I should have used the word “unconsumed” instead.
The hotel explains that the minibar has sensors that automatically register if something is taken out. I’m not surprised to learn that these sensors work only one way. They don’t register when something is put back. They tell us to dispute the bill, which we do. After a two-month investigation into the matter – what on earth they were investigating, I don’t know – my account is credited with the overpaid 240 dollars.
Meanwhile, Emo and I have returned from Paradise to the stinking communist flat.
I suggest we cheer ourselves up by taking things out of the fridge and putting them back as much as we like, for free, but even that brings us joy for no more than 5 minutes.
We decide to go out and do a bit of shopping to cheer ourselves up. We don’t want to stay out too late, as the next day we have to get up at 04:30. We need to make the start of the marathon, which, because of the great heat and high humidity, is at 06:00 in the morning.
We’re loaded down with bags of shopping junk and already on our way back to the stinking digs. We walk past a Gucci store that’s hosting a private party with restricted entry. There’s a guest list.
There’s no greater motivation for Emo to get in somewhere than knowing he’s not allowed. As soon as he realises the party is invitation-only, obviously for Singaporean VIPs, Emo insists we go in.
I admit it looks tempting, especially once I see some very interesting cocktails and nibbles being carried around inside. I’m quite hungry and thirsty. But I know, I just know, that without an invitation they’ll throw me out like a dirty kitten. Emil insists they’ll let us in. Hadn’t I noticed the way these Singaporean women look at him? They’d eat him alive.
And then Emo taught me one of the greatest lessons of my life, namely – never give up, no matter how hopeless my situation looks. Because what looks hopeless to me is easy for him.
He set off to get into the private party, and I – in order to mock him in the future – filmed this video. I thought it would turn out to be his great humiliation.
It turned out that I’d filmed an incredible triumph that words can’t do justice to. And it’s a good thing I made a video, because I couldn’t recreate it in words.
After Emo got past the Gucci security, he picked up a cocktail and raised it to me in a “cheers” through the window.
I felt like Gavroche in front of the shiny Gucci windows. Emo disappeared further inside and I lost sight of him.
A little later he sent me the photo with the two Asian women above. Those of you who follow my blog know about Emo’s weakness for Asian women (link to another story featuring an Asian woman).
Emo is flanked not by one but by two Singaporean women, who, in his words, “would eat him alive”. And on top of all that, he’s just been drinking “stag” wine!
I need to come up with a way to get in there too and restore some order!
To be continued………….
