Richard Jernigan -> RE: Missing in Action (Jul. 16 2014 14:54:56)
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ORIGINAL: Ruphus Hotel staff that sips of guests´ bottles or picks occasional items like watches, etc., and on the other hands hotel guests who yet in the mosts exclusive lodgings have made the personel on check out looking for eventually swiped bathrobes, towels etc. ... What times of lacking style, culture and integrity throughout. Disgusting. Ruphus The definition of theft varies from one culture to another. For example, in Micronesia it is very different from Europe and the USA. A constant source of friction where I lived was the "theft" of bicycles. There were no private cars, bus service was infrequent and sometimes unreliable. Marshallese people had to catch a ferry home to a different island, and it ran on an inflexible schedule. If you left your bicycle unlocked, you were likely at times to find it gone when you returned. But you could almost always find it parked in one of the racks at the harbor. To a Marshallese, this was a reasonable instance of borrowing, brought on by the necessity of catching the ferry. To most Americans it was theft, and provoked outrage. In Bali, foreign spirits cost more than twice what they do in the USA, due to the high taxes imposed on them. A bottle of Glenfiddich costs more than a third of the monthly earnings of a relatively prosperous limousine driver I spoke with. He supports a wife, three children and shares the support of his parents with his brothers. In Balinese culture, exposing someone to strong temptation is a sin. How else was the head room boy ever to know what single malt scotch tasted like, without taking an almost undetectable sample from an opened bottle, left out in the open for days at a time? I fear that he was severely disappointed, as I was at age fourteen when I decided to sample my father's Glenlivet and one of his Cuban Montecristos, both decidedly acquired tastes. The room boy was certainly in the wrong, but so was I, and the loss to an unimaginably rich American was infinitesimal. If it was the crime of theft, in Balinese terms I shared some of the responsibility. The staff at this hotel are very well trained in Western expectations, those who interact regularly with guests speak perfect English. Not only are they all friendly and polite in the inimitable southeast Asian way, they are thoughtful. I am not in the least apprehensive about leaving in the room thousands of dollars worth of camera gear, whose value they are sure to know, nor a guitar whose monetary value they probably don't know, and whose sentimental value I'm certain they don't know. A bit of Scotch Tape for the scotch whisky saves us all from sin. RNJ
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