Every now and then, the big question arises of whether someone here is especially nice to those who are obviously foreign. I probably shouldn't worry about it, since I don't go around trying to take advantage of anything, and besides, the issue probably swings both ways, i.e. the guy at the lime juice stand just might try to charge me a bit extra because I'm white. I actually did have a run-in with a lime juice hawker just last night, but I don't think he was racist, just not very bright.
In any case, my story of the week. The entire office went out to lunch on Friday at an Indian place - a very swanky and probably expensive one. (It was on the boss, so the rest of us never saw the bill.) The occasion was that our chief operating officer was in town. It proved to be a good way to get to know the guy. But that's beside the point. The point is, when the waiter came to take orders, we ended up all ordering a lunch formula menu sort of like they have in France. For the main course, I asked if they had my favorite Indian dish, chicken sagwalla (which I hadn't seen on the menu). He said no, but he could talk to the chef about it. I assured him that wouldn't be necessary and settled for chicken tikka. It was quite good, anyhow. But the formula included free seconds of anything we wanted. When I asked for seconds of the chicken, he brought out...chicken sagwalla!
Come to think of it, if there was a deciding factor in whether or not to go the extra mile for the picky American, it was probably that they knew our bill was going to be quite large and they wanted to make it worth our while so we might consider them for our next corporate lunch. I can live with that.
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