Almost committing a crime

It was a couple of hours later, while I was in the shower, contemplating the oddness of my predicament, when a thought struck me. I effectively threatened a nice old Mexican lady fixing the room, “Can I give you your extremities later?”

Must have set her back a bit, being in a strange country, with some even stranger asian geek suggesting not only that he would cut her up, but that he would actually return certain body parts at a later time. And he was smiling too, like it was all perfectly natural.

There was no such violence, however. That’s why it was funny.


A couple of days ago, I was comfortably immersed in my hotel desk doing some internet research, when the chambermaid arrived to fix up the room. I booked the room for cleaning just to keep it decent, and we often leave a tip just to make sure we comply with the social mores of this new cultural environment. This day though I had all of five dollars on my pocket and would hardly be happy if I had to toss it all away as gratuity.

So, here I was seated on the desk as the Mexican lady started doing her stuff…fixing the sheets, cleaning the bath, this and that, you know, hotel stuff. All this time I wanted to ask if it was ok to give her the tip later that afternoon as I did not have enough change. But she no habla ingles so I was screwed.

Aha, my mac, this precious little thing, had a translation widget! I was smiling, smug, as I decided to type my question and let the nice lady read it. Impress her with the nuances of modern technology. Shrink the world and bind cultures! This was world peace stuff. I translated “can I give you your tip later?” and she laughed a little. I was beaming with pride. She can only have been awed.

Ok, at the time it happened I was fairly self-absorbed and impressed with my own genius that I never realized I could have it all wrong. This was a mac, after all, and I was a foreign lawyer full of techie panache. I could not be wrong. Ever.

I was glad though that as she didn’t scream out of the room, arms flailing, demanding justice. As she stepped out of the room that day, she was nice enough to tell me, in deep Spanish dubbed with signs, that I probably meant “proponidad” as a translation for gratuity. Instead of "extremidad" for tip. I guess the mac just thought I was the godfather or something. Or a debonair member of the sputnik gang.