It's quiet here by the pool, and the wireless internet is wonderful. I have lots of good books to read (we stocked up at Maker Faire) and with the computer and a nice soft down comforter on the bed I'll feel good as new when the guys get home tonight. *sigh*
The hotel provides a big buffet for breakfast and dinner, and our entertainment in the morning is watching the food one particular hotel guest can pack away. The first few days we were here, we politely observed without comment, but the last few days it's been a race to get down in the morning to watch this master of consumption at work.
He's a tiny little chinese guy who probably weighs just over a hundred pounds. He sits by himself and eats, and eats and EATS.
He starts with a plate piled high with sausage and hash brown patties, a dozen of each at least. Yesterday there was bacon instead of sausage and he must have had at least three pounds of it stacked on his plate. It was fascinating watching it disappear, one slice after another, down the hatch.
Next come the waffles...these are huge waffles that you cook yourself on an electric griddle. They are the size of a dinner plate, and about an inch thick. Our hero sticks his fork in the middle of the waffle, and holing it upside down, he begins working his way around it, from the outside. The man is like a machine...chomping, chomping ...or maybe it's more accurate to say he nibbles, till it's al gone. He eats carefully and methodically, not stuffing and belching...he is quite polite, though he doesn't have western cutlery mastered yet.
And the fruit.....he loads up a big cereal bowl with cubed melon and packs that away. Sometimes two bowls. And yogurt, a few containers at least, and while he's eating his other food, he eats bananas; half a banana to a bite, with one hand, while holding his waffle carefully balanced on the end of his fork in the other hand. He is a marvel! At the side of his plate he has another bowl of granola and milk, or sometimes Fruitloops, that he somehow manages to sneak in with all the rest of his food.
He never speaks, and rarely takes his eyes off the TV in the corner of the room while he eats. I don't know where he goes in the daytime, but we suspect he works at one of the huge corporate headquarters that surround the hotel. Wal Mart's head office is within walking distance, and my theory is that he was sent here as a trade delegate by his country to sell more cheap consumer goods to Americans. Daniel thinks he's a computer genius making six figures, working at the Hitachi headquarters across the street, and that he's saving so much on groceries that he will soon be a millionaire.
I'ts kind of impossible not to speculate about him. He shows no evidence that he is aware his eating is anything out of the ordinary. The food is there, free for the taking, and I imagine that's not the case in his past life, whatever that may be.
When he is finally finished, he stands up, clears his table completely, and leaves quietly, (without even staggering or loosening the waist of his one blue suit!) He usually fills up two styrofoam cups with sausage and hash browns from the buffet table to take with him, though I can't imagine him being hungry for days after consuming that much at one go.
(*ahem*...do toothpick people watch me at a buffet table with the same fascination and disbelief?)
