A man of principles

I’m a man of honour who lives by a few moral standards. One of these is: squeeze the last drop out of every rupee. Left to myself, I’m able to adhere to this principle. For example, though I frequently miss breakfast when I travel, I don’t do this if breakfast is included in the room rate. Sometimes, when the meeting organizers insist on “starting bright and early”, this means reaching the breakfast area at 7.15 a.m., a time when I’m less awake than hungry, groggily loading up my plate and eating my painful way through it. I do this whether I have paid for the room or my company because it’s the principle of the thing, not the money. Or rather, the money is the principle, not whose money.

However I’m often thwarted from following the path of honour by my wife.

Many parking lots in Singapore require drivers to display pre-paid parking tickets with the date and time of parking punched out in half-hour slots. Last month my wife requested me to drive her on a specific shopping errand. At the parking lot, before punching holes in the ticket, I turned to her.

“Will you be done in half an hour?”

“Why?” she asked.

“So that I can punch the appropriate time in this parking coupon.”

“Oh, in that case, make it one hour – to be safe.”

I explained that it was more important not to waste a punched coupon than ‘to be safe’ but she stuck to her estimate, so I punched two half-hour coupons worth 50 cents each and accompanied her to the shop.

She browsed around for five minutes; then turned to me.

“Nah,” she said, “Take me to Kallang.”

“Keep looking.” I said and consulted my watch. “You have another 53 minutes.”

“I don’t need 53 minutes – take me to Kallang now.”

“It doesn’t matter whether you need it or not. I’ve punched the holes, so please shop here for a while. I don’t mind squandering the last 10 minutes,” I added magnanimously.

Instead of listening to the cool voice of reason, she simply walked to the car and got inside. I joined her, reluctantly. But I did not start the car.

“Why don’t we sit and chat?” I suggested, looking at my watch. “For about 47 minutes? Only last night, when I was watching the US Open, you complained that we don’t talk enough.”

“Please drive,” she said. “I’m not exactly in the mood to chat right now. But if you drive quickly, you can use the balance coupon value at the Kallang car park.”

“Ok,” I said grimly and drove with quiet aggression to the car park in Kallang. But when I reached there I discovered the car park had been changed to an automated system where the gate opens after silently recording the electronic payment device on your car’s dashboard and equally quietly deducts the parking fee when you leave. So, in addition to the 13 minutes lost in transit, I squandered another 34 minutes of paid juice on my punched parking tickets: it was painful for a man of my sturdy ethos.

A few days after that incident, I got another nasty shock. In my company’s year-end party last December, I had drawn the coveted prize at the lucky draw: airfare and two nights’ stay for two in a resort in Bali. As I sat watching a programme about Indonesia on television in October, I suddenly realized that I had forgotten about it. The reader will appreciate how painful it must have been for a man of such sturdy moral character, who flinches at wasting cents of paid parking, to discover he had allowed such an attractive freebie to expire.

“Oh, no!” I cried in dismay to my wife. “I think our free hotel stay at Bali has expired.”

She retrieved the vouchers and checked them.

“You’re right,” she said. “The hotel offer expired on 31^st August. But the flight tickets are valid till 30^th November. So if we plan it now, we only have to pay for the hotel.”

Once again she was preventing me from living according to my principles.

“Your plan is a reasonable one,” I said, “for a normal person. But it falls short of the high standards of a man of my staunch principles. If someone goofs up and tries to deprive me of a freebie, I resist.”

“Even if that someone is you?” she asked.

Ignoring the unnecessary question, I called the hotel in Bali and tried to explain the situation to reservations but the lady did not express any sympathy. Suddenly I got a brilliant idea for appealing to her. I handed the phone to my wife.

“Convince her to extend our freebie stay,” I whispered.

My wife spoke sweetly into the phone and managed to get connected to the hotel manager. To him she explained how deeply she and I and our neighbours and their friends all loved his hotel chain’s wonderful properties.

“But your spectacular locations are sometimes overshadowed by the impeccable service of your staff,” she gushed. “And the food in your restaurants…” After showering him with more unabashed approbation she said, “I was looking forward to a two-day free stay we had been gifted but, despite my telling him ten times, my husband forgot to redeem the vouchers.” She elaborated on her husband’s propensity to do this, citing three different examples.

The next day I got an email from the manager confirming an extension of our vouchers till end-November.

“Not bad,” I said to my wife. “You’re learning from me. Now please remember, a free breakfast is included with the free room. So please don’t talk about skipping breakfast when we’re there. Skip dinner if you have to.”