Blog 9: “the black peppercorn was special”

It seems that every long term job that I go on (two to three months), there is always something I find out about in the second half of the trip that would have made the first half way better. It might be a restaurant that has fantastic breadsticks or that my room key gets me six free wings at a sports bar (actually, the latter we knew about at the beginning of the job and took full advantage of it). Indeed, it happened again on this job.

For gold level members of the Marriott rewards program, you get access to the executive lounge on the tenth floor. Going into this job, I was a brand new member of Marriott's rewards program but after staying here ten days, I became a gold member. With that said, I thought I had to wait for the points in the program to apply to my stay before I officially became gold but apparently that's not true. A few nights ago, I finally checked out the executive lounge and I am a little upset I have not been visiting this place since my eleventh night here.

You walk into the lounge and are greeted by a guy that asks for your room number to verify you are clear to be in the lounge. I was cleared. The entire front and side walls of the room are windows and you get a really nice view of Chennai. At night, it has that Las Vegas effect I was talking about. The city just looks incredibly nice at night.

In front on me was a spread of appetizers: nachos and salsa, bruschetta, mini-sandwiches, and other things of that nature. Then, I looked to the left and there it was, lo and behold, free vodka, rum, whiskey, gin, and beer. What!? Really? Apparently my free vodka radar doesn't work if I am separated by more than four floors from it (my room is on the fifth floor). Well, this couldn't get much better, but then I looked next to that and there were onion rings! It was like for a split second I was back in America. There was also beef tenderloin with peppers, these fried mashed potato things, and chicken with crushed black peppercorn. The chicken with the black peppercorn was special because in the pepper shakers here, they only have white pepper. Sure, white pepper is good, but black pepper was one of those tastes that had eluded me for nearly forty days up until that point; and that is far too long.

Naturally, I poured myself a vodka and diet. Next, I grabbed a little bit of everything from the food buffet they had set up. Lastly, I found myself a comfy couch in front of a television and just forgot about the fact I was in India for a while. After downing the vodka and diet, I grabbed a whiskey and diet. After hanging out in the lounge for about a half hour to forty-five minutes, I decided it was time to head back tot he room.

Of course though, free alcohol beckons other people and there shows up a couple guys from the plant. We decided then it would be a fantastic idea to split a few Kingfishers (pretty much the official beer of Chennai) and b.s. for a while. A few beers in then, somehow euchre is brought up and two of the guys from Indianapolis challenge myself and a guy from Michigan to an “Indiana vs. the World” euchre match. We, of course, gladly accepted but we had a problem. We had, and still have, no cards. That is what I am on my way to do as I type this in the backseat of a Ford Ikon. I am on my way to find a deck of cards so I can show someone who is boss at euchre. I'll let you know how that turns out.

Hmm, that was an abrupt ending.