Breakfast alone

A few things I've noticed about having breakfast alone on the weekends.

1. You can read the papers comfortably because there's enough room at the table. And also because you're not being rude and ignoring anyone.

2. You notice more things around you, because you haven't actually got an engaging conversation going on at your own table.

So, a randomly scary thing I noticed while at breakfast. There weren't that many screaming children. And it was Sunday!!! Okay I have to admit that part of it was because there were well-mannered children. But...BUT there were two families sitting near me. Just parents and a young child at each table. The first couple had their daughter watching Upin & Ipin or something like that on the iPad. The other couple, had their son staring at Barney on the PSP. I know I'm not kid expert but is that really what parents want to allow their kids to do at the table during meals? The PSP kid was just pretty much staring at the screen while the mum holds the cup and makes him take several sips of juice, and then the dad feeds him a mouthful of food at a time. Again I'm no expert, but I really don't think that kid looked like he had any kind of disability or anything. He just looked like he couldn't be bothered to look away from his show. If that's what kids are doing during meals, then tell me, during what activity should they multitask and learn about table manners?

Then again, I'm the one reading the papers at the table, right?

Royale Bintang The Curve

So another one of my sporadic hotel reviews.

My family and I recently stayed at the Royale Bintang at The Curve. It's connected to the shopping center and is just opposite Ikano and Ikea. It's a four-star hotel, looks really nice...except for this super random fake life-sized camel at the entrance.

Great, right?

Not.

Check in time is at 2pm. We arrived in KL a bit early so we decided to go elsewhere first before checking in. At 2.15pm I get a call from the hotel asking when we're arriving because it's already past check in time. I assure them we're on the way - we're just running a little late and are a little lost.

We arrive at about 2.30 and I hurry over to the reception desk. And I'm told my room is not ready. WTF? Okay nevermind....she gives me a voucher for a welcome drink. We sit and have our drinks...in a leisurely manner, mind you. And it's about another 15-20 minutes before I go and check on the status of the room again.

They tell me that it's still not ready and will probably be yet another half hour. They can't locate the previous tenants of the room who still haven't checked out.

15 minutes later, they said it would be another 20 minutes.

WTF.

One of them tells us the latest check out they can give us as compensation is 1.30pm. She's the most junior staff amongst them, I think. The next guy says guests can have checkout as late as 4pm or 6pm. And the manager says it's typical for them to allow guests late check out for free. They obviously haven't gotten their stories straight. Until now, I still don't know which one of them is accurate.

Anyway by the time we check in it's past 3pm. We've asked them to compensate us for the super long delay by allowing us a late check out. Which the manager agrees to and claims he's set our key cards to allow for a 2pm check out.

So we go about our business and the next day we have lunch and come back at 1.30. And our key cards don't work. Luckily housekeeping is somewhere down the corridor and see us and open the door for us.

All in all they were just hopeless. Service was poor and they basically promised things and did not deliver. And then took an apathetic attitude to things when we complained.