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 The WWT has discovered a new universal constant, the
cost of an Italian dinner. An Italian Dinner costs $50 (or more),
regardless of where you are. You can pay more, but no less. If you order
fettuccini Alfredo, 50 bucks, pepperoni pizza, 50 bucks. I have eaten in
Rome, Milan, and San Diego; all cost 50 bucks. I made the mistake of
thinking that this was not true many times before I finally discovered the
law.
One of the objectives of the WWT is to invest in and pay for mistakes in
such a way that costs can be offset by sharing the information gained from
the mistakes with you the reader. There was the $100 money change scam in
the Prague railway station, the $100 Soiree scam in India, and the
pickpocket in Barcelona. After countless Italian dinners, it took three
sequential Italian dinners each escalating in overall cost to teach me the
$50 Italian dinner scam.
I hardly noticed it in Rome when two of us had a rather light snack in the
mid afternoon for $100. Three dollar meal advertisements splattered across
the windows did not resemble what was in the menu or mouthwatering visible
on the tables. I had no idea how much the meal cost until hours later when
I discovered how much a wad of the play money was really worth. I simply
thought that I had gotten cheated by a conniving waiter who took a hapless
tourist. In Milan, at a sidewalk cafe, I was almost relieved when I
discovered that 300,000 Lire was only $300 dollars for six people. The
300,000 scared me so bad that I did not observe the $50 dollar phenomenon.
I would probably never have noticed it until one enlightening night in San
Diego I bought Italian meals for 28 people with my Visa card. You who know
statistics know that twenty eight is a statistically significant number.
We needed a setting for the annual Holoknight ceremony, a ritual that
takes place somewhere in the world during an international optical
meeting. Each year the holoknight from the previous year selects an
optical scientist, who is well known throughout the community for his
contributions in the field of holography and for his reputation as an
international host. The idea is to promote international cooperation
through a brotherhood that commits to promoting friendship and technology
exchange between countries. The current holoknight presents the new
holoknight with a sword and parchment and takes the oath of the
brotherhood. The venue was the annual meeting of the International Society
for Optical Engineering held in San Diego during the first week of August.
As the holoknight from California, I accepted the responsibility of
arranging and hosting the dinner, a rather formidable task. After checking
out many restaurants and menus we settled on what seemed like the best of
a lot of unreasonable restaurant offers, an Italian Restaurant named
Ristorante A Itri, which was a short walk from the convention center where
the optical meetings were being held. A simple pizza and pasta menu seemed
perfect for the occasion. The restaurant gave us a special menu with a
limited selection of three pastas and five pizzas to cover vegetarians,
meat eaters, Jews, Mormons, and children, and these entrees ranged from
$7-$15.
The restaurant placed a few demands on me. First they wanted one bill,
paid by credit card, second, they wanted to add an 18% tip, and third they
wanted to add a surcharge of 15% to reserve an entire room for us. Now
this latter charge seems rather bizarre when you realize that the more we
spend the more they charge us for the room we are using. This is exactly
opposite of what makes more sense, namely, the more we spend, the less
they should charge for the room. Being not in a good negotiating position
I accepted their conditions. With taxes, these additional charges add
another 50% to a bill. If we had an average of about $10 for an entrée and
say $10 worth of beer or wine my total would add up to $30. Unfortunately
I did not do the math and simply guessed that $25 per head should cover
the average meal. I collected $25 from each attendee and let the non
drinkers off for $15 (In my experience the non drinkers always bitch when
the meal cost gets divided equally). I figured, what the hell, so I miss
it a little, it is all for a good cause, and even at $25 I was afraid
someone would complain about such an expensive pizza.
To keep the wine costs down, I made a second mistake by telling the
manager to serve just the house wine, a red and a white. I was assuming
that the house wine was stored in fifty gallon drums and drained off into
a pitcher for a few dollars a liter. I had forgotten that some restaurants
get their house wine by sending the wine steward to Napa Valley for a week
end. There he cuts a deal with a winery to bottle a special label and sell
it only to the restaurant so no one can even guess how much it should
cost. Unfortunately this was such a restaurant.
I knew I was in a little trouble when the first bottle crossed the table
and I saw the label. When I tasted the wine, I knew I was in more trouble.
It did not take a connoisseur of wine to tell that this was no Gallo jug
wine.
At that point the financial situation began to escalate and I began to
wonder how bad this could get. We had invited about 30 scientists from all
over the world expecting 15 to 20 to show up. Twenty-eight showed up, and
we had to set another table.
The dinner that should have started at 7:15, was delayed until 8 leaving
everyone with nothing to do but drink wine and chew on foccacia. Every two
minutes I would hear someone yelling, "We need more Cabernet". Seeing the
situation becoming more and more grim, I consoled myself by imagining what
a great story this was going to make. I felt some relief seeing a few non
drinkers sipping water and more when a few lower priced pizzas began to
arrive.
The program, which was scheduled to begin at 8:00 started at 9:30. I had
scheduled six speakers to give a five minute, light-hearted sketch on
their lives and loves in the field. It was called "How I got into this and
where I am taking it (or where it is taking me)". Werner Juptner from
Bremen Germany led off (he took 15 minutes). Others were averaging about
10 and Wolfgang Osten presented an amazing 30 minute PowerPoint
presentation. To make sure we didn’t leave anyone out we then began asking
others to speak, even though they were not really prepared. Enough
Chardonnay makes almost any speech tolerable (and possible), so no one
complained even when we began to hear life stories. It was almost 11 when
the knighting ceremony began and most of us were roaring drunk. I had
enough cabernet in me by this time that I had even stopped worrying about
the financial debacle.
We had chosen as the millennium holoknight, Professor Malgorzata
Kujawinska, from Poland. It was a touching, tear-jerking service with the
reigning holoknight, "Mitsuo of Tokyo" touching her shoulders with a
Samurai sword as she kneeled before him. She exclaimed that it was the
best award she had ever received. We all had to toast her, and more
bottles were opened. I could see a lot of half filled bottles sitting
around everywhere. Wo is me. I started to worry again.
I figured finally, I had better take my medicine and hand over my Visa
card to the manager. It was getting so late I thought he may be ready to
kick us out anyway. He then asked me "How about dessert"? I responded
quickly with a negatory, imagining that this crew is so full of wine by
now there cannot possibly be room for dessert. "Okay, then how about at
least coffee", he responded.
"Okay, what the hell, a few cups of coffee can't make it much worse than
it already is" I reasoned. So I headed to the bathroom to drain off some
of the cabernet.
Upon returning from the bathroom the scene almost threw me into cardiac
arrest. Two waiters were passing through the crowd with lush dessert carts
with desserts that were more works of art than dessert. At this point some
of the people were wondering "Wow, what a deal!" while a few of the more
naïve were still trying to make sure they got their $25 worth. One of the
most popular dishes had about a gallon of ice cream stacked into a
mountainous pyramid of scoops with all sorts of protruding decorations.
One of these could easily have served five people. In addition, dessert
coffees, cappuccino, and liquors began arriving. I wondered if the cashier
might have a gun hidden under the counter that I could shoot myself with.
Finally, nearing midnight, the manager seemed satisfied to bring me the
bill. The first thing I noticed was the cost of my lesson, a neat $1500
figure at the bottom. The next think I noticed was that the tip space had
been left blank. “Didn't you already add 18%?”
"Yes," he replied, " but you do have the option to add a little more if
you would care to".
“Give me a break, sir!”
Upon analysis of the bill, I could see that we had consumed 24 liters of
wine, which with not too great a surprise went for $28 a bottle. I had not
collected enough money even to pay the bar bill.
But this did make me realize once and for all that an Italian meal cost
$50, no matter where you get it or what you eat. I now have enough
statistics to prove this.
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