I've been noticing for a while that the economics of the cafeteria at my workplace are a bit strange, but yesterday it bumped itself right up to entry-deserving territory.

Like George Costanza, you might say the cafeteria is very...careful...with money. They have signs detailing their prices near the cash register, but most of the actual food items available are not listed. Instead, these signs indicate the cost for things like "hot water," "ice water in a cup," "napkins," "forks", "ketchup packets" and "empty plate." All the sorts of things you might think would come along with the meal. You can tell they're not wasting any money on the signs, they're plain printed paper taped up, with sloppily handwritten additions every so often. To be fair, I don't think they've ever charged me for my plastic fork, although I usually grab it after I've paid just in case they were thinking about it. I'm guessing the idea is to discourage some of the more economically disadvantaged patients from taking the opportunity to hoard all their dinnerware from the place, but can't they deal with that when it happens? Besides it's not like security's tight, in fact I sometimes stand at the cash register for a few minutes before an employee even shows themselves, so if someone really wants some plates, they'll get the plates.

The ironic part (you knew it was coming) is that although I get the same thing most days, a croissant and an orange Slice, and a banana if they're not too green, the price seems to fluctuate quite a bit. I haven't written down any specific figures, since that would kind of take away from the wonder of it all, but I'm pretty sure I've been charged amounts ranging from $2.15 to over $3. I rather doubt the price of croissants that come in plastic wrap is seasonal, so I chalk it up to employees forming their own opinions over time about what things cost, and possibly sometimes mistaking my soda for a coffee (it all goes in styrofoam cups with opaque lids).

Oh right, the yesterday part. Yesterday I was there bright and early when they have breakfast selections, which on average are even more unappetizing than the lunch ones. The color of the ham (at least I assume it's ham) they put on top of the eggs is nearest that of a pink highlighter. The woman in front of me was getting some bacon, and out of curiosity asked how she was being charged for it. "By the piece." By the piece of bacon....what a world.

Things like this make me think, that sometimes when we see how ridiculous things are in other countries, we fail to realize that equally silly things can be found in our own. Certainly there is an extent to which the collective philosophy stereotype of a people influences the way they handle everyday, universal things, but it's tempting to exaggerate it. Very tempting.... I can't help myself...

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This bit is too self-promoting to get its own entry, but I can't remain silent. Today a photographer for the New York Times came to our lab and took about 3 rolls of pictures of us and the robot. She had a digital SLR but confessed she only uses it as a substitute for a Polaroid. Apparently a reporter already conducted an interview over the phone with my boss, and it's pretty likely they'll run a story, timing unknown but assumedly within the next few weeks. If I were a New York Times reporter, working on a story that was happening in New York, I think I would go to the trouble of actually taking a subway ride up and seeing the damn robot, but we're not complaining, and probably it won't be a very big story. We hope this doesn't preclude them running another story once we're further along in the project, like having a robot testing in an OR, because that will probably be even more valuable on the business side of things. But it would certainly be extremely valuable now in many ways, and needless to say exciting.

Later today we all went to the surgery department's Christmas party. There's nothing quite like a roomful of slightly drunk surgeons releasing colossal amounts of stress. One of them suggested we go socialize with the physical therapists; we ended up getting dragged into conversation with a guy who vehemently insisted we change our project to be robots that have sex (with each other or with humans, I don't know which) in an operating room, which he proudly called "ROBOT SEX 2005!!!" Later he kept walking by us and whispering "robot sex 2005..." The others told us they barely knew him.