Unit 3

This Way for Suite Dreams

Predicting

This passage describes the features that its writer expects to find in his 'Dream Hotel'.

It also includes the features which might be found in a 'Nightmare Hotel'. Before you

read the passage, answer the following questions:

1. What do you think the writer means by "Dream hotels" and "Nightmare Hotels?"

2. Write 10 words (5 positives- 5 negative) which you expect to find in the passage.

3. Put 5 of these words in sentences that express your expectations regarding good

and bad hotels.

……………………………………………………………

Now read the passage and find out how many, if any, of the words you expected are
really used in the passage.

One of the factors that sets Dream Hotels apart is the speed and willingness with
which the staff do their jobs. Take room service. In your really classy Dream Hotel
this function is performed by an elite corps of deaf mutes who, especially when they
are bringing breakfast, know that you do not wish to speak. They maintain a monastic
silence in your presence. They bring you food that is hot. They accept your tip, even if
it's in the wrong currency, with a small, reverential bow. Then, pocketing your
worthless dong or piaster without a murmur, they depart as quickly and quietly as
they came.
 Compare that with the kind of thing one is likely to find in the lesser British
hostelries patronized by us working journos. When you ring for room service the man
at the desk often does not know what room service is. You urge him to make a few
inquiries, and eventually, sucking hard at his teeth, he connects you to the laundry.
When you finally get through to the appropriate person, you ask, let's say, for tea and
toasted sandwiches. Then you must be patient. During the time it takes to come you
can write a novel, go bald, change sex, perhaps even retire. And when it does arrive,
of course, it isn't toasted sandwiches at all. It is yesterday's scones. And the pot
contains tepid water and solitary tea-bag floating on the surface like a dead frog in a
pond.
The kind of personal service I am talking about is exemplified by a certain type of
South Korean geisha house where the guest, from the moment he enters the door,
doesn't use his hands. His jacket is removed by a sylph who then sits him down,
removes his tie, lifts the glass to his lips, knots a napkin around his neck and proceeds
to shove dinner into his mouth. Afterwards she wipes the gravy from his chin,
scratches his ear, loosens his belt, tips the cognac down his throat and, from time to
time, slides a smouldering Romeo y Julieta between his teeth.
You may find that kind of attention somewhat excessive. If so, how else do you judge
a 'Dream Hotel'? Well, a significant indicator of the standards it aspires to is its lifts.
Though they may be driven by men dressed like Mexican generals, the machines
themselves seem to have borrowed various important design details from the people
who invented the padded cell. A real five-star deluxe lift ought to have a small, well-
stocked bar in the corner, together with a gipsy violinist and a waiter ready to offer
the traveller a glass of gin and an onion on a stick whenever he steps aboard. The
potential of the lift as a social center, a place for businessmen or lovers to meet, has
not yet, alas, been recognized by even the most enlightened managements.
The worst hotel lifts in the world- and for that matter, the worst hotels- are in
Russia. Several years ago I had the misfortune to stay at a Moscow establishment so
dreadful that its name, mercifully, has been utterly erased from my memory. But it
was about 80 storeys high, and built by Stalin when his megalomania was starting to
give his doctors serious cause for concern. My room was just under the roof and,
when the view wasn't locked in by 10/10ths cloud cover, I was able to nod to the
Aeroflot pilots engaged in a holding pattern over the city. My only way back to earth,
other than through the window, was the lifts. These were operated by female hammer-
throwers disqualified from competition because they'd overdone the steroids and their
chests were getting hairy. A 15-minute wait for a lift was routine. But then, having
opened her doors, the operator liked to pretend she had not seen you and, playfully,
crashed them shut again in your face.
I got around that one by using the Lipstick Tactic. Advised by a friend who had been
there before, I entered the USSR with several dozen of the things. 'As soon as you get
to the hotel, start passing them about,' she said. 'Word will spread. Favors will be
granted.' Well, she was right. The lipsticks got me lift rides, and the lipsticks got me
food. I now realize in retrospect, that the function of the waitresses down in the vast,
echoing restaurant was to hold up the pillars. The provision of meals or service was
not listed among their duties. For hours after hour they leant heroically against their
concrete columns, clearly aware that even a few seconds' absence would pose grave
threats to the structural integrity of the building.
But I got my dinner, and I got it fast, by standing a Boots's 17 Gleamer in
'Satsuma' between my knife and fork the instant I sat down. Others were not so lucky.
One evening I shared my table with anAfrican who, faint with hunger, eventually laid
his head on the placement and began weeping. I found myself witnessing a full-scale
nervous breakdown, but though it distressed me, it did not distress the waitresses.
Grins flickered from pillar to pillar. They thought it was good cabaret.
……………………………………………………………
(Alexander Frater in The Observer Colour Magazine)

Think about the passage.

How do you find the passage? Is it difficult? If the answer is yes, try to decide the
reasons of difficulty.
Is it full of difficult words? Let's try to solve this problem. Select 10 difficult words
and apply the following two-step strategy to get to know their meanings.
(i) Decide what part of speech the word is. Is it a verb, a noun, an adjective, or an
adverb? This can be decided according to meaning, form and the position of the word.

(ii) Try to find a part of the word that you know. Take, e.g. the word "reverential."
You can guess it is an adjective because of its form and also because it is followed by
a noun, "bow." If you know the meaning of the first part of the word "revere," you can
easily guess that it means something related to respect and that would be enough for
you to understand the sentence. There are also affixes with definite meanings like
"pre", "post", "contra", "sub", etc. Get yourself acquainted with these affixes.
(iii) Try to guess the meaning from context.
(iv)Try using context clues to get the meaning.There are punctuation marks that are
usually followed by explanations of the words the precede them. The word "or," e.g.
is followed by an explanation or a synonym of the word that came before it. If you do
not understand the meaning of the word "dong" in the first paragraph, you can easily
guess it from the word piaster that comes after it.
There are other important clues that could be divided into three types:
1. Punctuation clues, e.g., comma, parentheses, and hyphen/dashes.
A punctuation mark is not just a form that has a certain place in a sentence like the
“comma” after the word “however” or the full stop at the end of a sentence. Some
punctuation marks or symbols are inserted in certain places to indicate that what was
written before the mark will be explained by what will come after it. These marks or
symbols are particularly important for you because they help you understand or at
least get closer to the meaning,e.g., if you find punctuation symbols like “comma” (,),
parentheses (- sentence-, (sentence), , sentence, or dashes, you expect an explanation
of what was written just before these symbols.

2. Restatement clues.
If you do not understand a word or a sentence, it might help if it was said in another
way changing the words or the structure. It is useful, therefore to be acquainted with
some of the words that indicate that a restatement of what has just been said will
follow these restatement markers. Examples of restatement clues:
Or, that is, In other words, i.e.

3. Examples:
A familiar way to explain something is to give examples of it. There are words that
indicate that an example of something that has just been mentioned will follow.
Words like “such as”, “for example”, or the abbreviation, e.g. are indicators that
symbols will follow.

………………………………………………………….
(1) Find a simile and a metaphor in the first two paragraphs and explain how they
enhance the author's description of good and bad hotels.
…………………………………………………
(2) Which of the following adjectives can be used to describe the passage? Give two
sentence as an evidence for each answer.
a. serious
b.sarcastic
c.obscure
d.objective
e.exaggerative
f.to the point
g.curt
h. hilarious
i. funny
j. stereotypical
………………………………………………
(3) "Take room service."
Who is the author addressing in the previous sentence?
…………………………………………….
(4) In the previous sentence, the author is
(a) Giving an order to someone to serve him
(b) Making a suggestion
(c) Giving an example
(d) Giving an invitation
………………………………………………
(5)Rewrite the underlined sentences changing the vocabulary and structures.
(6) Comment on the use of the following words;
(a) monastic
(b)pond
(c) steps aboard
(d) cabaret
………………………………………………
(7) At the beginning of the passage the author mentions "speed" and "willingness" as his
criteria for judging a hotel. Find evidence of both in good hotels and their opposites in
bad hotels.
………………………………………………
(8) Choose the correct answer:
i.In an elite hotel the staff do not talk while they serve breakfast because;
(a)They have disabilities that make them unable to hear or speak
(b)They are arrogant
(c) They are angry at the little tips they receive
(d) They respect the privacy of the clients.
ii. Sucking up at a person's teeth is a sign of
(a) politeness
(b) impatience
(c) friendliness
(d) merriment
iii. The underlined pronoun "it" refers to
(a) tea
(b) sandwiches
(c) breakfast
(d) answer of the telephone call
iv. A"Boots's 17 Gleamer in 'Satsuma'"is very probably
(a) a very effective gun
(b) a foreign currency
(c) the make of a lipstick
(d) the name of the meal the author was having
v. The writer works as a
(a) businessman
(b) pilot
(c) journalist
(d) a travel agent
vi. In paragraph no.3, the writer
(a) gives a factual account of what happens in a luxurious hotel.
(b) gives his personal expectations of what should happen in a luxurious hotel.
(c) describes the manners of having food in a hotel restaurant.
(d) sets the criteria for selecting hotel staff.
vii. In paragraph 3, "Romeo y Julieta" very probably refers to
(a) a famous play by William Shakespeare
(b) a type of food or hot drink
(c) a thermometer to make sure he has the right body temperature
(d) a fancy cigar

viii. The statement "slides a smouldering Romeo y Julieta between his teeth" implies
(a) that the hotel staff member wants to burn the guest's tongue.
(b) a policy to render maximum service to the guest
(c) that smoking is allowed in the premises.
(d) a trick to make the guest pay more.
ix. The underlined word "traveller" refers to
(a) a guest in the hotel
(b) a person who has just arrived from a long trip.
(c) a person leaving a plane who has just landed
(d) a person who loves onions as an appetizer.
x. The lifts in the Russian hotel were run by
(a) women who practiced hammer throwing before they were disqualified.
(b) rough women whose physiques lack feminine charm.
(c) women who take steroids regularly.
(d) women who take overdoses of steroids to win athletic competitions.
………………………………………………
(9) Explain the metaphor in the doubly underlined part in paragraph 4 and show how it
contributes to the author's point of view.
(10) According to the author, what is the job of the waitresses in the Russian restaurant?
………………………………………………
(11) Give one word to describe the "Lipstick Tactic."
……………………………………………
(12) In both Unit 1 and Unit 2 writers make abundant use of metaphors and similes yet
the tone differs significantly in both texts. Explain.
………………………………………………………………
13. What is the significance and semantic value of using the word “general” and the
words “padded cell”, and the word “traveller” and the word “aboard”?
……………………………………………………………..
There are hilarious examples of humor based upon exaggeration and the borrowing of
words that come from a totally different milieu. The use of the word “traveller” in the
paragraph paves the way for the metaphors in the following paragraph where the writer
describes the 80-storey building that was established during the Stalin period. To use the
lift to get from the ground level to the highest level is like traveling to the outer space and
back, since the writer says to get back to “earth”. The writer, however, is prudent enough
to skip mentioning the name of the hotel pretending that he no longer remembers it to
avoid a law action against himself or the journal should the hotel owners be offended.
To say that the lifts were operated by “Mexican generals” could at first be considered a
sign of great respect to the hosts but adding the two ominous words “padded cells” raises
negative feelings since the combination of the two phrases (Mexican generals) and
(padded cells) easily brings to the readers’ minds the figure of prisoners locked in a tight
cell that is guarded by high rank police officers.