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#1 2009-10-03 18:27:14

Tigeree
Member
Registered: 2005-11-19
Posts: 13,883

Holiday complaint's

My uncle sent me a funny email about people who'd made holiday complaint's to their travel agent's.

Here is what some of them said:

"No one told us there would be fish in the sea, the children were startled."

"On my holiday to Goa, India, I was disgusted to find that all the restaurants served curry. I do not like spicy food at all."

"The beach was too sandy"

"We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as yellow, but it was white.

A guest in a Novotel in Australia complained when his soup was too thick and strong, he was inadvertently slurping the gravy at the time.

"We had to wait in a queue outside with no air conditioning."

"I was bitten by a mosquito - no one said they could bite."

"I compared my one-bedroom apartment to my friends three-bedroom apartment and mine was significantly smaller."

"We booked an excursion to a water park - no one told us we had to bring our swimming costume and towels."


People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.
~ Anton Chekhov
Cheer up, emo kid.

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#2 2009-10-03 18:45:29

bobbym
bumpkin
From: Bumpkinland
Registered: 2009-04-12
Posts: 109,606

Re: Holiday complaint's

Hi Tigeree;

The beach was too sandy

Well, it's true.

I was bitten by a mosquito - no one said they could bite.

They should put it in the brochure that the mosquitoes can and will bite.


In mathematics, you don't understand things. You just get used to them.
If it ain't broke, fix it until it is.
Always satisfy the Prime Directive of getting the right answer above all else.

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#3 2009-10-04 14:23:07

soha
Real Member
Registered: 2006-07-07
Posts: 2,530

Re: Holiday complaint's

hahahahahahahahahahahahhaha

All of them were funny................

Good work!!!!


"Let us realize that: the privilege to work is a gift, the power to work is a blessing, the love of work is success!" smile smile
- David O. McKay

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#4 2019-12-24 20:15:03

Monox D. I-Fly
Member
From: Indonesia
Registered: 2015-12-02
Posts: 2,000

Re: Holiday complaint's

Tigeree wrote:

"We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as yellow, but it was white.

This reminds me to when I was still a kindergarten student, I made a drawing of two mountains: One was colored blue, and the other was colored green. When my teacher asked me why one of them was green, I retorted "Have you ever take a vacation? Mountain is green if looked from near. This one is near, the blue one is far".


Actually I never watch Star Wars and not interested in it anyway, but I choose a Yoda card as my avatar in honor of our great friend bobbym who has passed away.
May his adventurous soul rest in peace at heaven.

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#5 2019-12-24 21:07:06

Jai Ganesh
Administrator
Registered: 2005-06-28
Posts: 48,367

Re: Holiday complaint's

Tigeree wrote:

"On my holiday to Goa, India, I was disgusted to find that all the restaurants served curry. I do not like spicy food at all."

Indian spices include a variety of spices grown across the Indian subcontinent (a sub-region of South Asia). With different climates in different parts of the country, India produces a variety of spices, many of which are native to the subcontinent, while others were imported from similar climates and have since been cultivated locally for centuries.

Spices are used in different forms: whole, chopped, ground, roasted, sautéed, fried, and as topping. They blend food to extract the nutrients and bind them in a palatable form. Some spices are added at the end as a flavouring and are typically heated in a pan with ghee or cooking oil before being added to a dish. Lighter spices are added last, and spices with strong flavour should be added first. "Curry" refers to any dish in Indian cuisine that contains several spices blended together, whether dry or with a gravy base. However, it also refers to Curry leaves, commonly used in South India.

(sautéed : Sautéing or sauteing, meaning 'jumped, bounced' in reference to tossing while cooking is a method of cooking that uses a relatively small amount of oil or fat in a shallow pan over relatively high heat. Various sauté methods exist, and sauté pans are a specific type of pan designed for sautéing.)

The spice trade developed throughout the Indian subcontinent and Middle East by at earliest 2000 BCE with cinnamon and black pepper, and in East Asia with herbs and pepper. The Egyptians used herbs for mummification and their demand for exotic spices and herbs helped stimulate world trade. The word spice comes from the Old French word espice, which became epice, and which came from the Latin root spec, the noun referring to "appearance, sort, kind": species has the same root. By 1000 BCE, medical systems based upon herbs could be found in China, Korea, and India. Early uses were connected with magic, medicine, religion, tradition, and preservation.

Cloves were used in Mesopotamia by 1700 BCE. The ancient Indian epic Ramayana mentions cloves. The Romans had cloves in the 1st century CE, as Pliny the Elder wrote about them.

The earliest written records of spices come from ancient Egyptian, Chinese, and Indian cultures. The Ebers Papyrus from Early Egyptians that dates from 1550 B.C.E. describes some eight hundred different medicinal remedies and numerous medicinal procedures.

Historians believe that nutmeg, which originates from the Banda Islands in Southeast Asia, was introduced to Europe in the 6th century BCE.

Indonesian merchants traveled around China, India, the Middle East, and the east coast of Africa. Arab merchants facilitated the routes through the Middle East and India. This resulted in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria being the main trading center for spices. The most important discovery prior to the European spice trade were the monsoon winds (40 CE). Sailing from Eastern spice cultivators to Western European consumers gradually replaced the land-locked spice routes once facilitated by the Middle East Arab caravans.

The Portuguese in India

In 1498 during the Age of Discovery, Vasco da Gama landed in Calicut, India and changed the course of history. Da Gama’s discovery of an alternate route to India marked the beginning of the short-lived dominion the Portuguese had on the spice trade. Under the impetus of the spice trade, Portugal expanded territorially and commercially. By the year 1511, the Portuguese were in control of the spice trade of the Malabar coast of India and Ceylon. Until the end of the 16th century, their monopoly on the spice trade to India was exceptionally profitable for the Portuguese.

The main product brought back to Lisbon was black pepper. Pipernigrum was as valuable as gold in the age of discovery. In the 16th century, over half of Portugal’s state revenue came from West African gold and Indian pepper and other spices. The proportion of the spices greatly outweighed the gold.

The Portuguese monopoly on the pepper trade was not a long one, however, because they faced many problems from competition and from the pepper growers. By the 1580s the imports of pepper into Venice had increased, and that into Portugal had declined. Portugal had little to no control over the areas where pepper was grown.  There were many instances of “illegal” trading. Cargoes were hijacked inland and taken to the Red Sea by coolies or bullocks over the mainland. When the 1590s rolled around, the Dutch attacked and successfully put an end to the Portuguese monopoly.

Spice Consumption in Europe during the Renaissance

People in the Renaissance found many uses for spices and the spice trade was basic to the Renaissance economy. Pepper was used to preserve and to flavor spoiled meat. Cloves and cinnamon were used as substitutes for cleanliness and ventilation. They were strewn across the floor to prevent foot odor from permeating the room. People carried around pieces of nutmeg fitted with a tiny grater, ready to season unsavory, unpalatable food. Around many a Renaissance throat there hung spicy pomander to ward off suffocation, illness, and odor. The spice supplier for most of the countries in Europe was India. Pepper originated out off Cochin and the Malabar Coast, cinnamon and cardamom were native to Ceylon, and cloves were grown in the coast of the Bay of Bengal.

The Dutch and English in India

With the waning power of the Portuguese apparent, the Dutch and the English saw their opportunity to gain power in the spice trade world in India.

The Dutch entered the competition in earnest at the end of the 16th century. Dutch explorers Van Houtman and Van Neck made friends with native sultans and organized trading posts which eventually gave Holland the monopoly in the early 17th century. In 1658, the cinnamon trade in Ceylon was under their control, and in 1663, the best pepper ports on the Malabar Coast were theirs. When prices for cinnamon or other spices fell too low in Amsterdam, they would burn the spices.

England was an immense threat to the Portuguese and later, the Dutch, because they were a power at sea.  In 1600, the British East India Company was chartered by Queen Elizabeth I, and its major objective was obtaining spice cargoes.  The British worked slowly in their attempt to gain the power away from the Dutch, and finally in 1780, England and Holland started a war which severely weakened Dutch power in India. By the 1800s everything that once belonged to Portugal and Holland was controlled by the British.

Modern Trade

Spice growers now export their products through their own organizations or through exporting houses. Spices are now distributed by food manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers. With the advances in technology and science, too, spices are now able to flourish in other parts of the world with similar climates as India.


It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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