The Breakfast Buffet

The Breakfast Buffet is indeed turning out to be one of the most interesting, entertaining and edifying aspect of my vacations lately. Keeping aside the fact that it provides nourishment, sustenance and necessary fuel for the rest of the morning - and in some cases till late afternoon, how I have come to realize the above mentioned benefits is what I shall endeavour to explain in what follows.
As it turns out most of our vacations ( i.e. R and mine ) have breakfast included as part of the tariff. We do not happen to be of the adventurous back-packing type of travellers - our vacation destinations so far have been limited to popular tourist destinations or large metro cities. We book our holidays on the Internet or through well known travel and tour operators. Almost always, we stay in hotels and resorts where breakfast is served in large lobbies or coffee shops.
I would claim that breakfast is the best time of the day to get acquainted with fellow guests and hotel staff. My guess is that in typical vacations destinations a majority of the guests in the hotel also do land up for the breakfast buffet. Breakfast time is also when the restaurant / coffee shop is most crowded since most folks have their other meals as per their plans and convenience. Over the period of your stay you get to know about complete strangers and their families. You get to catch bits and pieces of their conversation, you start guessing their nationalities or states / cities where they have come from , their profession etc. Over the period of stay , as you keep meeting them at breakfast each day , the familiarity grows. Quite often you run into them again in the actual tourist hot spots, shopping areas etc. and you get to know even more about them.
In addition, if you do happen to be a keen observer, you would also start noticing food habits and what kind of food other guests stack on their plates. There are those slim and fit types - folks who partake just fruits and cereal. Then you have the coffee, croissants and juice only types - these are bony , angular types - possibly heavy smokers who do not care much about breakfast. Then you have the large beefy families. whose kids pile on huge mounds of protein stuff on their plates. The other side of the spectrum consist of Desi vegetarians - people who are in constant suspicion of the contents of the dishes and therefore tend to focus more on the breads, juices and fruits. Indeed a great way to know about people and cultures ! And that's not all - the buffet teaches you to be patient. This happens at the so called 'Live Counter' where the staff prepare eggs, dosas etc. to order. These counters are quite popular and if you too are one who would like your stuff hot off the skillet, you need to have patience as one of your virtues.

The Breakfast Buffet also challenges the best management brains since it poses a complex optimization problem with respect to the following: What is the optimum choice of items and corresponding quantity that one should stack on ones plate. On one hand you have already paid for the breakfast as part of your tariff, then you also need to consider that you need nourishment till your next meal, and you also need to watch your calories, fat, cholesterol etc., and at any point of time choice must also be governed by the state of your digestion and availability of and access to rest rooms later during the day. The skills honed at the breakfast lobby can be gainfully utilized in business and commerce.
For the more technically inclined, there is one more challenge in addition to the above mentioned optimization problem. It goes like this: When you are early to the buffet, and there are lots of empty tables to choose from, you need to do a visual survey of the spread and solve the above optimization problem first and then solve the "Travelling Salesman" problem that will help in selecting a table that minimizes the total distance you need to walk to load your plate.

Need I say more? Here is a piece of advice from from one who has now reached middle age - Never miss out the Breakfast Buffet !