Real isn't real anymore

We had a change of caterers in my office recently under the pretext of having one global catering service. They got rid of all the individual caterers like Sweet Chariot (Bakery), Juice Junction, etc and just had one group catering which provided the same (or what they consider to be the same). Now the stupid thing is that we have to go to the counter to see what we want and then go get a coupon and come back to actually buy the item.

Now on this day i was feeling a bit peckish and went over to the counter and saw that brownies were available and thought i get myself one. And so off i went to the counter to buy myself a coupon and I'm told there are no brownies for sale. Apparently the system says no brownies, now who am i to argue with such a high end piece of technology. Any attempt t convey the point that they are at the counter was met with shocked disbelief - "The system cannot be wrong". They even sent a fellow to go check if the actual brownies exist and to my shock, he comes back and reports that their are no brownies at the counter. I gave up. I resigned myself to the fact that my sense of sight and touch are nothing compared to the bits and bytes stored on this system's database. On my way out, the lad behind the counter asked if i didn't want the brownie, but i had to tell him that - "I do want it, but the chaps at the cash counter won't give me a coupon for it as they are not real".

On the same day on a similar note, the Pakistan government claims that the lone captured terrorist of the Mumbai attacks isn't a Pakistani since he's not in their database. This database is apparently the most comphrehensive list of citizens in Pakistan. It contains a total of 60 million people out of 160 million people who reside in Pakistan. I guess the remaining are imaginary or stand up props. I guess we can get rid of the 100 million not in the database and not have to worry as they never existed.

The bottom line is that if you ain't in the sytem you ain't real anymore. no matter if you can be seen, heard, smelt, touched or tasted.