light.

Now in pre-modern times, there would have been an on-off switch on the wall by the door. But these being Evolved times, I had to fumble around inside the (dark) bathroom in order to locate this second control panel. It's conveniently located just below groin height right next to the electrical socket; you turn on the light by sticking your finger onto one of the buttons....

I stared for some time at the menu of options. The first item on the menu is "Vanity". I have enough of that already, so I settled for item 4, "On".

They say that dehydration contributes to dementia, so my judgment may by now have been impaired. But I decided to go online and catch up on my mail.

Bad. Idea.

Now I'm not easily rattled, but by this time I needed coffee. So I decided to call room service using the iPad interface. (Yes, I know, the words "He" "Never" and "Learns" spring to mind). Anyway, instead of a cup-of-coffee icon I could press, this nightmare geezer appeared.

He babbled on about my "Interactive Customer Experience" - or ICE, as it's called. "To begin your experience, touch the screen" he then said. Now I'm not sure that my forceful motoric action at this point was strictly-speaking a 'touch' - but it did the trick: My nemesis disappeared.

A rational response to this tech insanity would have been for me run naked down to reception and start screaming at the duty manager. What in fact happened was a kind of high-tech Stockholm Syndrome. I stared stare at "Evolve > Off" and wondered when it was, exactly, that *I* had gone mad.