At my hotel in Kuala Lumpur you can’t just take the elevator to your floor. I checked in and then stood in the elevator jamming on my button, surprised that it wasn’t lighting up. Ah–I noticed–I had to insert my key card into a little slot and only then press the button — it lit up, I felt a little frisson of reward and was on my way. Presumably the apparatus is necessary for “security reasons”. A little inconvenient — no big deal.

But here’s the rub: you can’t access any other floor using your key card. My colleague is staying on a different floor and I can’t take the elevator to her room. Presumably if we want to meet in her room we’re supposed to meet in the lobby and then together go up to her room, in some low level cryptographic metaphor. I assume this is meant to prevent unauthorized entry and skulking around. But instead I took the fire stairs two floors up. Problem solved