A prize for the most ingenious use of the C language should surely go to Hong Kong’s notorious Club Volvo: the club has 1,000 high-priced hostesses and customers pay large amounts of money to talk to them, buy them drinks or meals, watch the show with them or take them out to a hotel – but this rip-off nightclub-cum bordello has moved with the times, each table has a point-of-sale terminal with colour screen, and each hostess has her own pink card to work it so that each time you buy a hostess a drink (nobody drinks alone at Club Volvo) she inserts her card, and while you watch the pictograms of bottles and glasses on the display she enters the price, if a hostess walks past and says Hello, she slips in her card and a pair of pink lips kiss you from the screen (everything costs money in Club Volvo); the system, called Futurepolis VAS-12, has 150 terminals controlled by twin 80386 micros and a DEC MicroVAX II – oh, and its also discreet, so that if you shoudl happen to leave with a hostess, the pictogram that appears on the screen (and on your bill) is a pink handbag.
