Breakfast issues of a hostelite

I opened my eyes in the morning and what a beautiful morning it was! Everything kind of seemed perfect except that there was something missing. Maybe I was missing home because it was my 3^rd consecutive

week in the hostel. Maybe I had assignments due. Then suddenly a thought popped into my mind. “What’s the time? Is it past 9? Did I miss breakfast?” I rushed to the mess just to find out that it was all too late. Well, this tends to happen when you’re up all night playing poker :P

I checked my wardrobe to find any cereal or maggi. I couldn't find either of them.I checked my wallet to see if I could buy something from the café. It was my lucky day I guess because I found 230 r.s in there :D I went to Umair’s room and asked Umair if he was in a mood for pizza. No luck there, they all had breakfast. “Hmmm. What can I possibly buy?” I asked myself. I wanted to get rid of thinking all over again every morning and come up with a solution to this problem once and for all. I thought for a moment decided to chalk out to a decision table to help me out and trust me, it really did :D

Here’s how you make a decision table. You make a table containing rows that specify certain conditions such as <200 R.S <400 in this case. You make columns and place a cross across each condition which is true in the columns to give all the possible meaningful conditions. E.g. if the mess is open then it is useless to specify the money in pocket as eating in the mess is the first priority.

Next you make an actions table that contains a list of actions that should be taken for a specific set of conditions. You tick the entry in the appropriate row that specifies the action to be taken for the set of condition given and you continue to do so for all the sets of conditions till you get the answers for all situation possible. You merge the actions table with the conditions table underneath it which gives you a decision table.

My priorities for having breakfast are as follows:

1)      Eat from mess.

2)      Eat cereal with milk.

3)      Eat maggi noodles.

4)      Eat a pizza with friends which costs R.S 220.

5)      Go to Monal for breakfast which costs R.S 400.

6)      Eat a Jumbo Burger that which costs R.S 275.

7)      Eat a sandwich from the cafeteria that costs R.S 145.

8)      Have a cup of tea with a paratha from the cafeteria which costs R.S 50.

And here’s how my decision table looked like:

CONDITIONS
MESS IS OPEN	X
CEREAL & MILK AVAILABLE	X	X	X
MAGGI NOODLES AVAILABLE	X	X	X	X
EAT ALONG WITH FRIENDS	X	X		X	X	X	X	X
0≤R.S< 100 IN POCKET							X
100≤R.S<200 IN POCKET								X
200≤R.S<400 IN POCKET						X			X
400≤R.S IN POCKET	X	X		X	X					X
ACTIONS
EAT FROM MESS	X
EAT CEREAL		X	X
EAT MAGGI NOODLES				X
EAT A PIZZA WITH FRIENDS					X	X
HAVE TEA WITH PARATHA							X
EAT A SANDWICH								X
EAT A JUMBO BURGER									X
GO TO MONAL										X

230 R.S with no friends to eat a pizza with at the moment? I think I’ll go for a jumbo burger today :D

“Hey dude! I can’t make up what to have for breakfast!” Ashir Manzoor asked.

“Let’s go to the bank on your CD 70, check how much money you have in your bank account and I’ll let you know.”

These software engineering classes are really making me smart :D