Sunday, November 14, 2021

Resident of a hotel

I had been a "long term resident" of Ibis One Central in Dubai over the past several years [2015 till 2019] where I stay for 1-2 months on each check-in cycle. Combining that with frequent visits to India (again staying in hotels) and my holidays with hotel stays, I would have clocked 310 days in hotels every year! My life had been as a resident of hotels.

Flower arrangement at Novotel lobby

After a short spell of being at home during the Covid lockdown, I am back again in Novotel World Trade Centre in Dubai for the last few months (since the end of July 2021).

That's a very unique experience ... not having a regular home. One of my most enjoyable positive factors of being a hotel resident is the ability to walk into a clean room every day without doing the cleaning myself. The housekeeping staff would have done my bed and cleaned the bathroom for my next day's use. Then there is the glory of going for breakfast and browsing through the choices, though it is boring sometimes, the ease of just getting there and having coffee without much effort is again a real comfort in the morning.

More than those, the people watching hobby is indeed therapeutic. At the Millenium hotel lobby, there is a Costa Coffee where I stop for breakfast on some days. Last week there was a father with a young kid (boy) and a toddler (girl) buying breakfast. The boy took an orange juice and joined the father at the counter, where the father was ordering his coffee, while the girl squeezes hesefl out of pram, walks to the fridge and takes an orange juice as well. She then slips, falls on the ground, makes a somersault of sorts while holding tight to the orange juice bottle ... walks like a drunk sailor towards the boy and gives a stare to the boy as if saying "if you want it, I too want it" while watching the father by the corner of her eye.

The father soon notices this and pays for that juice as well. All of them got to the table near mine, sat down, the father keeps his coffee out of reach, the boy started drinking his juice and the father now opened the orange juice bottle and hands it to the girl. Guess what she screams "No, I want chocolate!!!!!!!!!" ...

As the father was trying to get even with the "conflict", the boy was playing "papan gelongsor" (in Malay this means sliding plank) ... he was enjoying sliding under the table and sliding back up repeatedly ... enjoying the morning exercise!

As the daddy finished the diplomatic conversation with the girl, the boy gets stuck under the table and his hands were frantically trying to reach the table edge to inch himself up ... and the father reaches for his coffee and grabs it to avoid it spilling onto the boy's head!!

And the "stress management" session went on while I finished my breakfast and caught the train to office :-)