Delhi dash: Hotel

I hate spending time in hotels. I don’t care if it’s a backpacker dorm, 5-star or 23 stars, laying in a hotel bed gives me the worst bout of boredomitis. If a hotel has a nice bed, a clean bathroom and electricity I’m happy. If the service is good, even better. I don’t need anything else. I really don’t get why people make such a fuss about hotels. It’s a place one needs to crash after hours of exhaustive travel/work. I wouldn’t go to a 5-star hotel even if I had the money. What’s the point, seriously? But then I don’t have the money for a 5-star accommodation. If I had the money, being a CEO, raking up the frequent flier miles maybe I would have seen the point. But then I’m not going to the corporate sector.

the hotel alley. no cats in sight though.

I was in this place about 10 minutes walk from the New Delhi railway station, in an alley alongside a seemingly hotel avenue littered with cheap and medium range hotels. The place was cheap, obviously, but not too cheap or crummy. The bed was so like a water bed that I began worrying about giving myself spondilitis. The room was pretty small for a single bed but I wasn’t up for any salsa practice so I didn’t mind.

I tried to perfect my paper presentation in front of the mirror. Gave up. The boredom was paralyzing. Almost gave me depression. Geez. Even if someone asked me to streak naked through Connaught Place and then end up in the police station I would’ve gladly done it. There is nothing, and I repeat nothing worse than watching horrendous Hindi music videos which you wouldn’t have watched any other given time anyway. The comedy skits by those cartoon characters on 9XM are surprisingly funny though.

small room. boredom. nothing to do with smallness of the room.

I kept messaging random people from my cell and after a dozen thumb-smashing exercise found myself nearly out of prepaid balance. Apparently I forgot that an sms while roaming costs a dastardly Rs. 3.45. Outrageous!

Thankfully, the misery was not for long as in the conference days the only time I spent in the hotel room was consumed sleeping.

Below is a perfect example of what happens when I have nothing else to do/think/thinking of doing.

oh snap!

I’m back

and pretty pleased with myself with the way things went over the past week since the last post. This time I was lucky enough to avoid the unsavoury people in Delhi but food prices are atrocious, at least the hotel I was in. The auto rickshaw fares seemed high and erratic but l I didn’t have to pay half the time thanks to Prof. Don from Dallas. His Delhihole was just opposite of mine.

I will write an account of the trip and the Delhi days and the conference in the next several blog posts. They’re essentially journal entries for meant for my personal reading fast forward to a not-so-near future but since this is a blog and I decided to make the blog into a irregular journal of sorts I don’t mind you guys having a peek.

Oh, and I seriously need to buy a laptop. I do, seriously.

Damn!

I don’t like Delhi. I don’t like it at all. The place has all the boorish characteristics a capital city filled with politicians, lobbyists, insiders, minnows and all sorts of wannabe powerful people have. I’m not saying that people are not nice, they are, although my experience is mostly otherwise. But I digress. I’ll blame it on my luck.

I once hoped to get unnoticed at the conference. Now it seems there will be some known faces after all. I really don’t care. Give me a pretty university grad student from Canada/US/India/wherever who headbangs to Barenaked Ladies and U2 on her iPod while reading a peer’s paper, and I’m happy. And by happy I mean I will show her what India is all about (puns intended but I’m not sure what it means. LOL?).

Now if you’ll excuse me. I have a a train to catch.