Breakfast in the Hotel
I woke this morning with a start, realised I was in the hotel, rolled over and looked at the laptop screen (which was plugged in, so hadn't hibernated) – 6am. It always strikes me as amusing that for the first few moments when we wake up in a strange place, it takes our head a few moments to put everything together.
Half an hour later – after examining the ceiling in quite some detail – I scraped myself out of bed, opened the curtains, had a shower, and got dressed.
The restaurant area of the hotel is adjacent to check-in. It was strangely empty this morning – with two or three odd people (no, really, they were quite odd) eating already. I found an empty table and ordered from the pretty girl that wandered over.
“Cooked breakfast please”
“How many of each item would you like?”
Now there's a challenge. I wonder how many things you can get away with? Is there a limit? I read a (proably fake) story on the internet last night about a guy that was thrown out of a diner in the US because he took advantage of the “all you can eat” offer, and sat at a table for 7 hours eating 50lb of food. Given that I need to arrive at the office in the next couple of hours, that was out of the question.
I ordered a couple of sausages, a couple of pieces of bacon, a couple of eggs, and some fried vegetables (known over here as “Bubble and Squeak”). While waiting for it to arrive, I wandered over to the coffee machine and pressed the magic “Cappuccino” button. Given how long it took to gurgle and spit out the drink, I began to wonder if there was actually a small daemon inside the machine that had just travelled all the way to Italy to buy the drink from a street seller, and was now pouring it into my cup.
While eating and drinking, a blonde lady appeared in the restaurant, and introduced herself to two businessmen who had been talking about recent football results (they could easily have managed any team in the land, listening to their obviously experienced and forthright views). She busied herself with making a very elaborate collection of cereals and toast before re-joining them, and immediately changing the subject to Rugby, which made me smile. She obviously didknow a think or two, and they obviously did not.
I looked at my watch. 7:35. What to do for the next hour and a half? Maybe wander back up to the room and write a blog post – which is where you find me now. I still have some time before I need to throw the laptop into the backpack.
Maybe another coffee might be an idea – before pretending to be a teacher once again, standing in front of a projected screen for the majority of the day, and attempting to teach business people clever things that they won't use for several months before calling me back to build the things I taught them how to build for them.
It's a strange world.