Thursday, August 7

Travelling observations PART II--the hotel
Long flights always mess with my eating timing and pattern. I ate breakfast, but by the time we landed, it was 2pm as far as my belly was concerned. So needless to say I was quite famished. The hotel was in Burlingame, which was cool, or so I thought, since I had remembered a great sushi bar in downtown burlingame. Well after waiting a half hour for the hotel shuttle, then realizing that the hotel was nowhere near downtown burlingame, I resorted to eating at the hotel restaurant, much to the dismay of my tastebuds.

Now I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with this, and maybe it is only my company, but when I goto conferences that are with "my peers", we have to share rooms to keep costs down. It is such a surreal thing to sleep next to, and cohabitate with someone you have NEVER met or even heard of. Surreal you ask? Where do I start? There's just this awkward silence in the morning when you wake up. Some people are conversational, and some aren't. Meanwhile, you have to determine who's taking a shower first and all those details. I talked to my boss about the oddity of the experience and he confided in me that the few times he had to share, he never used the bathroom. That's right, he would use the public bathroom in the lobby. He said he did this as a courtesy to the roommate so he wouldn't offend them. To the contrary, my hotel bathroom is as close to my surrogate toilet as it can get.