As different as night and day
Dec. 18th, 2004 04:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kerravonsenThis is the tale of a terrible, horrible, no-good, bad day, and the good evening which followed.
Friday 17th December 2004. It was my day off; my last day of work for the year had been the day before. The plan was for me to sleep in a little, get clothed and in my right mind, go to the doctor, tell him not to operate on my Toe, come home, pack, go to the Adelphi hotel, and have a relaxing leisurely afternoon before getting ready for work's Christmas party there.
And then the first disaster happened.
Since this was going to be my first night away from home since I got my CPAP machine, I needed to pull all the bits off and pack it up in its bag. Unfortunately, when I was pulling the first tube off the humidifier, it tipped over, and the water poured straight through the other tube right into the CPAP machine itself. So I quickly detached the tubes and tried to shake the water out of the machine, and then did a Foolish Thing (only I didn't know it was Foolish) -- I turned on the machine to see if it was still working. This apparently guaranteed that I would burn out the circuits. (sigh)
I then called the CPAP technician I'd bought my machine from, and told him the tale, and the first thing he said was "don't turn on the machine!". It wasn't until my second call to him that I got up the nerve to tell him that I had. Anyway, he said something about a repairman, and I explained that I'd been planning on staying overnight somewhere, and that I supposed this meant that I'd be without a machine then, and he said he might be able to lend me one. Then the taxi to take me to the doctor came while we were still talking, so I had to hang up.
So I went to the doctor. The good news: the Toe seems very slightly better, so we're going to hold off on the Knife. And I lost 0.9 of a kilo!
Then the second disaster unleashed itself.
When I took out my wallet to pay for the consultation, I discovered that my credit card had gone missing. The receptionist told me to sit down and look carefully in my purse and everything, but I knew I wouldn't find it, because I hadn't been using this purse when I last saw my card, which was the day before when I was checking my balance. I must have left the card in the ATM. And, as expected, I didn't find it. The receptionist was nice and said she'd let me pay next time. (Darn, I just remembered! In all the fuss, I forgot to make my next appointment.)
Since I only had $20 in my purse, I wasn't going to take a taxi back. I'd have to walk, even if it was just slowly. But what was I going to do about the Chrismas party? I'd never be able to get back, or stay the night. I'd just gotten outside the clinic when who should I spot but my Aunt Estelle, who was walking in the other direction. So I poured out my woes and she made sympathetic noises. And then a bus stopped there! (Yes, there was a bus stop right outside the clinic, but I'd never seen a bus stop there before.) So I didn't have to walk, I got on the bus.
When I got home, I rang the bank and cancelled my card. They said it would take five working days to get there, seeing as it was Christmas time. Which basically meant that I would be without any money until after Christmas!
I called Mum & Dad and told them my distresses, and Mum said they could lend me some money, and my second brother was there and he could help with transport if I had to run around taking machines to repairmen and so on. So that calmed me down a bit.
Then I rang the technician back, and he said he could lend me a machine, and I could take my broken machine to him and he'd courier it to the repairman; but of course no idea how long it would take to repair or how much the repairs would cost. I'd have to meet him at Bayswater around 3pm.
So I called back Mum and we arranged that I'd go over there for lunch, pick up some money, and bro would then drive me where I needed to go. So I then started packing, and needed to iron some things because they were linen and looked all mangled after coming out of the wash; even though I'd have to iron them again, it was still better to iron out the mangled look first.
So then lunch, which was late because Dad had been cooking Chrismas cakes for the first time in years; I think he did it because he had assistance in the form of daughter-in-law and granddaughter. We had a nice lunch, and then I noticed it was twenty to three, so then we dashed off to go to Bayswater. We got there at 3:25, and machines were duly exchanged. He took a while to calibrate the loan-machine for me, and then told me how it worked. It was larger and clunkier and noisier than my own machine, but it would have to do.
In the car on the way back I realized I would have to re-pack stuff because the new machine wouldn't fit into the bag for the old machine, so instead of having my brother drop me off at the train station, I decided I'd better get a taxi. So then I packed, got a taxi, and managed to get to the Adelphi hotel at about twenty to five.
Then the third disaster pounced.
I managed to lug my case up the stairs to Reception, told them my name -- and they'd never heard of me. Nor had they heard of my company, nor my boss, nor the head of administration, nor were we apparently having any sort of function there that night.
(!!!)
They offered me a phone call, so I called our reception but nobody answered. The receptionist must have already left (no surprise, it was after five). Then I called Ian, whom I was pretty sure must have still been there, and he was. Much talking and to-ing and fro-ing ensued, wherein we clarified that we were having the function in the restaurant attached to the hotel, not in the hotel itself; that other people from our work *were* booked into the hotel (including Ian himself and some other names I recognised as from the Sydney office), but that my name wasn't there at all, and maybe they would have a room free or maybe not, and did I want to be booked in at the hotel across the street? Well, no I didn't because we'd gotten a special rate at this hotel, and I only had enough money on me to pay for that and breakfast and a taxi home, and I wouldn't be able to afford to stay anywhere nearby. But I didn't say that, just that I'd decide after they'd doublechecked the room situation. I sat down and waited while they tried to figure out about the room, and decided that if they couldn't get me a room, then I would just turn around, go home, and cry.
They found me a room. The reason they had this room free was because the airconditioning in it was broken. They had a portable cooler there, but it looked as if it was going to be a noisy night, what with having a noiser CPAP machine, plus the cooler. Oh well, any port in a storm.
By this time it was about 6pm, so all chances of having a nice relax before going down for the party at 7:30pm were gone; there was just enough time to catch my breath before I'd have to get up and start ironing things. Which I did.
I got downstairs at 7:30 on the dot, and found that a number of people were there already. I think we'd booked the whole place out for the evening; which was a long haul from the days when we took up one large table at the Flower Drum...
I made my way to a set of couches in the corner; even though I'd been wise enough to wear odd shoes (a runner on the foot with the plantar fasciitis, and a sandle on the foot with The Toe) and bring my cane, it was still much more sensible to sit down than to stand for an hour (or however long it took before we got past the drinks-and-appetizers part of the evening into the dinner proper.) I said hi to a few people, and some came and some went. I was beginning to regret my decision when it seemed like everyone had went and I was the only one sitting on the couches, and I wondered if it were going to be a long, boring evening. Then Philippa came (our lovely receptionist) and she asked me about my room, and I told her the tale and she said oh no, and went off to see if she could arrange a room swap, since one of the Sydney people hadn't come (but they still had the room in her name). Later she came back and told me she had been able to arrange that, and that they would move all my stuff to my new room, so that was looking up.
Things were looking up already, though, because John L and his wife Maxine came, and I like them (even though I only ever see Maxine once a year, she's nice to talk to, and John L is one of the few (only other?) Christian at work; he's a friend. So that was good. And then Janeene came, and then Janeene's SO Colin, whom I'd never met before. Sure disaster relief: we ended up spending most of the evening talking about all sorts of things (with occassional contribution by Janeene): his work (industrial control systems, the day before he'd been fixing a cesium detector at a plastic-making plant), SF&F, family backgrounds, limericks, religion and philosophy, linguistics and esperanto, all sorts of stuff. Just the kind of evening I like: good food and interesting conversation. When it came to moving to dinner, I managed to get a table with other people I know and like (Ian + Jill, Matt + Marg) but ended up spending most of the time talking to Colin and Janeene (on the
subjects mentioned earlier in this paragraph).
The food, of course, must be mentioned. The appetizers were oyster shots, prawn laksa and Peking duck; I only had the duck, but it was very nice. Then we had bread with -- no, there was no butter. Just flavoured olive oil and three powdery things to dip the oiled bread in; a seaweed+fish thing, a pale sweetish thing I didn't try, and a brown herby-salty thing. However even the oil by itself was actually nice, since they'd flavoured it with Parmesan cheese.
There was a choice of entrees and mains. The entree I had was tempura vegetable "flowers" with a goats-cheese (plus other stuff) centre; that was yummy. The main I had was the duck, with coconut rice and bok choy. I was careless and managed to take a mouthful of green chili, absently thinking it had been spring onion. Gah! I downed water and potato to try to quench the fire. And I carefully picked out the remaining bit of green chili. The potatoes were lovely. And so was the duck.
One grey mark: the waiters kept on changing their minds as to whether they would give me mineral water or still spring water -- and I don't like mineral water. What was worse, they'd pour one or the other into the same glass, so that when I'd finally managed to get spring water, and still had about two inches of it left, another waiter came along and ruined it with mineral water. I suppose I ought to have been assertive, but that takes courage and energy I didn't have.
Then the cheeses; I notice nobody touched the blue-vein. Colin was digging into the quince paste, so I thought I'd better try some, and it was very nice on the date-bread. So Colin stole some from the other plate on the table, and I had some more.
They had been playing musical wine all evening, of course. My boss is all into the very good wine. I can't tell you what, though, because I didn't remember to take my copy of the menu back with me. I didn't have any, and of course Matt said I didn't know what I was missing, and told me to smell the wine. But of course, since I'm not a wine drinker, I couldn't detect the subtleties, just the alcohol. However, as my reason for not drinking is basically because I don't like the stuff, occassionally someone persuades me to give something a try, and what has usually happened is that I've given it a try, and not liked it. However, the dessert wine that they had this time was actually quite nice. Fruity and sweet, but not too sweet. I was amazed. Not that I'd actually gulp the stuff down; just a few sips were enough for me. I wonder what it was. Probably something exotic, imported, and hideously expensive, knowing my boss.
For the actual dessert, they gave us platters of samples from their menu. Colin and I basically had the plates at our end of the table between us, because the other four had their own platters, and Janeene didn't dare touch the desserts because she has a wheat allergy, and while they'd managed to get her entree specially made with rice flour, and her mains had no flour in it, she didn't want to take any chances with the dessert. A number of the tiny dishes were sorbet/ice cream, which had to be eaten before they melted. It's a toss up which one was nicer: the mint sorbet or the honeycomb ice cream on a ginger biscuit with a toffee lattice. I think the mint, probably. It tasted like real mint, not peppermint or spearmint flavouring, but plain old normal mint you'd grow in your herb garden. Very refreshing. There were also various pudding/mousse things; the chocolate one was so chocolatey that I only took two spoonfuls. There was a coconut-and-sesame one which had a sesame sort of crust on top, which meant that it ended up tasting more of sesame than coconut. There were other fruit-flavoured ones with bits of fruit and sauces, but I think the mint sorbet was probably the best of them all.
By this time it was half-past-midnight, so I thought I'd better go. So I said goodbye to Paul and Pam, our hosts, and went up to reception and got my new room key. And everything was there, and I divested myself of my finery and got into my pajamas, and I managed to finally figure out how to turn off all the lights, and off to sleep with my borrowed CPAP machine sans humidifier, which was at home.
A word about the hotel. The Adelphi is very Modern, in the 1960s style. It looks as if a designer went wild with a boatload of stainless steel, white plastic, yellow & charcoal-grey leather, and pine. Which might not be that far from the truth, considering that their website gives credit to who designed the couches, the bathroom, and the soap-holder. What isn't made of steel is made of plastic, and what isn't made of plastic is made of leather. The coffee tables were just one sheet of steel, bent in two acute angles to make the legs (or, one of the tables in reception was just one long piece of steel slightly bent at one end, and at the other end has two legs -- it made me think of an airline runway). The couches were covered with charcoal leather and yellow leather, and there wasn't a right angle to be found in them. The chairs in the cafe were similar. They also had little white cubes in reception for people to sit on; and some of them had glowing lights inside. In the room itself, there was another one of those leather couches (with a slightly different design with a higher back). The bedspread was unrelieved black (possibly cotton). The coffee table was another steel thing, and the table by the wall was again steel. The chair was white plastic and steel. The wall behind the bed was pine, as were the wardrobe and the outer side of the wall of the bathroom.
The bathroom, ah, the bathroom. One wall was floor-to-ceiling mirrors. The walls at either end were glass with an opaque backing, or something like that. The fourth wall was floor to ceiling steel. The floor was black (granite?) tiles. The bathroom bench and sink were one long sheet of steel with a depression for the sink (sort of like if one had taken a slice of a cylinder and pushed it into the metal). The shower consisted of a clear glass splash-screen, which meant one shouldn't put stuff on that end of the bench if one didn't want it to get wet. Made it convenient for grabbing things, though.
I awoke at a quarter to nine, which was about seven hours sleep, feeling pretty good. Though by the time I actually was on my way home, I was hit with the sleepies and am still feeling tired now. Anyway, I got up, and debated whether I would go for a swim in their pool, just to give it a try, or whether I would shower and have breakfast. I decided to go for the pool, and after a false start when I discovered I shouldn't have gone up there in bare feet, I was in the pool. It was nice and refreshing. Very narrow -- only the width of one lane of a standard swimming pool, and was apparently 25 metres long. There was nobody else there, which was part of what made it relaxing. I swam about four laps, but that was still enough to show that I hadn't been swimming in too long. I managed to get within almost a metre of a sparrow who had perched on the barrier around the pool, by paddling very quietly and slowly towards it.
Then I went back down and showered and washed my hair. Then I braided it while it was still wet, because I wasn't going to try to blow-dry the whole thing. I knew it was going to be a very hot day, so it seemed silly to get myself all hot drying it when it would dry fairly quickly once I got out into the day. Just so long as it wasn't dripping, it ought to be okay. Then I decided to iron my cotton blouse I was planning to wear, and that turned out to be a foolish mistake, because by the time I'd finished getting all dressed, with blouse, I looked at my watch and discovered it was 10:48 -- and checkout was at 11am.
That was the fastest I'd ever packed in my life, but, twelve minutes later, I was able to call down to reception and ask them to send someone to help me with my bags. When we got to reception he suggested I have breakfast before I check out (rather than the other way around). I had been getting mixed signals all along as to whether breakfast was included or not in the charge, so I decided to play it safe, and order the "light breakfast"; that way, if it wasn't included, I would have had to pay for it anyway, and if it was included, I wouldn't have been throwing my money away getting the non-standard breakfast I would have had to pay for. Sure enough, after I'd ordered, the waitress came back and said that my room was a room-only, and I'd have to pay for breakfast, would I like it added to my room? And I said yes. (Why not?).
I ended up being glad I'd ordered Nutri-grain for the cereal, because it came with slices of banana and strawberry, an added treat. I sort of consider Nutri-grain a "dessert" cereal, because it is so sweet; I only have it every now and then for a treat. Then English muffins, which, to my surprise, were four halves instead of two. So that was a full brunch. Oh, and I asked for and got hot chocolate instead of tea-or-coffee. A nice thing to keep in mind when staying at hotels, to ask if they have hot chocolate.
Then I went to check out. And got another pleasant surprise. Not only was my breakfast paid for, but my room as well! I suspect that it's because I was swapped with one of the people from the Sydney office; those who elect to come are flown down and have a hotel room at the company's expense. I know, they did it the other way around one year when they had the Christmas party in Sydney, when there were more people in Sydney than Melbourne. Since they would have been paying for it anyway if that person hadn't cancelled, I shall just accept it gratefully, mix-up or not.
So all I ended up paying for was the taxi to and fro.
Friday 17th December 2004. It was my day off; my last day of work for the year had been the day before. The plan was for me to sleep in a little, get clothed and in my right mind, go to the doctor, tell him not to operate on my Toe, come home, pack, go to the Adelphi hotel, and have a relaxing leisurely afternoon before getting ready for work's Christmas party there.
And then the first disaster happened.
Since this was going to be my first night away from home since I got my CPAP machine, I needed to pull all the bits off and pack it up in its bag. Unfortunately, when I was pulling the first tube off the humidifier, it tipped over, and the water poured straight through the other tube right into the CPAP machine itself. So I quickly detached the tubes and tried to shake the water out of the machine, and then did a Foolish Thing (only I didn't know it was Foolish) -- I turned on the machine to see if it was still working. This apparently guaranteed that I would burn out the circuits. (sigh)
I then called the CPAP technician I'd bought my machine from, and told him the tale, and the first thing he said was "don't turn on the machine!". It wasn't until my second call to him that I got up the nerve to tell him that I had. Anyway, he said something about a repairman, and I explained that I'd been planning on staying overnight somewhere, and that I supposed this meant that I'd be without a machine then, and he said he might be able to lend me one. Then the taxi to take me to the doctor came while we were still talking, so I had to hang up.
So I went to the doctor. The good news: the Toe seems very slightly better, so we're going to hold off on the Knife. And I lost 0.9 of a kilo!
Then the second disaster unleashed itself.
When I took out my wallet to pay for the consultation, I discovered that my credit card had gone missing. The receptionist told me to sit down and look carefully in my purse and everything, but I knew I wouldn't find it, because I hadn't been using this purse when I last saw my card, which was the day before when I was checking my balance. I must have left the card in the ATM. And, as expected, I didn't find it. The receptionist was nice and said she'd let me pay next time. (Darn, I just remembered! In all the fuss, I forgot to make my next appointment.)
Since I only had $20 in my purse, I wasn't going to take a taxi back. I'd have to walk, even if it was just slowly. But what was I going to do about the Chrismas party? I'd never be able to get back, or stay the night. I'd just gotten outside the clinic when who should I spot but my Aunt Estelle, who was walking in the other direction. So I poured out my woes and she made sympathetic noises. And then a bus stopped there! (Yes, there was a bus stop right outside the clinic, but I'd never seen a bus stop there before.) So I didn't have to walk, I got on the bus.
When I got home, I rang the bank and cancelled my card. They said it would take five working days to get there, seeing as it was Christmas time. Which basically meant that I would be without any money until after Christmas!
I called Mum & Dad and told them my distresses, and Mum said they could lend me some money, and my second brother was there and he could help with transport if I had to run around taking machines to repairmen and so on. So that calmed me down a bit.
Then I rang the technician back, and he said he could lend me a machine, and I could take my broken machine to him and he'd courier it to the repairman; but of course no idea how long it would take to repair or how much the repairs would cost. I'd have to meet him at Bayswater around 3pm.
So I called back Mum and we arranged that I'd go over there for lunch, pick up some money, and bro would then drive me where I needed to go. So I then started packing, and needed to iron some things because they were linen and looked all mangled after coming out of the wash; even though I'd have to iron them again, it was still better to iron out the mangled look first.
So then lunch, which was late because Dad had been cooking Chrismas cakes for the first time in years; I think he did it because he had assistance in the form of daughter-in-law and granddaughter. We had a nice lunch, and then I noticed it was twenty to three, so then we dashed off to go to Bayswater. We got there at 3:25, and machines were duly exchanged. He took a while to calibrate the loan-machine for me, and then told me how it worked. It was larger and clunkier and noisier than my own machine, but it would have to do.
In the car on the way back I realized I would have to re-pack stuff because the new machine wouldn't fit into the bag for the old machine, so instead of having my brother drop me off at the train station, I decided I'd better get a taxi. So then I packed, got a taxi, and managed to get to the Adelphi hotel at about twenty to five.
Then the third disaster pounced.
I managed to lug my case up the stairs to Reception, told them my name -- and they'd never heard of me. Nor had they heard of my company, nor my boss, nor the head of administration, nor were we apparently having any sort of function there that night.
(!!!)
They offered me a phone call, so I called our reception but nobody answered. The receptionist must have already left (no surprise, it was after five). Then I called Ian, whom I was pretty sure must have still been there, and he was. Much talking and to-ing and fro-ing ensued, wherein we clarified that we were having the function in the restaurant attached to the hotel, not in the hotel itself; that other people from our work *were* booked into the hotel (including Ian himself and some other names I recognised as from the Sydney office), but that my name wasn't there at all, and maybe they would have a room free or maybe not, and did I want to be booked in at the hotel across the street? Well, no I didn't because we'd gotten a special rate at this hotel, and I only had enough money on me to pay for that and breakfast and a taxi home, and I wouldn't be able to afford to stay anywhere nearby. But I didn't say that, just that I'd decide after they'd doublechecked the room situation. I sat down and waited while they tried to figure out about the room, and decided that if they couldn't get me a room, then I would just turn around, go home, and cry.
They found me a room. The reason they had this room free was because the airconditioning in it was broken. They had a portable cooler there, but it looked as if it was going to be a noisy night, what with having a noiser CPAP machine, plus the cooler. Oh well, any port in a storm.
By this time it was about 6pm, so all chances of having a nice relax before going down for the party at 7:30pm were gone; there was just enough time to catch my breath before I'd have to get up and start ironing things. Which I did.
I got downstairs at 7:30 on the dot, and found that a number of people were there already. I think we'd booked the whole place out for the evening; which was a long haul from the days when we took up one large table at the Flower Drum...
I made my way to a set of couches in the corner; even though I'd been wise enough to wear odd shoes (a runner on the foot with the plantar fasciitis, and a sandle on the foot with The Toe) and bring my cane, it was still much more sensible to sit down than to stand for an hour (or however long it took before we got past the drinks-and-appetizers part of the evening into the dinner proper.) I said hi to a few people, and some came and some went. I was beginning to regret my decision when it seemed like everyone had went and I was the only one sitting on the couches, and I wondered if it were going to be a long, boring evening. Then Philippa came (our lovely receptionist) and she asked me about my room, and I told her the tale and she said oh no, and went off to see if she could arrange a room swap, since one of the Sydney people hadn't come (but they still had the room in her name). Later she came back and told me she had been able to arrange that, and that they would move all my stuff to my new room, so that was looking up.
Things were looking up already, though, because John L and his wife Maxine came, and I like them (even though I only ever see Maxine once a year, she's nice to talk to, and John L is one of the few (only other?) Christian at work; he's a friend. So that was good. And then Janeene came, and then Janeene's SO Colin, whom I'd never met before. Sure disaster relief: we ended up spending most of the evening talking about all sorts of things (with occassional contribution by Janeene): his work (industrial control systems, the day before he'd been fixing a cesium detector at a plastic-making plant), SF&F, family backgrounds, limericks, religion and philosophy, linguistics and esperanto, all sorts of stuff. Just the kind of evening I like: good food and interesting conversation. When it came to moving to dinner, I managed to get a table with other people I know and like (Ian + Jill, Matt + Marg) but ended up spending most of the time talking to Colin and Janeene (on the
subjects mentioned earlier in this paragraph).
The food, of course, must be mentioned. The appetizers were oyster shots, prawn laksa and Peking duck; I only had the duck, but it was very nice. Then we had bread with -- no, there was no butter. Just flavoured olive oil and three powdery things to dip the oiled bread in; a seaweed+fish thing, a pale sweetish thing I didn't try, and a brown herby-salty thing. However even the oil by itself was actually nice, since they'd flavoured it with Parmesan cheese.
There was a choice of entrees and mains. The entree I had was tempura vegetable "flowers" with a goats-cheese (plus other stuff) centre; that was yummy. The main I had was the duck, with coconut rice and bok choy. I was careless and managed to take a mouthful of green chili, absently thinking it had been spring onion. Gah! I downed water and potato to try to quench the fire. And I carefully picked out the remaining bit of green chili. The potatoes were lovely. And so was the duck.
One grey mark: the waiters kept on changing their minds as to whether they would give me mineral water or still spring water -- and I don't like mineral water. What was worse, they'd pour one or the other into the same glass, so that when I'd finally managed to get spring water, and still had about two inches of it left, another waiter came along and ruined it with mineral water. I suppose I ought to have been assertive, but that takes courage and energy I didn't have.
Then the cheeses; I notice nobody touched the blue-vein. Colin was digging into the quince paste, so I thought I'd better try some, and it was very nice on the date-bread. So Colin stole some from the other plate on the table, and I had some more.
They had been playing musical wine all evening, of course. My boss is all into the very good wine. I can't tell you what, though, because I didn't remember to take my copy of the menu back with me. I didn't have any, and of course Matt said I didn't know what I was missing, and told me to smell the wine. But of course, since I'm not a wine drinker, I couldn't detect the subtleties, just the alcohol. However, as my reason for not drinking is basically because I don't like the stuff, occassionally someone persuades me to give something a try, and what has usually happened is that I've given it a try, and not liked it. However, the dessert wine that they had this time was actually quite nice. Fruity and sweet, but not too sweet. I was amazed. Not that I'd actually gulp the stuff down; just a few sips were enough for me. I wonder what it was. Probably something exotic, imported, and hideously expensive, knowing my boss.
For the actual dessert, they gave us platters of samples from their menu. Colin and I basically had the plates at our end of the table between us, because the other four had their own platters, and Janeene didn't dare touch the desserts because she has a wheat allergy, and while they'd managed to get her entree specially made with rice flour, and her mains had no flour in it, she didn't want to take any chances with the dessert. A number of the tiny dishes were sorbet/ice cream, which had to be eaten before they melted. It's a toss up which one was nicer: the mint sorbet or the honeycomb ice cream on a ginger biscuit with a toffee lattice. I think the mint, probably. It tasted like real mint, not peppermint or spearmint flavouring, but plain old normal mint you'd grow in your herb garden. Very refreshing. There were also various pudding/mousse things; the chocolate one was so chocolatey that I only took two spoonfuls. There was a coconut-and-sesame one which had a sesame sort of crust on top, which meant that it ended up tasting more of sesame than coconut. There were other fruit-flavoured ones with bits of fruit and sauces, but I think the mint sorbet was probably the best of them all.
By this time it was half-past-midnight, so I thought I'd better go. So I said goodbye to Paul and Pam, our hosts, and went up to reception and got my new room key. And everything was there, and I divested myself of my finery and got into my pajamas, and I managed to finally figure out how to turn off all the lights, and off to sleep with my borrowed CPAP machine sans humidifier, which was at home.
A word about the hotel. The Adelphi is very Modern, in the 1960s style. It looks as if a designer went wild with a boatload of stainless steel, white plastic, yellow & charcoal-grey leather, and pine. Which might not be that far from the truth, considering that their website gives credit to who designed the couches, the bathroom, and the soap-holder. What isn't made of steel is made of plastic, and what isn't made of plastic is made of leather. The coffee tables were just one sheet of steel, bent in two acute angles to make the legs (or, one of the tables in reception was just one long piece of steel slightly bent at one end, and at the other end has two legs -- it made me think of an airline runway). The couches were covered with charcoal leather and yellow leather, and there wasn't a right angle to be found in them. The chairs in the cafe were similar. They also had little white cubes in reception for people to sit on; and some of them had glowing lights inside. In the room itself, there was another one of those leather couches (with a slightly different design with a higher back). The bedspread was unrelieved black (possibly cotton). The coffee table was another steel thing, and the table by the wall was again steel. The chair was white plastic and steel. The wall behind the bed was pine, as were the wardrobe and the outer side of the wall of the bathroom.
The bathroom, ah, the bathroom. One wall was floor-to-ceiling mirrors. The walls at either end were glass with an opaque backing, or something like that. The fourth wall was floor to ceiling steel. The floor was black (granite?) tiles. The bathroom bench and sink were one long sheet of steel with a depression for the sink (sort of like if one had taken a slice of a cylinder and pushed it into the metal). The shower consisted of a clear glass splash-screen, which meant one shouldn't put stuff on that end of the bench if one didn't want it to get wet. Made it convenient for grabbing things, though.
I awoke at a quarter to nine, which was about seven hours sleep, feeling pretty good. Though by the time I actually was on my way home, I was hit with the sleepies and am still feeling tired now. Anyway, I got up, and debated whether I would go for a swim in their pool, just to give it a try, or whether I would shower and have breakfast. I decided to go for the pool, and after a false start when I discovered I shouldn't have gone up there in bare feet, I was in the pool. It was nice and refreshing. Very narrow -- only the width of one lane of a standard swimming pool, and was apparently 25 metres long. There was nobody else there, which was part of what made it relaxing. I swam about four laps, but that was still enough to show that I hadn't been swimming in too long. I managed to get within almost a metre of a sparrow who had perched on the barrier around the pool, by paddling very quietly and slowly towards it.
Then I went back down and showered and washed my hair. Then I braided it while it was still wet, because I wasn't going to try to blow-dry the whole thing. I knew it was going to be a very hot day, so it seemed silly to get myself all hot drying it when it would dry fairly quickly once I got out into the day. Just so long as it wasn't dripping, it ought to be okay. Then I decided to iron my cotton blouse I was planning to wear, and that turned out to be a foolish mistake, because by the time I'd finished getting all dressed, with blouse, I looked at my watch and discovered it was 10:48 -- and checkout was at 11am.
That was the fastest I'd ever packed in my life, but, twelve minutes later, I was able to call down to reception and ask them to send someone to help me with my bags. When we got to reception he suggested I have breakfast before I check out (rather than the other way around). I had been getting mixed signals all along as to whether breakfast was included or not in the charge, so I decided to play it safe, and order the "light breakfast"; that way, if it wasn't included, I would have had to pay for it anyway, and if it was included, I wouldn't have been throwing my money away getting the non-standard breakfast I would have had to pay for. Sure enough, after I'd ordered, the waitress came back and said that my room was a room-only, and I'd have to pay for breakfast, would I like it added to my room? And I said yes. (Why not?).
I ended up being glad I'd ordered Nutri-grain for the cereal, because it came with slices of banana and strawberry, an added treat. I sort of consider Nutri-grain a "dessert" cereal, because it is so sweet; I only have it every now and then for a treat. Then English muffins, which, to my surprise, were four halves instead of two. So that was a full brunch. Oh, and I asked for and got hot chocolate instead of tea-or-coffee. A nice thing to keep in mind when staying at hotels, to ask if they have hot chocolate.
Then I went to check out. And got another pleasant surprise. Not only was my breakfast paid for, but my room as well! I suspect that it's because I was swapped with one of the people from the Sydney office; those who elect to come are flown down and have a hotel room at the company's expense. I know, they did it the other way around one year when they had the Christmas party in Sydney, when there were more people in Sydney than Melbourne. Since they would have been paying for it anyway if that person hadn't cancelled, I shall just accept it gratefully, mix-up or not.
So all I ended up paying for was the taxi to and fro.
I now pronounce myself very tired.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-12-18 06:04 am (UTC)Your meal and conversations beat ours last night. Greg's company had their Christmas dinner with partners invited. It was in Ponsonby which has no parking unless you park streets away and walk uphill in the strong cold winds as we did--when do we get a summer? The food was very artistically presented and quite good, but we couldn't talk. The other half of the restaurant, just two tables away and separated only by a waist-high partition, was a bar and dance-floor, so once they started playing techno and the people packed in there were yelling at each other (no room to dance) we had to yell too. I gave it up as too hard after a while because my voice doesn't carry well, but I did have an interesting conversation about language and culture with another contractor who worked in Holland and France (I used to work in Germany) before it got unbearably noisy. I didn't even bother with coffee. I think the noise was getting to dangerous industrial levels.
Next time I hope someone suggests a restaurant conducive to a bit of socialising.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-18 06:28 am (UTC)Oh, my sympathies! We had a similar awfulness one year when we went somewhere that had live music, and it was too loud to easily converse over, but yours sounds much worse!
no subject
Date: 2004-12-18 08:49 am (UTC)I'm glad that were able to battle through and that you got to have a lovely dinner and the room paid for. Here's hoping someone somewhere is super-organized and you get your credit card before Xmas.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-18 09:13 am (UTC)As for the credit/ATM card, fortunately I have helpful family who are helpful -- and I've already bought everyone's presents in anticipation of my Toe possibly being operated on, so that was foresightful, even if it was a different disaster it anticipated.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-18 10:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-18 07:49 pm (UTC)