Recently, I have been yapping on and on about my latest
desire to write about something I really love. To share my experiences, both
awesome and bothersome. I love Hotels.
Okay that’s an understatement. I am crazy about hotels. The true proof of this
is how often my close friends call me to rate an hotel they intend lodging in
or to tell me about a new one that just opened up its doors to guests. I do not
hesitate to give my impressions or to put down such hotels in my “to visit” or
“ never to return” list. The hustle of
everyday life has not diminished my interests whatsoever. On the contrary, it
has only served to fuel my search for new hotels as I recognize the need to
take a break from time to time so as not to suffer a breakdown (it’s easy to
get carried away with trying to be on top of your game work-wise that you
forget another person will be given the job once you fall off the face of the
earth) and to be adventurous and fun seeking in the process.
I love hotels for the many things they represent. For me, it
means solitude and escape. It means being waited on. It is a peep into the
world where your money can do many things for you. In my short young incredibly
blessed years, I have worked on different
jobs and even though they are far apart, they have something in common.
They always involve TRAVEL. I must confess, so long as a job has travel in it,
I am more than willing to be on it. I love the experience of seeing new things
and absorbing new environments, personalities and culture. For this reason, I
have been opportuned to travel on work related matters and of course, travel
always almost involves hotel stays. So be it work or leisure, just the thought
of experiencing a new hotel or revisiting a really nice hotel gets me in the
groove. I have stayed in some really
good and incredibly affordable ones and I have stayed in the nasty bed bugs
infested ones. Those ones should not even be called hotels or their younger
sisters, Motels. They were just damn right nasty, from the rooms to the
service, NASTY. Anyway, that is a story for another day.
So it was on one of such “yapping sprees” that I was asked
why I wanted to write about hotels and why I felt I could. My automatic
response was “I love hotels and I have passed a night or many nights in so many
of them”. And then the room went quiet! I was beginning to wonder if an angel
was passing (like we fooled ourselves when we were children and a room suddenly
went quiet before discourse almost automatically continued) when somebody said
“what?! If I did not know you I would have taken that out of context. Why so
many hotels?” and then I responded “It may be that I am on holiday in a new
town or a different part of town but it’s mostly work that has given me such a
wide variety of hotels” and the retort I got was “work? Hotels? Work!! Please
don’t say that in unfamiliar gatherings, people may think otherwise”. I was
going to reply but then, I took a beat and thought about it.
Our society is one that is majorly prejudiced and we like to
see, do or hear something in a certain way or no way at all. Stating that I
have visited so many hotels “because” of work may not correlate with who or what certain people think you are or who
they think you should be. I really do not understand why it is so weird to make
such statements without being at risk of being viewed as a “road-runner”. You have to look a
certain way, dress a certain way, be a certain age and speak a certain way to
be a certain person. This prejudice is so culture deep that getting out of it
is a task on its own. Does staying or loving to stay in so many hotels mean you
are not “pure”? or does it just mean that our prejudices usually come up before
we actually spare a thought and realize that hotels are built for many reasons,
part of which surely include making rooms available for travelers and solitude seekers who need them.
Please share your thoughts.
MB
*Ebunlola for the girls dem* Oh yes, I have come to quarrel today. I have issues with you guys. Is it that difficult to be a gentleman? No seriously, we really want to know.
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I was going through my Twitter TL, and someone tweeted 'Any man who opens the door for a woman, gets her bag and is always courteous is a good man', and someone replied, 'No, the others are good, the ones who do all these are just extraordinary'. This got me thinking a lot, why would any guy want to be average, just doing the regular stuff. Letting the girl get her own door, sometimes they even push us from the road. Why?? Oh wait, that's what you guys call swag innit? sorry broda u ain't got nada. You don't even have to be in a relationship with the person to be a gentleman. On many occasions, my lecturers here in London have gotten the door for me when we meet at the entrance, or let me go in the lift first and ask the floor I'm going to and enter it on my behalf, etc. It's just courtesy. I have heard a lot of people say if you see a Nigerian man getting the car door for a woman, its either the door is bad or its a new relationship. LOL. Sadly though it is very true. You guys know that when a woman is happy, the world is happy right? Please do yourselves and the world a favour and be nice. xoxo
