Huh? wha... ?!

My flight from one coast of the Subcontinent to the other landed after midnight, followed by an hour drive to my hotel in a suicidal taxi.   I think drivers here use their car horns the way dolphins and bats use sonar (i.e. for echo-location). 

I checked into the hotel, showered, and finally fell into bed by 2:00AM (after making sure to arrange a wake up call so I wouldn't miss my morning meeting).

The neat thing is that when I asked for my wake up call, the hotel clerk asked if I would also like a follow-up call in case I fell back to sleep (they must know me)... as well as how long a delay I wanted before the follow up call.

Kewl.

The next question was even kewler;  "Would you like a pot of fresh brewed coffee and a newspaper delivered to the room with the follow-up wake-up call?"

Aaaaand the survey says: Yes.  Yes I would!

I went instantly to sleep, confident that my morning would be pleasant, albeit too soon.

After what felt like 30 seconds I was jarred awake by a knocking at the door.  I couldn't see my watch in the darkness (the heavy drapes were still drawn), so I got out of bed and stumbled to the door to peek through the peep hole.

Standing there in the hallway was a uniformed room service attendant with a coffee tray and a folded newspaper.  All I could figure through the fog was that I must have slept through two wake up calls, so I let the guy in... gave him a small tip and sat down to have my coffee and figure out how late I actually was.

When I could finally focus on my watch (two cups later) I realized that it was still 20 minutes before my first scheduled wake-up call! 

Apparently they are still working the kinks out of the coordination between the wake-up service and the room service folks. 

Oh well, it was a nice thought.  And the coffee is actually excellent.  But I really could have used that extra 20 minutes (plus the 15 minute roll-over period before the second call).

I guess I'll check out the Cricket scores and Bollywood gossip in the 'Hindustan Times'.