Home Away From Home - Part I

I’ve gotten quite attached to the quirkiness of my hotel. I can’t imagine staying anyplace else in Taipei.

In my windowless room, there is no dawn (or dusk or high noon for that matter). I typically awaken to a waltz of dueling saws from the floor above, the hacking up of phlegm a couple of rooms away, and the clinking, clanking, clucking of the maids up and down the hallways. Here, an alarm clock is an unnecessary accessory.

The hotel is on the 13th of 14 floors. And only the 13th. The elevator is just off a main boulevard tucked around the corner from a Starbucks and a restaurant – as yet untested by me. In daylight hours, the ride up and down is uneventful. A few other guests and workmen (with wheelbarrows) doing reconstruction on the 11th and 14th floors. It’s a completely different experience once the sun sets. Strikingly beautiful women, all slender, all wearing something extremely tight. They ride backwards, facing me and the mirror, touching up cosmetics and making fine adjustments to their evening wear no matter what’s out of place. Their destination - the 7 or 9th floors. As the doors open, I catch a glimpse of 3 women in formal gowns sitting behind a bank of phones and two women on either side, each with a hand held device that is quickly applied to the forehead of each girl coming of the elevator. I’m captivated and dying with curiosity. It all feels secretive, seductively Kubrickesque (‘Eyes Wide Shut’) and public at the same time. I haven’t yet worked up the nerve to step off with the landing party and discover this new world.

In contrast, the elevator on my floor empties into a “waiting for godot” ish chamber with a faded linoleum floor. A washer and dryer face the elevator just off to the left, shoved back against a waist high concrete wall. The hot air duct for the dryer hangs limply over that wall into a chasm, 13 stories deep, ending in a metal mesh net just above the ground below. The linoleum floor creeps along the perpendicular side of the concrete wall for a good 30 yards ending at a motion sensitive sliding glass door that gives way to the hotel's small gathering room and front desk, illuminated with 60 watt bulbs.

Two countertops, 5 feet or so in length, on walls at a 90 degree angle are the only defining feature and function of the gathering room. Upon them rests two toasters, a coffee maker, breakfast from 7:30 – 10:30 AM, and afternoon tea from 4:30 – 5:30. (I’ve never been around when tea is served). Breakfast consists of a variety of vegetables (some western, some Asian) and a bowl of Thousand Island dressing with which to make a salad. Also peanuts, salty noodles, hard boiled eggs, deli meat that I’ve never seen in a grocery store, pork dumplings and toasting bread with single size servings of smuckers jam and some kind of butter. Paying guests must take the food back to their rooms to eat. It’s obvious that the cockroach that I saw wasn’t required to do the same. It’s not that I mind sharing breakfast with a cockroach. It’s that I mine KNOWING that he and I are eating together. It’s a tough call for me – getting up early and spending money to eat on the streets or getting up later and eating food that is free to me, as well as the other inhabitants.

The third wall of the gathering room is shared with the front office. The ‘front desk’ itself is a large window size opening, chest high, looking into that office. The office appears to be manned 24x7, though I have no idea what happens out there once I hunker down for the night. Two gals alternate 15 hours days (7:30AM – 10:30 PM) with periodic two days off in a row. Time off and breaks are covered by an older guy with mutton chop sideburns and a young up and comer. Hotel keys are left with the front desk staff upon leaving the hotel. So they definitely monitor coming and going.

The charm of the hotel starts with the front desk staff. Professional attire, personal faces. Our dialogue is sparse at best, except for one of the two girls who continues to expand my vocabulary 3-4 words a days. With the others, it’s a short phrase and a smile at greetings and departures. They change my money, keep swapping my valuables in and out of their safe, give me tokens for the washer dryer, sell me washing machine soap and try to respond to my almost daily requests for directions and other type of concierge services. Upon arriving in Taipei, one of my early fears was whether anyone would notice if anything happened to me. I now take comfort in believing that they would. (that fear and that comfort are a topic unto themselves)

To be continued at some point in the future … the room itself!