Where Things Are Slick

I am a regular now at the lounge on the forty-fourth floor.  This hotel, the Le Royal Meridien in Shanghai is one I’ve probably stayed in one hundred nights by now, over the last fifteen years.  It’s a tall, sixty-five-plus story tower, that isn’t particularly attractive sloping to a loud angular summit.  But its more attractive certainly than the notably ugly Radisson Blu tower across the street that is only fifty-five stories tall and sports a flying saucer lounge for its roof, complete with bad live music.

The dinner spread at the Le Meridien lounge is impressive.  One can only say.  Many, many other (formerly SPG and now “BONVOY”) lounges are a notable compromise.  This makes missing a paid dinner a quite reasonable choice.  It’s free.  Rather than wander around as I used to when I stayed at the Green Court serviced apartments a few blocks from here, looking for some local cuisine, I just elevator down to the forty-fourth floor and have more than I can ever eat or drink my full-on bottom shelf liquor and wine, and a hearty salad spread with spreads of meat.  I always get a seat by the window and look out on the city. And if I try to work, long enough thereafter, I generally begin to nod.

The hotel has finally opened the front door again, as I mentioned.  Now there are two elevators that go from the ground-floor check in straight up to the rooms.  This had always otherwise been impossible.  But what this means, I’ve discovered the hard way, is that all other elevators, now don’t come down here and go to the inert space in the old lobby.  There is no way to cross to the down elevators as there once was, and rather one must walk all the ways around.  Accordingly, one has to be very careful choosing elevators, once you have the system sorted.  I kept meeting an Australian gent on my fifty-third-floor elevator area, once, twice and then a third time and each time we talk elevators. 

I had one room one week and one room another week, that both all starred out over east side of the People’s Square.  This week I’m staring to the north of the Park down to the Green Court, where I’d otherwise stayed in years past.  This year I thought I was slick staying here.  I’ll get so many points, I thought.  Think of all the places I can stay for free with all those points.  But where things are slick one ought to remember that things can become slippery.  The university agreed to prepay the room.  Cool.  Save me the hassle of turning in an expense report and getting reimbursed.  Sure.  You book it.  I’ll just enjoy all the points. 

I found out this morning that this means that you can’t get the points if you don’t pay with your own card.  This makes no sense to me.  I chose the hotel.  I stayed the nights.  I’m your la-dee-da platinum member.  I tried to discuss this with the lady in on the phone who was most assuredly from Singapore, the best students of Japanese rigidity on the earth and quickly I could tell it would go nowhere.  Trying to cheer myself up I thought of the M. C. Lyte song “Paper Thin” in which she memorably tells a suitor:  “That dream is over.  Your yacht is sinking.”

Tuesday, 6/4/19