I still remember...

Wondering what does the above picture signify... Read on...

"My Experience at the Empire of Luxury"...


Jan 26th 2001 - When I was in first year, I had an unforgettable and an adventurous visit to the Le Royal Meredien, a 5 star hotel in Chennai which I then called "Empire of Luxury". All of a sudden, I desired to roam about in a luxurious hotel and decided to go to this place. I didn't have a nice formal dress that time and was ordinarily dressed. The weirdest thing I did that day was choosing to go there in a bicycle :-) . As expected the security folks in the hotel stopped me in the gate and looked at me as if I stopped there to ask for some address. When I said, "My uncle is coming from Bangalore next week and he wants to know the tariff of this hotel as this is kinda close to the airport. Can I get the tariff card from inside?", that person hesitantly said "yes, but you can go only upto to the reception as visitors are not allowed inside." Then I asked him a question - he would have never encountered such a question before as a guard of a star hotel - "Where do I park my cycle?". He literally didn't have a answer to this and told me to park it outside in the road near the entrance. That junk cycle didn't even have a proper stand and I finally had to rest on the walls of the hotel right in front. It would have been a rare photograph had someone captured the cycle parked on the entrance wall where the name of the 5 star hotel was carved in glittering stone :-)

So after gaining such a dramatic entry I went inside and as a formality went to the reception first to enquire about the tariff. After some 2-3 minutes of discussion with the reception people, I generally roamed about the lobby area of the hotel. I was in no mood to get out of the place and went roaming about each and every place inside. Checked out the big screen TV inside the bar there, went in lift to have a panaromic view of the swimming pool, browsed through the menu card of every restaurant before I realised that I have been inside for almost half-an-hour now. When I came out of the hotel after all this, I saw the security ppl restless and trying to call someone in the walky-talky. He,after seeing me coming out, hanged the phone, came to me and said, "What were you doing inside? Just now I was about to alarm our security guards inside that some 'mysterious person' is inside the hotel for half an hour". I smiled and said a big sorry before I escaped from there in the bicycle :-)

This story - when I came back and told my friends in the hostel - became so popular that during my birthday party that year my friends asked me for a treat in Meredien. I promised them "Sometime in my life, I will definitely give you all a big treat in Le Royal Meredien, Chennai". Those words still ring in my ears and I remember this entire story during each birthday.

This morning I wanted to blog about this after seeing the Yahoo Reminder in my desktop.