I set an alarm to wake up at 5:15a.m to go for a workout at 6a.m with the local November Project chapter in New Orleans. The alarm starts ringing and buzzing. I was trying to reach the phone and because of the buzzing and me trying to reach the phone, somehow the phone fell into a crack. Now the drama begins.
The alarm is still ringing, which is waking up everyone. Yeah I am in the hostel in a 12 person dorm. So I try to take it and try everything with the little visibility I have, obviously because it was early in the morning and no one sleeps with lights on and hey I just woke up, I mean I f'ing literally woke up. So one of the dorm-mate comes to help. For one he wants to f'ing get some sleep and two he seemed to a good caring human looking out for fellow dorm-mate. We both try all the things we could for almost 45 minutes. Then my dorm mate says I think we should just go to sleep an figure this out in the morning. Thank God, the phone doesn't ring unendingly, if it does we would have gone crazy. At least we went to sleep.
Although I couldn't sleep and my brain started going crazy with many questions like
- Why does this happen to me always ? (It reminded me of the crazy thing that happened to me last time I was in New orleans. Although this wasn't as bad as the last one.)
- Is this a pattern, Is this an omen telling me something ? telling me to do something to get unstuck ?
Yes the right time came and it was around 8a.m when I could see some light and I immediately went to the front desk of the hostel and had to wait for the front desk person to check in others. I see my dorm-mate again and we both laugh looking at each other. He says "this is simply ridiculous, who would ever expect for such a thing to happen" for which all I could say was "Exactly". Yes no one would go for charging a phone only to think it will fall into this crack, wide enough for your sleek iPhone to slip into because of the alarm buzz. It can only go in but we can't take it out. I was also telling him how do I even explain it to her what just happened ?
Anyways I get the chance to talk to the girl at the front desk and I tell her "I have a situation". I try to explain her as much as I can for her to understand because for such a ridiculous thing, you only have to see it to believe it but I did my best and I think she got it. I said may be a handyman could help us with "this situation". She said "Yeah he is not here yet but I will him let him know". I still stood there and I think she was expecting me to leave and said "I will let you know when I hear from him", implying "Yeah I got it and you can go now". In that state of mind I couldn't go but I didn't want to be annoying in her face and left saying "I will sit in this lobby or will be in my room 9".
I go back to my room do some productive things like sending emails to folks about my app etc trying to get my mind off this ridiculousness. Then the front desk lady comes to check in few more folks and give them a tour of the room 9. Then she sees the ridiculousness and now she got how ridiculous it was and she said "I am sorry this happened" and all I could do was laugh. But atleast I am glad she saw it and now knows we really need the help of the handyman. And I think she called the handyman again. Luckily he showed up just few minutes after she left.
The handyman shows up, looked at it and said something along the lines of "What the F....." and said "I will get my tools and see what we can do"
So he comes back with the tools and we try different things. There is not much I could do as he was already trying everything he can with this tools. I thought to myself I need to record this ridiculousness. Although I couldn't capture it well, this is what we had to go through.
Looking back, this "situation" isn't as crazy as my last one where I had to figure out a way to survive for 4 days and I had to figure that out all by myself and I did it. This time I can see the phone, it is right there but I couldn't do much or didn't have the tools but luckily I could find someone who has the tools. Again I figured out a way :) I guess adventures like these are part of the experience of traveling.
It also reminded me of the 127 hours movie but this time we had to wait for 7 hours and not 127 hrs. Thank God...
