Skip to main content

Connecting Right

We stayed in an Airbnb recently that stood out for the level of attention paid to the needs of a traveler. The place was in the middle of an ancient town. The exterior was still historical but inside was completely modern. This was a smart and connected apartment where everything could be controlled by an universal remote. At first blush it seemed excessive to have everything remote controlled but with a couple of hours of settling in, it started to make sense. If you had a question about how anything worked, there was only one answer - the remote had a button for it. The blinds, the appliances, the bathroom, the garage - everything managed the same way. F, the owner of the place is a young geek who inherited some prime real-estate from his grandparents and decided to turn that into a source of income. He did a job the grandparents would be proud of - the old world charm remained intact while making the living area very usable and comfortable. 

We extended our stay because the place had such a cozy vibe and was a perfect stop to rest and recharge on a road-trip. I am no fan of smart and connected anything and would never implement this in my home. But this was a situation where it made perfect sense. You rent your place to a revolving door of strangers and want them all to be comfortable, know how to make things work in your house. F had done this exactly right. Living in the quaint part of town is usually an experience once has to develop a taste for. Nothing works like it is supposed to, there are many tips and tricks you need to learn to do the simplest things - like open and closing a faucet in the bathroom without flooding the house. Describing all of that to a guest who will live there for a night can get quite arduous. We are generally up for such adventures but F really combined the best of both worlds in a way I have rarely seen.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha...
5 comments
Read more

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more