London Series: Room Service at Sheraton Skyline

Despite the perceived excitement of managing projects with remote teams and having to travel often to different sites, all I can say that it’s not as glamorous as it seems. For sure, there are benefits & opportunities to this job but sometimes it really takes a lot out of me. I am not sure if I can do this for life. Here is how it was like one of the days I was in London.

I was already struggling trying to keep up with a highly technical 8-hour training course each day. Mind you, the course starts at about midnight Vancouver time — a time when I should be soundly asleep in bed.

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Needless to say, it’s hard trying to stay awake sometimes. I must have taken something like 10 cups of coffee over the course of the day. I tell myself this is bad for me but I could not help it. After a couple of days, I was really sick of the coffee from the machine in the training rooms and bought “real ones” from the cafeteria.

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Right after that training, there were three conference calls that I need to get on. That three conference calls took a total of 4 hours with the first one starting at 6:00 PM (LON time) and the last one completed at midnight. I stayed in the office the whole time because I did not want to take conference calls with my cell or the hotel — it would have been enormously expensive to do so. Moreover I always need to take conference calls hands free.

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I did not even get the chance to grab dinner because the cafeteria had already closed. That one day was a really long one. At least the calls that day were “easy” ones — ones that I was not beaten up on. 🙂

By the time I got back to my room, I was famished. All the restaurants are closed at that time and what I had available is the hotel’s room service. There were not much choice on the menu — just pizza and grills. The Grilled Beef Sirloin Steak sounded good … 10 oz some more … just what I needed.

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When I called for my order, they told me “it’ll be 30 minutes” … what?!? 30 minutes? That was a long wait for me. Good thing I had some cookies in my bag.

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They gave me a choice of sauce but I just can’t remember what it is now. I only remembered that what I selected was some uncommon sauce … perhaps something like peppermint something … I can’t remember.

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Here it is again … ketchup and … English Mustard for condiments. BTW, English mustards are different from North America mustards … the colour looked slightly different and with English mustard you can see “stuff” (ground pepper?) in them.

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The steak sure was not disappointing at all. It was like … wow! Perfect medium rare; just the way I always liked my steak. This whole thingy costs 24 GBP — quite reasonable I think, considering.

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There were some work I needed to deliver out from the conference calls but I just couldn’t stay awake anymore. Anyway, even if I did it over the night, those guys in Atlanta and Vancouver would have already gone for the day.

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  1. RobynT

    mmm… i like that kind of mustard. i think it’s the kind my mother-in-law had last time i visited her. it’s like little seeds inside right? i have no clue what they are.

  2. nhbilly

    Greetings from California. 🙂 Find your posting interesting and entertaining especial the food on your flights….

  3. jason

    It’s not pepper – it’s mustard! Those are the mustard seeds. In the mustard we are more familiar with, the mustard is ground up, but you can find this whole grain mustard in Vancouver as well.

  4. Rukya, London

    The Heinz Mustard you had looks a lot like Dijon with extra mustard seeds added. I’ve always known English Mustard to be yellow in colour and strong in flavour – Colman’s is the most popular brand of mustard here in the UK. American Mustard is even more yellow in colour, but the flavour is very mild – I’ve tried French’s Classic Yellow and I didn’t like it.

  5. Anonymous

    i think you’ll find the bits in the mustard are mustard seeds

  6. Ben

    Hi All: OK, all these comments about mustard had piqued my interest in this condiment. OK, I am on a quest to keep on trying this until I like it — just like my quest to make myself enjoy blue cheese. 🙂

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