I arrive by cab from the airport and probably tip too much as I fumble with the dual challenge of semi-familiar currency and large banknotes fresh from the ATM.

I fill in a form at reception, always asking if I need to fill the whole thing in, and the answer is usually no.

They give me a key; a card; a breakfast voucher; a slip of paper with the wifi login credentials; instructions on how to get to my room, which I will forget the instant I walk away with my luggage.

I approach my room with trepidation, remembering all the others I’ve stayed in; the all-smoking, all-the time one; the one with the nightclub underneath; the one with the man snoring next door; the one next to reception; the one without a tv or radio; the one on the building site; the one with no windows; the one with the crazy art; the one on two floors; the one with the cockroaches; the one with no air con but a temp indicator telling me exactly how hot it was at 5am (34°C, thanks for telling me)

I unlock the door and dump my stuff on the bed. It smells – it always does – of nothing specific, and is too hot. The lightswitches are funny big squares, and there are more of them, and more plug sockets, than anyone could possibly need.

First things first: the tv goes on. Music, news, film, chat show, anything. I don’t want to stand in an unfamiliar space, listening, so there’s something reassuring about random background chatter and/or europop while I figure out what happens next.

The bathroom is clean, and there’s Stuff in bottles – or sometimes wall-mounted economy convenience dispensers - to be used, that I never will. There’s a heated towel rail that will not switch off.

I open all the drawers and the cupboards, to see what’s there. A dry-cleaning service bag, safe which I doubt anyone uses; those hangers which you can’t/wouldn’t want to steal; a bible (hello Gideons); a trouser press. I look at the minibar, but I never break in to it. Just not that thirsty, I guess.

I read impenetrable wifi instructions before turning on the laptop and just trying to connect anyway. Sometimes it works. Sometimes I end up stealing wifi from an open connection unrelated to the hotel. I pity anyone who lives next door to a hotel – they must wonder why their connection speeds are so shitty. Sometimes I go connectionless and frustrated.

I flip through the guest service folder checking out what myriad of pleasures are available to me, even though I’ll rarely use any – I’m never there long enough. There’s a gym; in-room massage services; bar and room service. There’s a nanny service; doctor; wake-up call; list of TV channels. You can borrow a DVD; an umbrella; an ironing board.

I check out the inroom comfort stuff. Sometimes there’s a bathrobe, sometimes there’s slippers. If there are, I jam them on - anything to avoid bare foot on dubiously-clean carpet.

I retune the TV from whatever the waffle was before to something else. Invariably, inexplicably, it’s often Eurosport – odd sports which even when narrated in a different language can be understood: competitive paragliding from New Zealand or summer biathlon, featuring men with big thighs pumping around a green course on elongated rollerblades.

I fiddle idly with my camera, and take photos of random things around the room. Reflections. Patterns. The view. The room. Odd translations in the room service menu.

I’m on my own, and I’m already bored.

I take out the notes for my talk for the morning, and go through it, making scrawls in the margin. I know this talk well, and even the customisations I’ve made for this event are familiar by now, so there’s no need, really, but it’s something to do.

I contemplate having a bath, but inspection of the bath reveals that it’s not really somewhere I want to wallow: too bright; too quiet; too many thoughts of the endless stream of nameless patrons standing naked and crusty-businessman-footed where I’d be trying to relax. Besides, I haven’t got a magazine, and there’s no bubble stuff. There rarely is.

It’s too early to sleep (a combination of time difference and restlessness, so I get my book out, stick something calming on the iPod and try to zone out a bit. I turn the TV volume down, but leave it on, flickering across the room, because it’s somehow good to have the men with the big thighs for company.

I climb onto the bed, or one of them. I’ve never understood why some rooms have two kingsize beds in them. If you were with someone, wouldn’t you want to share? And if you didn’t want to share, why are the beds so big?

The bed is topped by a duvet (good) or a complicated sheet/blanket/quilt arrangement (bad), I recall urban myths about how rarely the counterpane/quilt things are washed, and feel a bit ill just touching it.

I am dehydrated, and hot as fuck. I turn the air con down, or open the windows, or have a cold shower if I can’t do either. I sip water from the bottle I bought at the airport back in London, and splash my face.

It’s still too early for sleep, but I can just about justify going to bed. I climb into familiar nightwear from home (camisole/cotton pyjama trousers) and into an unfamiliar bed, which involves kicking through taut layers of bedding and fighting with the wrong pillow.

I set a complex array of alarms to go off in the morning – my phone, watch, alarm clock (if I remembered it) and sometimes even the hotel clock radio, if I can figure it out. I am paranoid that nothing will wake me and I’ll somehow sleep through and miss my morning obligation, even though I always sleep poorly in hotels.

I watch an episode of something light on my iphone, like Eureka or Gossip Girl or Life on Mars, or listen to a podcast while playing something mindless on my Nintendo DS: patience, usually, because I find the act of putting things in their rightful place conducive to relaxation.

Finally, I switch off the tv, the lights, the DS, and put earplugs in. I don’t need them, but I don’t want to know if I do need them, if you see what I mean.

I lie for a while, unsleeping. I am too hot; too uncomfortable; too awake; too anticipatory; too alert. I tell myself it’s ok if I don’t sleep much/at all, that I’ll be OK to do the talk anyway, that I’m going home and can sleep afterwards. I toss. I turn. I read a bit. I try again when I see the clock sneak around to locally very late.

At some point, despite my best efforts to elude it, sleep sneaks in anyway, and coshes me.

I wake briefly at two; at four; at half past five; at six fifteen, at which point I briefly consider giving and getting up, since I’m so awake anyway. Before I get a chance to do so, I drop off again, and at seven, just as I’m finally getting into proper sleep, I am rudely awoken by the alarm. I snooze-wake-snooze for a bit, and then get up, feeling more guilty and groggy than is strictly necessary.

I portion out my movements so as to be ready to check out and head to the event on time, not desperately early. There is a shower to be had; hair to be dried; clothes to be pressed or at least put on; breakfast to munch, alone; packing up and checking out. On a good day, I can do all this in half an hour. Because I’m up stupidly early, I spin it out and let it last for two hours.

At breakfast I eat more than I would at home, because like a hobo I don’t know when my next meal might be. There’s no guarantees of a laid-on lunch, so at most, I’m going to be looking at a long hungry stretch until I can grab a handful of salty pretzels from the bar at the airport lounge. In the meantime, I stock up on slow-release carbs and eat things I always intend to (but never do) at home at similar hours of the morning – fruit salad; yoghurt; granola.

I eye the array of garishly-coloured sliced meats and artfully-flavoured cheeses with a combination of suspicion and desire – old backpacking instincts die hard, and I’m tempted to make a sneaky sandwich using breakfast rolls, and smuggle it out in a napkin as my student self once did. But this is not that class of hotel, and the napkins are cloth and monogrammed, not paper, so I resist.

I hesitate over whether to tip the waitress who brought my tea, even though I did the bulk of the hunting-and-gathering across the buffet tables for my breakfast.

I head back to the room to assemble my things (though they are, of course, already assembled, because I had nothing else to do in the hour before breakfast). I brush my teeth, dawdle for a few moments and then gather my stuff and go to check out.

At the main desk, as I surrender my card/key while the receptionist asks with a mixture of suspicion and charm whether I raided the minibar. When I confess I didn’t, he seems somewhat disappointed.

The rest of the day passes in a relative whirl. Walk or taxi to the event, speak, listen, talk, lunch, listen, panel, cab, airport, check in, lounge, fly, tube, bus, velcro cat.

And I’m home. Until the next time.