Open Modest and register new account...choose your country and Nokia Messaging, enter your email address and password...and there you go.
Hmm... Let me ask first, have you been experiencing similar lag when browsing web sites, or doing other internet-related tasks? And, as Dzano noted, experimenting with an e-mail account from a different provider than Hotmail could prove useful. If that works, the likelihood is that there is a problem either with the Hotmail account setup, or with Hotmail's POP3 access. If the lag exists for any email account, something else is going on...
I'm not asking you to try with any other email provider. Use your existing Hotmail account and register it trough Nokia Messaging. It's much faster and it supports push email.