In case any of you have wondered about the spottiness of my posting over the last week or so, I have been working on a project in Italy since last Saturday. Sadly, I didn’t have much time for sightseeing. Much of my time was spent in an unairconditioned warehouse between Milan and Bologna during a recordbreaking heatwave. As one of my hosts pointed out at the end of the week, this week I’ve lived the life of a warehouse worker. I ended each day physically exhausted and drenched in perspiration. I rarely slept more than three or four hours a night due to a combination of jet lag, the slowness of my old body to adapt, and an uncomfortable hotel bed.
This week I will return as well as I can to my regular schedule. Last night I went to bed at my normal hour, taking some melatonin in an attempt at helping my body to regularize its internal clock. That always knocks me out the day after so, although I rose at the normal time, too, I’m pretty groggy.
This was the first time I had ever been to Italy and I’m very much looking forward to returning as a tourist. I’ll be posting the impressions I formed during my travels over the next several days. I speak no Italian but people who work at the airports, in hotels and restaurants, and at my client’s spoke English pretty well, as I anticipated. At one point I used my Russian to communicate which practically brought tears to the eyes of the person to whom I was speaking (a Russian).
“The only way he could broaden his mind would be by putting it under a train.”
The person who came up with that line must have known about the effects of jetlag.
Glad to have you back.
Sadly, I had zero time for sightseeing. I worked for ten hours a day—eight with the customer, half an hour in a daily meeting with my U. S.-based team after my Italian workday, and then another hour or so working on other projects. To top it off in the course of things I was walking 10-14 km/day.