I Can't Believe I'm Being Payed for This
Here's what Friday (that is to say, yesterday) looked like for me:
6:00 The problem of waking up to a classical music radio station is that sometimes they wake you up with trumpets. In the middle of the night. Still beats the time (back when I lived in France) when I was woken up by the voice of Jean-Marie Le Pen (leader of the French extreme-right). I still shudder at the though of it.
6:10 Get up. Put water to boil. Put clothes on. Wash face. Make coffee. Breakfast.
6:30 Suddenly realize the bus comes in five minutes. Run around the apartment packing my bag with my left hand while brushing my teeth with the right one.
6:34 Lock apartment's door.
6:35 I'm so out of shape (a term widely inaccurate in that it assumes I have ever been in shape) I'm out of breath from running from my building's door to the bus stop. All, what, thirty meters of the way.
6:45 I understand this particular bus sometimes makes a look to stop at the railway station, and sometimes does not. I don't mind walking from this other stop to the railway station. But if all the twelve people who come off the bus at this particular stop all go to the railway station, maybe the stop should be included at this time of the day? Just thinking out loud muttering under my breath.
6:55 Board regional express train. Find seat facing forward. Plop down in seat.
6:58 Trains depart.
7:00 Fall asleep.
7:40 Wake up a few minutes before arrival.
7:45 Get off train. Meet up with colleague. Board train to Graz. Look for unoccupied seats facing forward. Sit down.
7:58 Trains depart. Chat merrily away.
9:00 Catch up with some reading while colleague merrily snores away.
10:16 Arrive in the capital of Bavaria.
10:45 Arrive at colleague's institute.
10:50 Coffee with colleague. Talk about God and the weather (not literally. It's a German expression).
11:00 Start crunching. Cover a white board with scribbles (not mine), get confused about variables names, call every one of them "that thing there", get more confused (no idea why). Clear away some confusion. Shake hands while various colleagues enter and leave the room. Argue about the validity of one approach.
12:45 Lunch. Successfully manage not to run away from all the clinicians wearing their white coats in the cafeteria and to refrain the urge from shouting at the top of my lungs that a white coat isn't a uniform but a way of protecting patients from outside germs and people from the outside from patients' germs.
13:15 Coffee.
13:45 Get back to the white board. Bat arms and fling hands around a lot.
15:15 Water.
15:25 Get at the computer. Code some stuff. Argue about my debugging technique ("Well, if it's not happy with 1,000 here, then it's 10,000") despite the fact that it works.
16:30 Decide to call it a day.
16:45 Let the locals argue about where to get a beer.
17:00 Suggest it's about damn time we leave for that beer.
17:15 Sit down in beer garden.
17:20 Savor first sip of Augustiner (after about four mouthfuls of foam — what is it with you and five-centimeter layers of foam, Germanland?). Chat. Bad-mouth southern California, for well-deserved reasons. Compare American microbrews and German beers. Compare the climate of Eat some mackerel on a stick. Try to explain the concept of Easter bells (the Easter bells leave Rome on the morning of Easter and fly all over France and drop chocolate eggs in every garden, what's hard to grasp about that? "Des cloches qui volent ?" exclaims the Montrealer in disbelief. Well, how did you think the eggs got there, the Easter Rabbit? Please). Discuss the importance of birthdays. Agree that Germany is quite the place to be.
20:10 Leave beer garden.
20:40 Board train to Frankfurt.
22:50 Change trains.
00:26 Trains arrive. Run like a madwoman towards the bus stop. See scores of people waiting and no bus. A full minute later, board bus.
00:45 Enter apartment. Text message colleague to let him now I'm home safe.
Soon after that Crash in bed.
