Day 12 - Ground Hog Day

I woke up on Wednesday and noticed that my allergies (perhaps, see below) were still adversely affecting me. I got to the office and found my new friend the cappuccino machine. I continued to conduct training and then came lunch. Go figure, lunch was the same sort of sandwiches, orange juice, and sliced muffins (I think I had forgotten to mention them on my other posts) that we had had the previous two days of training. This time they were on bread again, and like Tuesday, I avoided the ones with mushrooms. The sandwiches were sliced in four triangles each and professionally laid out across the platter. The ones with salmon and cream cheese were particularly enjoyable, with the giant capers that they have down here. (The capers were not specifically the enjoyable part, I actually prefer the taste of the small ones).

After lunch we continued training and actually got to the point of finishing all of the material. As a final touch, we provided a demonstration to some of the higher-ups in the company. Nothing too special. The interesting thing about the demo was that it was arranged by the employee who had connected the IP over fiber link that we had used to talk to our equipment. He found, or rather quite blatantly made himself an opportunity to talk about how wonderful his communication link was. He got no reaction for his remarks; everyone in the room saw quite clearly that he was flattering himself.

Throughout the day, and especially towards the end of the day, with my nose was continuing to leak obnoxiously, my throat was dry caused pain when I swallowed, and my entire body was beginning to ache miserably all over.

I became acutely aware that I felt like crap.

I made my way home at the end of the day and promptly climbed my way into bed. The last thing I wanted while in Australia was to become sick. I, like the night before, woke up a few hours later, checked my e-mail and chatted online. This lasted maybe two hours and I was back in bed trying to sleep off my sickness, or whatever else it was. It did occur to me that being sore all over could actually be a result of my swimming two days earlier; the soreness and allergies together causing me to think that I was getting sick. Either way, I was back in bed having successfully spent two days in a row doing effectively the exact same lack of activities at work and in the hotel.