Day Three - First Cracks

Posted on 2006/11/30 00:29:55 (November 2006).

[29th November 2006]

Following the very popular trend of being physically injured at the upper limbs, my body decided to be sympathetic with John and Nigel.

They got injured in several fashionably manners, mostly involved extreme sex scenes and stuff like that, I instead decided to feel bad just sleeping, which sets a standard in dullness and idiocy in how to ruin a business trip and one's health.

As you know I suffer jet lag quite a lot, so basically the night between Tuesday and Thursday (Day 2 and Day 3) I slept a GRAN TOTAL of 2 hours!!
I tried to be in bed for the rest of the night (making a common mistake), and probably I have slept in some awkward position hence the injury.

My chest has been hurting all day, but the real problem was the back, chest pains were just a side effect.

Of course the colleagues couldn't give a flying fuck about it and I had to go out to see two clients with them (among which a huge chain very famous all around the globe), and then work on the presentation for next Monday.

Then around six, I have been told that since today was "No overtime day" if I wanted to do overtime I should have told them to get approval from the director (the approval is infact automatic). Quite strange if you ask me...

Well it was no overtime for me (by the way 9 to 7 is ALREADY OVERTIME for European standards), and I went back home.

Got a nice Katsu-Kare (Curry with fried pork cutlet) in a very nice old restaurant near the hotel (I will take some picture next time I go it's really a cool place), and then after a very hot bath it was time to go to bed and get that sleeping pill that I badly needed...

Yes I have heard of this crazy concept of "no overtime day" (something like "zangyou nashi no hi"...?). I think the especially great feature of it is that part about having to "ask permission" to work overtime. Can you imagine the scene?

"Oh please dear manager, can I give up some more of my own time so I can work even longer for no extra money?"

Or

"Please can you take advantage even more of my insecurity about whether or not I'm a valued member of the company, and give me the opportunity to neglect my increasingly estranged wife and family a while longer...?"

Ah what a joy it will be to get back to working in Blighty. Stroll in at 9:30, first hour of the day having a cup of tea and talking to your colleagues about last night's telly, two hour pub lunch, afternoon spent quitely dozing off at your desk, straight out the door like a shot when the whistle blows at 5:30, and home in time to watch Neighbours.

That's what puts the Great in Great Britain!

Posted by John at 2006/11/30 04:36:43.

Incidentally, I think Italy ought to rebrand itself as "Great Italy" as I believe you share similar work ethics and are therefore thoroughly entitled.

Posted by John at 2006/11/30 04:38:31.

Maybe "Grande Italia".

Posted by John at 2006/11/30 04:38:45.

Working in Japan just gets more curious by the day! Odd concept!!!

I reckon overtime is just a sign employers make bigger promises than they can keep! (Not a failing of overstretched employees as they would have you believe!!) When they *do* offer you overtime in the UK they have the temerity to imply they are doing you a favour!!!

I'll say it once, with emphasis: "Sheesh!!"

Posted by Nigel at 2006/11/30 07:28:40.

Do these two "goods" qualify as spam in your opinion?

Anyways John is completely right. Here they do really live to work, I don't know if I could bear it for much longer than 1 month at the time. The thing that annoys me most is that fact that it seems to be mandatory to go to some place to get drunk afterwards, I mean what If I wanted to take a rest instead?
But that is Japan after all, I knew what I was going to bite into, and I can't complain, though I reserve myself to create hell on earth if for some strange reason I don't get paid or I don't get the contract done...

Posted by Lox at 2006/11/30 11:02:40.

fati una buona sega e ti sentira molto meglio...

Posted by Sheri at 2006/11/30 11:22:20.

"sentirai", scusi

Posted by Sheri at 2006/11/30 11:23:05.

Is it just me or is the main daily board broken again ? If it is I nominate this thread to hang out on instead. I am not a splitter!!

Posted by Kev at 2006/11/30 11:35:32.

Yes, a bit annoying, isn't it? British technology. I suggest we fire the chairman.

Posted by Sheri at 2006/11/30 12:47:04.

Without indemnities (no golden parachute).

Posted by Sheri at 2006/11/30 12:48:12.

John, you may pack your stuff (and incidently, your toothbrush from my glass)!

Posted by Sheri at 2006/11/30 12:49:48.

Happy to hang out here guys!! :)

Not much going on here (except needlessly nerdy stuff...!)

:))

Posted by Nigel at 2006/11/30 13:25:14.

I've just fixed the board - it was the same old problem as ever, a CGI timeout happened in the middle of the last post, and so the HTML file disappeared altogether.

When I did a little rewrite of the board script a while ago I made it "failsafe" so that most of the time all somebody needs to do in this sort of situation is FTP in and rename index.html.tmp to index.html.

Posted by John at 2006/11/30 13:33:54.

Sheri: Are you casting aspersions about British Technology? Eh? Eh?

Tim Berners Lee invented the world wide web.

Alan Turing more or less invented the modern concept of the computer (in scientific circles we refer to them as "Turing machines").

Charles Babbage predated that with his analytical and difference engines, arguable the forerunner of the computer.

Simon Faraday discovered electricity.

All of them British!

It's almost pointless to apply the word "British" before technology - I mean, is there really any technology worth talking about which isn't British?

Posted by John at 2006/11/30 13:56:00.

Cut to the quick, aren't you, John? Il n'y a que la vérité qui blesse...

Posted by Sheri at 2006/11/30 14:15:03.

Well John regarding technology:

The microprocessor was invented by an italian guy the same for radio and telephone :-P

Posted by Federico at 2006/11/30 16:21:22.

Federico! Nice one!! :)) What do you mean by "micro-processor" though? A guy called Geoffrey Dummer created a prototype "integrated circuit" in 1956. A Mr Jack Kilby filed a patent for such while working foe Texas Instruments in '59. C'mon, give me a name?!?!

Good, old Guglielmo Marconi did amazing work though!! :))

Posted by Nigel at 2006/11/30 16:56:30.

And the MP3 was invented by 2 frenchmen (though working for an American company)

Posted by Sheri at 2006/11/30 19:37:00.

It was Federico Faggin. Born in Italy he moved in USA and, working for Intel he designed the 4004 the first microprocessor. It was a 4bit processor (CPU) designed for a japanese company it powered their calculators.

The 4004 was the first full featured CPU built in a single silicon die.

Check on wikipedia for more info :-)

Posted by Federico at 2006/11/30 20:34:19.

Ah yes! Thanks Federico! Interesting stuff! Your countryman has certainly received his fair share of awards for his work!! :)

Sheri: C'mon then - gimmee some names!!

Posted by Nigel at 2006/11/30 22:08:09.

Ciao Fede, everything ok? I can see that there is a bit of a technology history challenge here! Meucci is among the other great engineers in Italy although the invention of the telephone is a bit of a dispute...

Posted by Lox at 2006/11/30 22:08:35.

Bollocks, Federico! Your version has probably been writtent by an American: here is a French version from Wikipedia which is totally different:
À la demande de Hans-Georg Mussman, un groupe de travail regroupant Leon Van de Kerkhof (Philips), Yves-François Dehery (TDF-CCETT), Karlheinz Brandenburg (FhG) reprit des idées de Musicam et d'ASPEC, ajouta de nouveaux outils technologiques et créa le format MP3 (Layer III ou couche III), conçu pour être de même qualité à 128 kbit/s que le MP2 à 192 kbit/s

Posted by Sheri at 2006/11/30 22:12:46.

Nel culo, Federico, ce l'hai nel culo!

Posted by Sheri at 2006/11/30 22:15:36.

Sheri: I think Fede was talking about processors not MP3.. (by the way the French version of Wikipedia is clearly wrong, everyone knows that MP3 strands for the name of the ITALIAN inventor; Mario Pastrami, from Naples.)

Posted by Lox at 2006/11/30 22:20:24.

Sure Lox! I believe you!
No, francamente, Federico, non ci capisco niente e me ne fotto completamente! Volevo solamente contradirti! Tu e sopratutto John, quel inglese pretenzioso! ;-)

Posted by Sheri at 2006/11/30 22:30:49.

Sheri: I think that after a good year (maybe a little less) that you dwell at "la Maison", we can read through your efforts at upsetting the way things are, which in my opinion is a very good thing by the way!

Posted by Lox at 2006/11/30 23:02:02.

I have successfully deleted 2 comments that looked like spam, John's blog engine is GRAND!!

Posted by Lox at 2006/12/01 00:14:20.

Don't worry Sheri, no offense taken :-)

Regarding Meucci there's no dispute: Meucci was the first to invent the telephone, also the USA House of Representatives aknowledged it (but it was in 2002, a little late). He simply lacked the funds to patent the invention so Bell copied it :-(

I always said that patents don't work as they should.

BTW Meucci was born in San Frediano, borough of Florence :-)

Posted by Federico at 2006/12/01 20:37:13.

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