Another update, albeit a little late in the week. I was struck down with the flu at the start of the week, so I was experimenting with which cocktail of drugs would provide the best relief from the symptoms. First thing I did was go out and buy some pseudoephedrine, because that stuff does wonders. It's a pity I can't get any Sudafed here (although I got a Pfizer act-alike). The real magic came from a combination of that, some Vitamin C stuff, and the time-honoured herbal remedy of turmeric and honey. Total turnaround time for the flu (from first symptoms to being able to function mostly normally) was about 48 hours. That time isn't too bad, especially considering that the last flu shot I had (with the previous seasons flu strains) was almost a year ago. I'm still a bit congested, but all up I'm ready to head off to Italy for the week. I doubt I'll be able to fire off a blog post from the conference centre, but I might be able to scab some keyboard time from the other conference attendees if I look desperate enough.

My DSL is a continuing saga, and I really don't think it's going to be working before I leave for Italy. The company (according to their records) has tried to call me back twice. The first time - I admit - I missed their call by 5 minutes (it's a big hill to run up!), but then began the guessing game as to when they would call me back. It turns out that they tried calling me back again at 8:00 the next day. For some reason, they expected me to piously wait by the phone in the hope that they would call me at some point of time, if ever. What with my hideously unscheduled life, I don't exactly know when I'm going to be sitting around the phone, but if I say I'll be around to answer the phone, I'll do my best to make sure that I'm around to answer it. Even better, when I rang up their service line to get some answers (which costs money by the way), I got lots of placating noises saying that they will be trying to ring me on that day or the next. It's not like they can fix the problem by talking to me either - the phone line doesn't even have a DSL signal to synchronise to, but for some reason they feel that they should talk to me before harassing Deutsche Telekom to fix it. I'm hoping it will be all automagically fixed by the time I come back from Florence, but I'm not counting on that happening.

Just a quick pointer for any of you who might come back to Earth as small animals, insects, or spiders. I don't mind that you're an insect. But seriously, if you're a slug, and you're looking for a safe place to spend the night, my jeans are not the safest place, especially not when they're on the washing line, and I have a policy of reigining vacuumy death upon any insect that would dare breach the sacred confines of my apartment. I've made an example of the slug, and it's spidery brother/cousin/guy off the street. Let that be an example to the rest of you insects (That's literally, not figuratively - I'm not calling the readers of this insects, although if you are an insect and you are reading this, and even though this combination is amazingly unlikely to occur - I was talking to you.). I am an official representative of the great noodly one, so don't mess with my jeans, or my apartment.