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Jet-lagged

I’ve just returned today from ten days in Montréal, and I’m so jet-lagged I don’t know what day of the week it is, or what meal I’m meant to be having next. I’m going to try to stay awake until mid evening, then collapse into bed and just hope I sleep through the night to try to reset my body clock. But I’m expecting to feel shattered for the rest of the week.

It wasn’t a holiday though. I’ve been participating in a big equipment trial, trying to integrate my experimental system with a complementary one from the University of Dayton, and some Canadian hardware. It’s been very hard work, but ultimately very interesting, and has allowed my team to test our kit much more extensively than in the comparatively limited equipment trials I’ve been running over the past few years.

It’s so good to be home! Equipment trials are extremely hard work in general, but doing it abroad is worse – even things like the power supply voltage and shape of the plug require thought to make sure that it will all work when we turn it on. Plus Montréal is Francophone, so there was the added challenge of dusting off my limited French. In fact, most people were bilingual, and provided that one made a token effort in French they were usually happy to switch to English. Which was just as well!