A singularly long day that, thanks to the timezone conspiracy, manages to start in Italy and end in Mexico about 31 hours later.
Right now I am in the USA. But really I am not; I am flying somwhere over Texas, having recently overflown Canada, the Great Lakes, Arkansas and other places.
I am at 10.000 meters altitude in a French plane full of French and Mexican people. I have watched three movies, and this eternal afternoon is beginning to tire me some - but in two hours I will be in landing at Mexico City, so I bear this test with fortitude.
The two necking teenagers close to me are beginning to tire me as well; they don't stay still, but neither do they get down to serious (and entertaining for the audience) groping.
His idea of caressing is something that would seem more appropriate when applied to a cat.
And she is quite coy, but maybe simply tired with the whole airplane business and with the hairy ponytailed presence on the right (that would be me).
How glad I am to be no longer of that age.
Having secured the downvotes of the teens with the last sentence, let me set down some of the facts of this busy week in Italy before the erosion of memory sets in.
I went there for an interview. It was a very promising interview, in a sense, because they paid plane and hotel and board, but by no means a done deal.
This is how I found myself in the small yet strangely attractive town of Ivrea. I met a lot of interesting people from England, the US, Germany and the Netherlands (the Dutch guy had a serious accent. When I didn't understand "Nuthrlunds" he proceeded to explain: "you know, small, fery small country somewhere in the North, close to Belgium").
Of course, I spoke more English than Italian. The interview went ... I don't know, I have superstitious fears of writing any opinion of how it went.
Let us just say that I did not piss in my pants and that I didn't turn red. This much I could do. Having done the best I could (a typical Boy Scout thing to say), and the decision of hiring me being quite completely out of my hands, I spent some days with my family.
They are planning to move to Milan this summer. The new house still needs fixing, and many things in the new house are already in boxes. All the books, for example. Very disturbing to be so close to an unreachable library.
My father very visibly set aside one room for me and one room for my sister, even if I am not planning to live there and my sister will probably only be spending the weekends there.
But such is the way of the Italian family. I admit that I would be disappointed not to have a room (even symbolically) at my parents' house.
A final tip of the hat to Airfrance that forced me to check in even my hand luggage (which was within the lmits), claiming that we were travelling on a "small plane". The same French genius expressed itself in Charles De Gaulle airport, terminal 2, an impressive masterpiece of glass and concrete engineering where you always have to catch a bus, and where, if it rains, you get wet. But it does look good !, which is what France is indeed all about. Still, three airport bus rides for a simple transfer are a bit too much.
Just so you don't think I am a total whiner, I will also admit that the Airfrance airplane food is quite tasty, they have a fair choice of wine, and that the little individual entertainment system (movies plus games plus plane tracking) manages to keep one amused for hours.
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