Day 10 In Florence

Well it is day 10 of my Florence tour of duty and there is no sign of when I am going to be either going to Russia or even a project meeting in Korea to get my letter of invitation for the Russian Visa, I could spend my entire month in Florence and achieve nothing, to be honest I am starting to prepare lots of documentation for my project but it is nothing to compare with what I normally do for a living. The weather is fantastic, clear blue skies and wonderful fresh air blowing through the windows when you have them open, I have just been for my annual medical and had what can only described as medieval water torture inflicted upon me, I was asked not to eat before going to the clinic and that was for the cholesterol probably and I was invited to lay down and a guy had hot water hosed into my ears with my eyes closed and this was until my brain was spinning and then he put a bright light over my eyes and got me to look in different directions, I almost puked several times, he was not happy doing this in one ear but both ears, I felt like shit after that and then he threw me out of his office to await some other doctor sticking needles into me, I felt like death with my brain pulsating form the bright lights and my ears still pounding from the water torture and having no food inside of me made me light headed and very bilious. I needed some comfort from mama and nothing was available, I left the clinic after they drew at least 2 litres of blood and was desperate for a taxi and some food, I wandered around a part of town I didn’t know and found a supermarket and got fruit juice and some donuts, this gave me some sugar in the blood and I felt less sick but I was still lost and kept trying to flag down a taxi, No chance, all were occupied and I was left to wander around and finally I found myself in a dead end housing area. This was getting insane and out of control. I managed to find my way back to a small main road and finally got an empty taxi after 1 hour. I felt total relief and went to complain in my office about the tests in the clinic, the guys in the office were all laughing but they don’t have to do these tests. I am now off to the main company office and to carry out some more meaningless paperwork and see if I can not fall asleep as I had to get up at 6 to go to the clinic.