Eureka

While not getting a good night's sleep and rampant boredom may be to blame for some of my zombiness this week, another potential culprit has stepped up. Although the classic symptom of swollen eyelids hasn't shown, the distinctive itching in the inner ear finally did. It happens every year, and I still never recognise it until I've been feeling out of sorts for a week - yep, my hayfever is back.

In another feat of what-would-we-do-without-the-internet, I looked up the generic name for the active ingredient in my favourite antihistamine and managed to get it at the local pharmacy, in its generic form, for 7 Euro for 20 tablets. Result.

The weather forecast was spot on, it's raining and grey and chilly. It's supposed to be better tomorrow. I'll write my postcards for Japan - they didn't have any 1 Euro stamps at the post office, but I have some 55 cent ones with poppies and 45 cent ones with daisies instead. I should also do some more work on my presentation - which needs to be turned into a 5-minute recording by next Friday - but I feel more like studying German. I'm sick of sounding like I have a mental age of 2.

In other news, I've been asked to consider staying on until the end of September (a month longer than my current contract) to work on a new project. Fine in principle, and they have signed off my holidays for the craft fair I'm doing and my residential week. Need to be careful about being in Japan at the right time for my brother getting there after Mongolia though. And, like the project that has just ended, I won't be doing any translation. Just supporting the people using English as a source and spotting errors in the existing translation. No idea if I'll be allowed to correct them or not yet.

It's incredibly frustrating. I came here to translate, not edit. I know editing and checking are also valuable skills, but they're not the ones I'm after right now... I may have to try to find something to do on the side to get the experience I want.