A Physicist's life #2

Being the Polarized Target week coordinator in Geneva,I have to make sure
everything is going on correctly with the target shifters, I am on call
whenever a serious problem occurs and have to fix it.. Last week-end the
shifters were mostly untrained Russians and I did run from North tho
south... To start with one did not show up at 8 am when his shift started.
I had to replace him as the previous shifter had been spending the whole
night. I tried to find the missing guy by phone, sent him emails, asked
his colleagues.. nobody knew where he was.. eventually he showed up at 3pm
one hour before the end of his shift very sorry and apologetic.. He had
just forgotten about his shift. Then we started to polarize and I had to
stay as an expert to start the process..I was expecting the midnight
shifter was planned to be a young Czech student , a clever and smart guy.
So I was happy I would be able to relax then as I knew he could handle the
polarization build up. But at midnight, the missing shifter of the morning
re appeared telling me that feeling guilty he had arranged to swap shifts
with the young student. This was another story for me ! I had to prepare
the follow up of the polarization by myself because this guy was not able
to touch anything. So I worked until 2 am and went to sleep then. But at 3:30 am
my mobile phone wakes me up.. the same guy , usually lazy and now totally
dedicated to the work tells me that there has been no change of the
polarization during the last hour.. I have to go there again to retune the
frequency of the microwave generator. In fact all the computers had
crashed and communications between them were lost. I had to reboot all of
them , it took me one hour.. then restart the programs , the slow controls
but there was still an important communication link which I could not
re-establish. I stayed there trying and trying until 6:30 am and left the
guy knowing another expert would come around 7. I tried to sleep again at
8am, at 11 am my mobile phone rings again. One of my French colleagues
wants me to attend a meeting about some work to do in three months from
now. I tell him I have just been sleeping for three hours and he
apologizes but I cannot go to sleep anymore and finally take a shower and
go to the meeting where I am sort of losing my temper saying to people
that the meeting is not well organized and that I am wasting my time and
have to go back to real world when they are in dreamland.
I go back to the experiment where I find another Russian doing
crosswords instead of working, I call the computer center to tell them my
problem of communication between computers. They send two technicians who
find out in five minutes that the hotlink internet cable on which there is
a label "do not unplug" was not correctly plugged.. and I remember that
the now "famous" missing russian shifter had brought his laptop during the
night and had probably tried to hook it to the internet killing by doing this
the communications needed for our equipment.. This was confirmed when I
asked him a few hours later.. I told him it was written "do not unplug",
he did not understand the word "unplug".. I can tell you they have
selected world champions in Russia, just for me !!
As he was on shift next night he called me again around 3am for a minor
thing and I had another short night.. ..Today was a bit better, what will
be tomorrow ..I never mentionned it but the guys were smelling as
usually..oh dear...staly marinated onions and vodka..cheers !

Tonight I am going to catch the night train to Paris listening to Jonathan's Acetate demos on my walkman, then I will dive into Bach's "l'art de la fugue".