"Manga" cafe -the savior

While in Japan (to see and help my mother), I heard positive news about our research grant application (not a final decision, but a positive recommendation) and I had to work on the rebuttal. But I got the news on Monday night. Tuesday and Wednesday I visited my mother. Wednesday was the last day to visit her and I did not want to waste any second of the precious time with her. On Wednesday, I had to have a ZOOM meeting with my colleague on the project. And on Thursday I had to take a flight back to the Netherlands. So, I had to work on the draft in between all of these.

While I was with my mother on Wednesday, I realized that if I left her place when she went to have dinner around 18:00, it would be too late for the meeting at 19:00 when I came back to where I was staying (at my brother's, 1.5hrs away). But also, there were no rooms in the nursing building where I could have privacy to have the ZOOM meeting. The meeting was urgent, we really had to decide how to respond to one of the referee's comments.

Then, I came up with an idea, "The manga cafe!". In Japan, there are cafes with full of mangas, 24/7, and customers can go into a private room to read them. On the way between my mother's and my brothers's, I knew there was one manga cafe like that.

After saying goodbye to my mother, which was hard and sad, I took the train and went to the cafe, had some chaos there but succeeded in checking in, and settled in a tiny small room at 18:40. Perfect.

I worked on my part of the draft on Thursday morning and then, I had to leave for the airport. On the way, at Tokyo and Paris airports, I had to check the status of the draft. I arrived in the Netherlands on Friday morning. By then, the draft was in good shape, I thought. But somehow there was a problem with the online document and my colleague had to work on it again.

I checked it again on Saturday, and it was submitted on Sunday.

Pffff...