Snowy Isolation - The End Game of 2020 in Italy
View from hotel room at Milan Malpensa Airport, Italy Back to Italy in December to attempt to complete flying on the last F-35 jet of the year, despite the snowy, foggy weather and resurgence of COVID in Europe. This deployment was different than others during this COVID year. We stayed sequestered in our Milan Malpensa airport hotel rooms unless at work. All restaurants were closed except for takeout. The stay was punctuated only with weekend roundtrip commercial flights to Amsterdam and back to comply with Italy's 120 hour stay limit. Our team surprisingly got it done! But "the thrill" is missing without the opportunity to enjoy the la vita bella di Italia. One bright spot was meeting a brilliant young waiter while dining at the Schiphol Airport Marriot hotel in Amsterdam. He saw me working on my Stanford Machine Learning homework while waiting for my meal and amazingly recognized the Coursera content as he is planning to take the same course (for fun). Stevens C