The diary reads:

After a long (and I mean really long) flight from Beijing , arrived into Doha really tired and thinking about how much time I would need to get my body clock into its right pace again but also looking forward for the ‘next leg of the race’.
Shortly after a quick nap, a friend of mine wanted to go to the swimming pool and as the weather was incredibly hot, we headed there. My first time trying the place, the swimming pool is at the top floor of one of the (many) towers in the city centre. Really nice to swim a little (I really miss swimming) and the best part was the really inviting and warm hot tub. 

Lingered in the bubbly water until every part of my skin looked like an old raisin and finished the day with a lovely ‘whole-grilled chicken and shishah’ combo at Doha’s Souq Wakif.’

As the roster continues, the days off become shorter and involve preparation for destinations to come. The cool water of the rooftop pool washes off the jet-lag and, laying on the hard surface of the white plastic pool chair, I can’t help but being invaded with a rush of happiness, for today is a weekday in which most of my acquaintances are in an office, yet I have arrived from China in the morning and will be in Italy the day after.

The crew bus picks me up. The blasting sound of an old Vengaboys and Aqua mixed tape proudly played by the driver as a companion for the late afternoon journey to the terminal. My light suitcase is easy to carry for I have only packed some shorts and comfy shoes for the two days in Lombardia.
Seven hours are needed to leave the desert and land in far-off Milan Malpensa Airport. During the half-full flight, I receive a feedback form full of appraisals from a customer, his bleached teeth sporting the most Italian smile I have seen and his voice saying: ‘ You are a nice-a gentleman, you smile a lot-a‘ in the thickest accent available.

It is summer in Italy, yet the temperature is not as suffocating as in the Middle East. Malpensa Airport, although large, is notiriously far from the city centre, the one-hour journey taken through the beginning of the late afternoon rush hour, the buildings in the horizon at times lost in the thick smog.
The hotel, a small joint next to the train station is not particularly striking. The dark corridors coated in white paint and dark timber plates adding to the moldy atmosphere of my transitional home for the next two nights.

A summer evening in Italy is not to be wasted. My crew and I meet up at the lobby and walk through streets covered in construction rubble and freshly laid tram lines until the industrial nature of Milan is slightly lost and merges with the ancient architecture of the manicured city centre. Seafood pasta and lemon soda are enjoyed in the late afternoon and into the early evening, amidst groups of posh Italian women who cover their faces in ridicilously large Ray-bans and sip on glasses of pinot grigio by the flower-covered terrazzas.

The next day is for sightseeing. Early in the morning, our English-speaking voices echo in the enormity of the hollow vaults at the Stazione Centrale, where we join commuters for a trip underground, through hazy tunnels of engineering leading us to Piazza dei Duomo.

Milan might not have the famous charming mess of Rome or the pristine spells from Florence, yet the Duomo breaks this myth and stands right in the centre of the industrial city as a witness to time changing, the metropolis revolving around it in ripples of bad traffic and smog without touching it.
Candoglia marble carvings shine against the clear sky, whispering about a project that took over six-hundred years to be completed, and the iron and glass roofs of Galleria Emanuelle right across the square, speaks of history through its intricate lines and elaborate mosaics.