English is my native language, but I spent the first 10 years of my career in Japan. I didn't really notice a difference with which language was being spoken.

English is my native language, but I spent the first 10 years of my career in Japan. I didn't really notice a difference with which language was being spoken. My Japanese colleagues came up with a joke (?). They'd ask me something mundane (like: did you eat yet?), but since I was so zombie-like for several minutes, they would slap a post-it on me. I felt bad about this, but I was managing a 2M line code base (C), and they 'only' had to manage 250k-or-so transistors. I now believe (for me) that if you (one) is debugging a large code-base, taking a moment to relearn human is to be expected. It's a self-serving belief, but I have found little evidence that it is wrong...