The days are melting into one here. And it has nothing to do with the mostly pleasant weather. In our windowless office, the clocks are on Irish time. RTÉ One television is on all the screens so we see the nine o’clock news at five o’clock here. And reporting into the mainstream radio programmes back home adds to our body clocks thinking we are in Rialto and not Rio.

One evening this week I finished a report for Drivetime and walked out into the sunshine to find it was only two o’clock here – not six. I call it Olympic lag!

Eighteen-hour working days are not uncommon but I am not complaining. It is brilliant to be part of this amazing event. I must be running on adrenalin. And schteak, of course. The farmers back home mightn’t like to hear this, but I concur with the O’Donovan boys about the cuts being served here.

To put it in context, relative to home, our hotel is along the dual carriageway near Naas. Olympic Park is at the Curragh. The Olympic stadium is around Croke Park and the sailing and rowing is in Bray and Dun Laoghaire. So we are well away from the glamour and edginess we hear about in downtown Rio, where I have yet to visit.

Close to our hotel, there is a shopping centre with an array of lovely restaurants with menus dripping with lists of different succulent steak cuts. The restaurants are not cheap and they are not terribly busy either, because the country is in a deep recession. One night last week, I walked past about six of these restaurants and they were all virtually empty.

Last Friday night, some five hours after they had won their silver medal in rowing, I met the O’Donovan brothers for an interview on the roof of an apartment block overlooking Olympic Park. It’s a 10-minute walk away from where RTÉ and the BBC broadcast live links back to studio and is used for its beautiful panoramic backdrop.

When they arrived, they looked shattered. They hadn’t showered and were still in their racing gear. They hadn’t eaten a bit since breakfast, let alone any schteaks. So one of our staff ordered pizza, which arrived just after their live “podium pants” interview with Darragh Maloney back in Dublin. They wolfed it down just before Evanne Ni Chuilinn interviewed them again for the nine o’clock news.

It was a great pleasure to meet them and hold the heavy, well-earned silver medals, just them and me and a couple of more colleagues sitting on a Rio rooftop eating pizza, laughing and joking while the country at home celebrated. It was a rare moment of relaxation in these past two weeks of pulling like a dog. CL

Touts landing themselves with tickets to trouble

Ticket touting is a serious crime in Rio de Janeiro. If you sell on a ticket for a sporting event at above face value, you are in deep trouble here. It is described as being “a crime against the popular economy”.

I would never buy a ticket for above its face value. In desperate situations, some people are forced into doing so, be it on the street or via an elaborate dressed-up hospitality package. But in general, we frown at the practice. Maybe this is an unfair comparison to make, but can you tell me what’s the difference in principle, between upping the price of a ticket for a big match occasion and upping the price of a hotel room on the weekends of big matches or big concerts?