I wrote in a previous post about how nice it is to be as many as 16 hours ahead of your normal timezone. It allows you to delude yourself into feeling that you're sort of "in the future", especially if you're communicating via email or telephone, etc, with that "past" timezone. I can't really explain very well why I like it. It's just a fun feeling. I always like that feeling when I come to the "Far East". It's an uber-version of that feeling you have if you wake up early in the morning and get to work at 7:00am. You feel you're getting a little head start. (Never mind that you're snoring during the 4:00pm board meeting when they're discussing who to lay off due to the budget cuts. You wake up and wonder why everyone is staring at you.....) I should also mention that another thing that is nice is the jet lag. Nice? People often equate jet lag with tiredness, but this is really just a confusion of two things, imho. Jet lag is really -in my mind- the result of being able to get your body clock out of sync with the day-night cycle by travelling rather rapidly across the planet. There's no major reason why this is a bad thing in and of itself. It's just that we tend to typically within a short time of arriving have to deal with the business of working within the local business hours, perhaps listen to the talks at the conference you came to attend, talk to the people you are visiting, etc. Or, you've simply come to a place that has absolutely nothing to do once the sun has set, and so there's no benefit to being awake at night, so you've got to quickly get in sync with the day. If you've no pressure to conform to these things -no immediate meetings to attend, and plenty to do at night- then it's not an issue. Just ride it out, and your body will adapt by locking back on to the light in its own sweet time. In the meantime, you get to stay up late into the sweet slow hours of the early morning. This is good for thinking uninterruptedly, exploring lively nighttime neighbourhoods and markets, watching movies, and generally pleasantly twiddling ones thumbs and toes. There are some periods, nevertheless, when you're trying to sleep because you think you ought to, and then you can't. Or the day comes, it gets louder and then that when you want to sleep but then its loud. I did not have that latter problem. There were nice thick curtains on my various hotels' windows, and in case I needed them (I did not) I had the earplugs I always use for flying (always have a million pairs as although I bring my own, the airline always gives me extra sets, bless 'em). Overall, I find that jet lag in the Far East can be deliciously bizarre and rather fun. For this trip I was exactly like Bill Murray in the film Lost in Translation for the first few days. It was great. Well, exactly like Bill Murray, except for the fact that: (1) I'm not funny, (2) There were no billboards with my face on them around the city, selling Santori (although I did see Santori for sale rather a lot, which amused me no end.) (3) It was Taiwan and not Japan. (4) I actually enjoy staying up in a hotel room into the wee hours, and going out exploring a strange city (see later descriptions of explorations). (5) There was no Scarlett Johansson in my room. Other than that it was exactly the same. Huh! Poor guy, you're thinking. No Scarlett Johansson. Oh, feel no pity for me, dear reader. I had someone way preferable in my room..... Mary McDonnell. (As tasty as she might seem, I'd (probably) boot Scarlett out of my room in favour of Mary McDonnell almost any day....) You've never heard of her, in all probability, which is just sad. Sad and wrong. She's one of many hugely talented actresses above a certain age that become invisible because they're not eligible to play the eye-candy roles, or the amusing caregiver role, etc. But keep an eye out for her. She is an unacknowledged master at communicating a huge amount of complex information and emotion with her eyes in combination with at least 17 very different types of smile (and smile-related mouth expressions). With her abilities she should be as famous and in demand as several less well talented male actors of the same age..... but there you go. Instead, she's most well known as the president's wife in Independence Day, or the mother in Donnie Darko. Ok, so she was not really in the room with me. Instead, I had some of her wonderful work on DVD in the form of (her role as president in) the whole of season one of the newly re-imagined drama Battlestar Galactica. A treat to myself last semester was to buy that and watch it. Never found the time, and so remembered to order it from Amazon in time for it to show up on the doorstep and get stuffed into my suitcase for watching on walkabout. Perfect occasional viewing in the wee hours of the morning (and later during the trip, during the evening after dinner). I could write a whole post about that show. In short: Don't be fooled by the "space opera" setting. It is mostly irrelevant. This is some of the best combined writing, directing and acting I've ever seen on television in this genre and maybe in any genre. It's truly -to use a tired term- character-driven, and there's no dwelling on silly techno-babble and Star Trek type of drivel. It is constantly inventive, challenging, and unpredictable. Go get it (Watch the pilot/miniseries first, though. 2 hours.). (Now I need to find another month away to watch Season 2.) Ok, there is a major problem to come. I'm now 16 hours back, having spent a month adapting to the other timezone at my leisure. I have only two days* to prepare all my classes and at the same time get my body clock in shape to start a gruelling semester of classes, office hours and meetings, starting 9:00am on Monday! My body will be thinking that it is 1:00am on Tuesday. Confused? I will be. -cvj (*And I can't even start yet. Everything in the house is covered in a thick layer of dust....Must clean....can't stop myself....)
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