Lag

I'm back from London and I had a superb time. I'm not quite ready to debrief on my journey though, as I am currently being buffeted on all sides by the evil jetlag demons. Jetlag is strange stuff - sometimes I feel deathly tired, like my body has completely run out of energy and is shutting down beneath me. Sometimes I feel well-rested, but yawn constantly, like a hippo on the final chapter of his PhD. Often I feel hungry, and then ten minutes later feel ridiculously full, or even start salivating wildly half an hour after eating lunch. As the day draws on, I find I wind down like a clockwork soldier and stop, staring at a pen or a doorknob for several seconds before my mind rubberbands back into my body. Luckily this hasn't happened in the middle of the road or while I've been operating heavy machinery.

As for sage advice in dealing with jet lag, there doesn't seem to be a lot beyond forcing oneself onto the day schedule at the new location through mental discipline, chemical assistance or physical exercise. I have found that my body seems to latch onto the new clock better if daytime has lots of bright light and night is kept nice and dark, but I'm not sure that works for everyone.

William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, which is a terrible book and should not be read under any circumstance, had this to say about jet lag: Her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage. Well said - pity about the rest of the book.