Monday, May 17, 2010

jet lag

Jet lag-
I never really understood the full effects of jet-lag until yesterday. I arrived back in Hong Kong at 6.30am from Tuscon, Arizona via Los Angeles and Vancouver. I did some boring shit in the morning, and then lay down on my bed at around 11.30am.At 11.45 i was in the middle of a dream that involved me waiting in line at security at a nameless airport, and then i was awoken by my phone. It took me a good 2 minutes to clear my head and get to grips that i was no longer travelling and realise where i was. I had a great afternoon at the beach with friends, but I did feel a little tired. Most of my mates passed through and then went into the town, and I promised that i would follow them later. Mid evening I walked into town by myself to catch up with everyone and made a fatal mistake and sat on a bench at the harbour, to have a smoke and enjoy the view. Here's where the jet-lag really kicked in! I came to, and panicked and thought, fuck what time is it? Have i missed that flight? Where am i? Where's my bag? Not being able to answer any of these questions I did what I always do in such situations and 'took a moment' during my moment I thought Where am I going? Where have I been? My bag is probably with someone! It was then that I heard a lot of Cantonese voices to the left of me, and my first thought was-i must be waiting for a flight back to Hong Kong. I honestly at this point had no idea where i was, or what i was doing. A minute went by , I was quite happy knowing that i must be waiting for the same flight as the Chinese people next to me. Then it occurred to me that i could only hear Cantonese voices .At every point in this story , my eyes had been open, i was sat on a bench with the South China Sea less than 5 metres away with all the noise that entails. At the exact moment that i realised it was really strange to only hear Chinese people in an airport, the curtains opened before my eyes , and my brain accepted the reality of what my eyes had been seeing for the last 5 minutes. I had had moments of hallucination during extreme times of tiredness recently, but for my brain to completely disregard what my eyes were seeing is another matter entirely! That is jet-lag.

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