Fighting Jet Lag; Jet Lag’s Winning

I’m back in South Africa. Most years when I come back I start off and sometimes finish in Melville, in Johannesburg. It’s an area with which I’m intimately familiar, and it gives me a comfortable place to settle in, re-adjust, and recover from jet lag. I’ve been coming to South Africa and traveling internationally regularly for fifteen years, and yet I’m still lousy at dealing with jet lag. Perhaps it’s a lack of discipline on my part (I cannot sleep on planes, so when I get to a bad, any bed, I know I should fight of sleep, but I never do), or maybe I have an especially stubborn circadian rhythm. Whatever the reason, I usually need several days to make myself get on a normal schedule rather than forcing it at once.

My posts here for the next few weeks will often take the form of diary entries–light on links, heavy on observation, reliant on my own knowledge and background but also my own prejudices. For some of you, my work might be too much self-indulgence. For others, it might represent something akin to real reportage from someone who often traffics in opinion journalism.