On jet lag, flush toilets and Johhny Cash...

Jet lag is a weird thing. I've travelled across the US a handful of times and dealt with the 3 hour difference (from Seattle, its +3 hours on the East Coast and -2 hours in Hawaii) and frankly never had much issue with it. I took one trip to Norway (-9 hours) but it was purely vacation, so I was out at the pubs till 2am pretty much and never really noticed the jet lag.

On this trip I've had to both get used to the +12.5 hour difference (wtf with the .5 anywhoo?) but also these guys work on a very different schedule than I do. (Back home I tend to work from 7am-6pm; here they tend to work from 10am till 10 or 11pm.)

I've tried to follow all of the advice: don't nap during the day (except my first day off the plane when I was dead beat,) exposure to sunlight in the morning, the jet-lag diet (which involves several days of alternating feast-and-famine.) However what I've found is that no matter what, I am dead tired between 10am and 5pm here... and then restless and awake during the night. And when I do finally get to sleep... at 12, 1am, 2am... I wake up exactly at 3:30 am. Eigh!!! It's messed up. Thank god there is internet in the hotel.

One of my buddies back home asked me yesterday if I had flush toilets. Everywhere that I have been, at least, has had western standards of plumbing and amenities. Clearly there are people here living without that, but I think the past few years (especially here in Bangalore, from what I understand) there has been an incredible push of modernization and westernizaion, driven by the IT sector. I'm worried about the effect of the worldwide recession on these guys (companies have already been failing and cutting jobs here, so they are already feeling it.) It just makes me more determined to do my part as I feel that my company will really be able to contribute to the recovery, in the long run.

To prove that I have working plumbing, here is a pic of the Smallest. Bathroom. Evar.

From Bangalore Day Three

Check out the weird sink that looks like a bowl on the table. Its actually attached. If you turn the water on too much it will totally shoot up out of the bowl, which I found out the first day I was getting ready for work.

From Bangalore Day Three

I can barely fit my fat ass into that shower. and the sink has 2 mirrors in the corner, which means that when you shave or brush your teeth, you can see 3 of yourself. It was confusing, as I didn't know which guy to look at!

Which brings me to my final point. I finally got some real spicy food here in the past 24-36 hours, and it was wonderful. But thank god for that flush toilet... for I went down in a Burning Ring of Fire.