I’m on a whirlwind 2-week excursion in the U.S. before I head back to my lovely Penang. It never ceases to amaze me how long it still takes to travel the world in the 21st century. Where are the Star Trek transporters? Come on, scientists! Us arts people write you good entertainment so it will relax your mind so you can create new ways of traveling to benefit us arts people. Why is it taking so long?

And I had a very good itinerary. I’ve made the trek from Asia to the US probably twenty times. Most itineraries area horrible – overnight in Singapore – twelve hours in Hong Kong – six hours in Narita – whatever the layovers might be, they are usually not great.

As I said, I had a good itinerary – a total time of 25 hours. That was about 20 hours of actual flying and a couple layovers dispersed in. Not bad at all. Quite good, actually. It’s not uncommon to have my flights take 38 hours or 44 hours or something insane like that.

And this time, I got to fly through Dubai – first time ever. Emirates is a great airline. Great service, roomy seats compared to others, and other small touches which make a nice difference. Here are my first photos of Dubai from my airplane.

But now I’m in horrible jet lag. Been tossing and turning since 3:20 so I finally got out of bed at 5:30. It’s going to be a long day and by late afternoon I’ll be dying.

Not much writing going on because my head can’t seem to focus on anything, and my daughter and I have been having ridiculous conversations because of English challenges afflicted upon us by jet lag. I hope that’s the case I can’t seem to say anything coherent yet.

It’s a horrible cycle. My stomach says it’s time to eat when it’s midnight and 5am here. My head says it’s time to sleep when it’s noon and 5pm here. Last night, I cooked for my daughter and her husband because I figured there is no way I will fall asleep standing over a wok with a wooden spoon in my hand. It worked. It also helped that we went out for ice cream after that.

The worse thing about all of this is that in two weeks time, I’ll have to reverse it all and get acclimated again back to GMT +8.

The joys of world travelling!