Monday, December 12, 2022

How To Manage The Longest Night

In two days, we will be off. The Eldership is fully staffed (by the two of us as usual). We've done all our planning. This has consisted primarily of attempts to line up various services such as a car and driver which have all failed. So it will be improvising city for us. As of the moment, I am deeply contemplating how I am going to manage the jet lag associated with the voyage from Albuquerque, USA to Melaka, Malaysia.

 We actually have a really good set of connections with a minimum of layover. BUT it will still result in the LONGEST NIGHT. What do I mean?

We fly from Albuquerque to Houston. Pedestrian. Then we get on an All Nippon Airways flight from Houston to Tokyo. That's a 14 hour flight. It leaves at 4pm Houston time and gets in at 9pm Tokyo time. We have a 3 hour layover. Then we leave on ANA again at Midnight, fly 8 hours and get into Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at 6:45am local time. 

Let's analyze. 14 + 3 + 8 = 25 hours in flight with layovers. BUT because of the way the time changes work, its as if this is all captured in one overnight. Just an overnight that is twice as long as normal. So how to plan sleeping and awake periods so we are not total basket cases when we get to Malaysia? Here's my plan.

  • Use the first half of the Houston to Tokyo flight to eat, drink and then sleep. As I rarely sleep more than 5 hours at a time, I should have around another 7 hours.
  • Take the last 7 hours as awake time. I actually have a lot of work to do to wrap things up with my paying clients before throwing myself into a month of indulgence in SE Asia.
  • Keep awake during the layover in Tokyo. Get to sleep on the flight from Tokyo to Kuala Lumpur as soon as food service is over. Hopefully that will get me close to having my body clock on Malaysia time. 

We'll see.

BTW...I LOVE doing this kind of stuff. I am living my own personal dream.

3 comments:

Renee Michelle Goertzen said...

That sounds utterly exhausting to me, so I appreciate the explanation that you're enjoying this!

Tom P said...

Jet Lag is real!

alexis said...

you guys can't even complain to me about this stuff anymore - I know you love it