- 30 hrs door to door travel: I didn’t realize how long it takes to travel from Jakarta to DC, about 10 hours longer than from Manila to DC. Emirates is super nice: large selection of movies, abundant good airplane food, pretty flight attendant. Yet, it’s still not fun to fly for 24 hrs.
- Jet lag has started. I arrived Wednesday 9am, got to hotel 11am. Had 3 meetings from 1-6pm, almost allucinating by the end of it. The first night I slept 10 hours solid. Then Thursday night I woke up 12am and didn’t go back to sleep until 2:30am. I finished reading a cookbook, ate plenty of carby snacks, checked on the family, took melatonin, trying not to curse the jet lag.
- A mix of work and personal meetings. I had 6 meetings on Thursday. The highlight was meeting with an old friend from grad school and lunch with my grad school advisor who’s an avid runner and did a half ironman under 6 hours at age 58. The other meetings were work related. I didn’t want to talk to anyone else by 6pm, seriously. It reminded me of Lisa who has that many meetings in a daily basis. How does she do it?
- What’s going on with Trader Joe’s? Do I notice that stock is low and variety has reduced??? I went there twice in my two days stay because I couldn’t believe what I saw. Is it the result of inflation or logistic bottlenecks? anyone noticed?
- Not contacting many old “friends”. Given how short this trip is (10 days), I’ve decided not to meet with “friends” that I used to hang out as my weekend is already packed with to-do list (shopping at Georgetown, 10km race on Sunday, and potentially lunch at one of my oldest grad school friends). I could probably fit few more meet ups, but I can anticipate the emptiness that I may feel afterwards, trying to connect with people that I no longer connect. Instead, I should honor my tired body and rest when possible.
5 on Friday from DC
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Our New Journey 
That’s a long time to be in a plane, regardless of how comfortable it is. I admire you for jumping into your meetings too quickly. I wonder about Trader Joe’s too. In ours there are fewer selections, but lots of stock. Something seems out of wack.
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Yikes – that’s a LONG stretch of travel. I always feel icky at the end of long flights. Hope the time in DC is awesome, though!
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That’s a long way away from home… 30 hours! Oh my. I usually travel around 15-20 hrs when I go to Europe and that’s enough!
Hope you have a great stay in DC (it’s probably pretty humid there right now, right?)
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I can’t imagine flying for that long!!! Yuck!!! I really do not really love flying in general. I sometimes just feel a little queasy or kind of yucky, so that sounds pretty horrible. I guess there is no way around it if you need to travel far, however. The jet lag also sounds very not fun. Enjoy your time in DC.
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Ack! A 24 hour flight??? Yes, I’ll bet the jetlag is challenging. About Trader Joes… I think ours is fully stocked? I haven’t been there in a couple weeks, but last time I was there it seemed normal. I’ll probably go this week and report back!
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Ugh that is a looooong flight. My longest flight has been to Australia when I studied abroad but it was broken up a bit with a stop in Fiji. So the longest stretch was 14 hours from LAX to Fiji. It is a brutal time change, too! I think it was 14 hours difference for me if I remember correctly but that was 21 years ago now!
You had a full day of meetings! It is very exhausting, even when some of them were reconnecting with friends/colleagues. Things have slowed down a bit for me but I still often have 5+ meetings in a day. We had trained another colleague in to help with calls but he resigned and went to another company so we are really understaffed right now. 😦
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