I’ve got India coming up in March (which is not one, but two overnight flights! And I’m going to invest in a pair of what we on CV now call god isolation headphones. Anyone got a preference for brands?

Interestingly, for the second morning running I’ve been up at more or less exactly the right time (6:00am) each morning, feeling fresh (and craving a traditional Taiwanese/Chinese breakfast).

I think this is largely because I did the most important thing of all that you can do on a long (enough) flight: I had some sleep at about the appropriate time of the timezone I was heading to. So while flying over the Pacific from Nagoya to San Francisco, I slept about four hours before we landed at 7:45am, or so…. I think this begins the resetting procedure early, which explains why I don’t feel so bad even though it is supposed to be midnight Sunday right now (i.e. Sunday 8:00am LA time).

I do still get dozy in the late afternoon/ early evening though….. I resist the temptation to go to sleep though, and hold off on that until night…. I hope that goes away soon.

-cvj

http://reviews.cnet.com/Sony_MDR_EX71SL_WK_black/4505-6468_7-30520512.html?tag=topprods

I own a pair which allow me to listen to music for long periods (most of the day, in fact) without hurting my ears. They also have reasonable noise cancellation and very good sound. Price is good, and if someone in Sony reads that, I want my commission…

As for bananas, I often bring those and other fruit to long flights, alas I am still miserable for about a week later. I blame the oxygen deprivation, in fact I am equally miserable if I fly on north-south routes… This is why I contemplated melatonin, but I share your reluctance to medicate myself unnecessarily.

Count Iblis:- Gosh, are you entering body building competitions?! I’m guessing that is why it would matter that much if your training schedule got disrupted…. no?

I don’t really have the figure for that I do like to stay fit, but actually for me it’s a bit more serious than that. I suffer from a rare metabolic problem. It was not diagnosed until I was 20 years old. It affects my energy levels. I have to eat regularly and try to stay fit. Although my parents always knew that something wasn’t quite right about me, we never saw it as a medical problem at before it was diagnaosed.

Things gradually deteriorated when I moved from home to study physics. Living on your own studying hard is not really the same as living at home and receiving your meals on time It actually took some years for me to find a way in which I could feel ok and still work hard. When I was at high school living with my parents, I really didn’t have to work hard at all to get high grades. So, I never got the feedback that things actually weren’t going as well as they should go.

Then later when I started my Ph.D. I had to learn to survive going to conferences where the food isn’t always ok. When I’m very fit then I can tolerate more then when I’m not so super fit. So, then I won’t become unwell too fast and I have time to take measures to improve the situation or simply leave.

Mark:- Thanks! Those look pretty good! Now if only I could afford them….Will have to save my pennies. (annoyingly, I’ve just come back from the land of ridiculously cheap technology…sigh.)

-cvj

Virgin gives them out free to economy passengers. And you get your own television too, with lots of movie choices. I watched “Wallace and Gromit: the curse of the were-rabbit” on the way back from the US – yay! (Helped to block out the lewd comments on the 70-something archaeologist sat next to me ;( )

Flying again tomorrow – maybe I’ll take some bananas along!

Cheers,

-cvj

-cvj

Those god isolation headphones which woudl fix the problem are just too bulky for me to bring along

Useful for those afraid of flying, I imagine?

OMG, LOL! The funniest travel-story typo ever!

But yes, uh hmm (stops chuckling), I agree. Earbuds can be damaging because they have to be cranked so high due to outside noise; headphones, less so.

Moshe:- I’ve heard that too. Maybe I’ll try it one day, but right now I’ll stick to the old methods, so that I don’t become reliant on having melatonin to recover. Fortunately, what usually happens is that after about two days I sort of “snap” back to the regular clock rather suddenly, and resume my regular cycle of things. (hmmm actually, that’s after an eight hour lag…I’ve forgotten what happens for the really big ones…)

I have a bad habit of not getting as much sleep as I should in general anyway (as anyone who has given a seminar here at USC might have noticed – During the seminar, I can sometimes be seen to nod in agreement with what they are saying just a little too often ), so I’m not really sure what my “regular cycle” is any more….

citrine:- This is somethign I’ve heard too. I try to pick some up as part of my regular fruit intake as a matter of course. Are we talking about a normal amount here, or lots of bananas? Perhaps I could use this as an excuse to make lots of bananas flambe! Yummmm.

I never have a shortage of things to do on long flights. I love long flights, actually, by which I mean eight hours or more. I tend to bring books, calculations I’m doing, blank paper for scribbling random ideas I have, sketchpad and set of drawing pencils for a bit of drawing, powerbook and spare charged battery if I have any work of that sort to do (and for diary writing and blogging these days…) and earplugs and eyemask (in case I’m not in business class, although for flights over 6 or 7 hours I always upgrade -at my own (airmiles) expense, not on anyone’s grant money- and so those you get for free). I seldom use my personal music (i.e., ipod) on flighs any more because you don’t realise how loudly you turn those things up over the engine noise..damages your ears. If I do, it is through the earplugs! Those god isolation headphones which woudl fix the problem are just too bulky for me to bring along (’cause I’ve got all that other junk in my bag….!)

-cvj

My tried and true method of coping with long airborne stretches is to force myself to stash away a few books I’ve always wanted to read until the flight. It takes me a lot of self-control not to start reading it in the airport (or even before that ) When I came to the USA (from a S.Asian country) to begin grad school, I brought along 5 Agatha Christie mysteries. These books made the almost 50 hr journey go by pretty quickly.

Then, after about a week, I will return to my normal biorithm. Otherwise I would have to postpone excercising for another week, because my body doesn’t react well to excercise when not sleeping well and not eating on time. But after that week I would have to resume work and then, after three weeks of not working out, it could be difficult to resume the usual training schedules. Then, because works comes first, you can’t always train when you feel fittest. So, effectively you could lose a month of training and that would have consequences for fitness.

Also: – CONGRATULATIONS!!!! and I wish you and your little girl the best…..

-cvj

Naturally I woke up my husband so he wouldn’t miss it.

These days I’m up a couple of times a night with my 3-week-old daughter, and will be for probably at least another couple of months. Luckily she’s pretty cute, even at 3 AM. But I’m not doing any star-gazing.

-cvj