I’m blogging to force myself to stay awake because seriously, a 12.5 hour (yeah, India has this weird half hour time zone offset) time difference blows. It blows in terms of jet lag and in terms of trying to talk to people. I tried to call a friend today and it went sort of like this:
Me: Hey! What’s up?
Friend: Oh hi….I’m going to bed….
Me: Oh…okay then…goodnight….
Not that exciting.
At the moment I’m sitting on the wicker couch in my uncle’s living room. The uncle who teaches electrical engineering at an IIT and is a wiz at thing scientific, like most of the rest of my family. Not like me. The internet is spotty, it’s rainy (as it has been since we landed here) and I look like I have chicken pox because I’m covered in mosquito bites. The mosquitos here are like uber bugs and bite through clothes and leave welts the size of small eggs. I also have no self control and keep scratching them and it’s likely that I’ll come home all scaly and scabby.
But before I got here, there was the flight…the ordeal that between leaving the house in San Jose to arriving at the grandmother’s house in India lasted 45 hours. The first flight left SFO at 1:30 AM and lasted 14 and a half hours, most of which I slept, some of which I watched inflight entertainment. Then a layover in Hong Kong for three-ish hours. During which we had to go through security, throw away our water bottles and take off our belts shoes and watches. The same in transit security was in place in Bangkok, where our layover was for twelve hours. It was pretty ridiculous, did they really think that between sitting inside the airplane and shuffling around in the airport we’d pick up anything more dangerous than the rock hard bread rolls we’d been served? Pointless security checks irk me.
The twelve hours in the Bangkok airport also irked me. As did the fact that the airport has no signs pointing you towards the transit day rooms. And my feet which post 14.5 hr plane ride had swollen to gargantuan proportions and were aching under the shackles of my sneakers. And the sketchy Indian men staring at the sister and I at the airport in Calcutta.
Now I run the risk of having this blog turn into a list of things that annoy me. I apologise but at the moment I’m itchy from bug bites, jet lagged, and hot. This makes me prone to being annoyed. And my internet connection sucks.
So instead I’ll share with you a story that my sister told me. While on the flight to Hong Kong, I was nodding off and I did the sleep and sway thing that happens when you are trying to sleep while sitting upright. Apparently while doing that, my forehead crashed into the arm rest between my sister’s seat and mine. Post crash, the story goes, I groaned a fierce groan of anger and rage, made feeble sleepy punching motions, turned around and drooped back into sleep.
I need to get better sleeping habits. Between chewing pillows, talking, and now punching….I seem to be a crazy.
1 comment:
Nice. The mosquitos here in Jamaica, too, give bug bites the size of small eggs. If you can find even an iota of self-control — and I know it's hard! — then do try not to scratch them. I'm sure people have told you this before; it took me years to listen to my relatives. But really, it's much better after one day (somehow they stop itching if you don't scratch them) and they go down much faster that way. See if someone will give you hydrocortisone, Vicks or Tiger Balm in the meantime! Good luck!
Post a Comment