The Erratic Travelogue

Well, I've got a lot of catching up to do. The last couple weeks since I have posted have been quite the adventure as well, as I have begun the recovery from the surgery. The surgery had delayed a trek of over 10K miles across an ocean for a work detail in Malaysia, or possibly derailed it altogether depending on what the doctor found. As it turned out, the doctor gave the all-clear signal, and a few days later, I was leaving on a jet plane in the wee hours of the morning.

I found I haven't had the time to keep up with as many things as I thought I would, but here's my attempt to log in some thoughts during this trek.

Red-eye flights normally are no fun, but in this case, it could work out to my advantage if I played it right.

With the time being roughly 4:30 PM at my destination, my personal game plan was to stay up for as long as humanly possible. One thing that worked against me, and something I'll have to keep in mind for next time, is that I decided to go to work the day before the flight. The realization struck me as I went through security that to make my plan work right, I'd have to literally stay up for more than 24-hours straight.

Not much is open after 10 PM at pretty much any airport, and finding ways to keep my mind from drifting into nighty-night land would be a challenge. As it turned out, my terminal had lots of interesting art work to ponder a bit, and these pieces as well as a few abandoned local newspapers managed to hold back Mr. Sandman.







So far so good...but a 14-hour flight into Taiwan awaited. Staying awake until exhausted was now doable, but would I be able to turn the trick and actually conk out? I had a bought a new travel pillow and some ear plugs to help me turn the trick, but deep down I knew it wasn't going to work out exactly to plan...