Lagging

Hello, have been meaning to make a thorough post but coming back to the States has literally been like jumping back into the fire. Not because we’ve come home, as much as it is that I came back to work. At work we’re in the final stages of planning for a technical conference and so there are a million and one things to do. I basically came home, opened up the luggage in the middle of the living room floor, and then went to work on the conference. AIiiieeeeee!
Coming back to the U.S. has definitely been interesting. Getting through passport control was remarkably simple, which surprised me. It was probably the fastest passport check on the entire trip, although the process of standing in line, getting my luggage, and getting to the hotel in Los Angeles took about 2.5 hours. THAT sucked. The drive to the hotel was weird – Los Angeles seemed so quiet in comparison to the cities we’d visited, even though we were on the frickin’ Sunset Strip at 10:30pm. It was also remarkable how many advertisements were everywhere, and that they all featured the same people as always: Angelina Jolie, Steve Martin, Gwyneth Paltrow, all the usual suspects.
At the hotel we found that we couldn’t find any good bad TV, which was bewildering. We’d gotten used to movie channels with hours upon hours of lousy B-grade American movies while we were in Cambodia and Vietnam, but back in the U.S. all we could find were crappy sitcoms and news channels. It was interesting how many of the American movies we watched overseas featured hookers and/or terrorists – made Americans seem like paranoid sex fiends. We did get to see Good Morning Vietnam while in Saigon, which was a terribly amusing coincidence.
Now that I’m back in the U.S. I’m hitting the lag which I’d avoided for most of our trip. I’m lagging out around 2pm, staying up until 2am, and then waking up with this crazy drunken feeling. Yesterday I couldn’t figure out where I was when I woke up, and today I stumbled around trying to find clothes so I could answer the doorbell to get a package, but failed miserably. A couple more days and I should be right as rain.
I’ve found since returning that I have an even greater distaste for listening to the news (including NPR, The Daily Show, the Alito hearings), and I find myself drawn to information about the Middle East, which all seems very biased compared to my personal experiences. I’m struck by how the “western world” and the “arab world” don’t seem to understand each other much. I’m considering whether I should learn some Arabic. For now I’ll just keep listening to Nancy Ajram. 🙂