I have arrived in Beijing!! The flight actually felt very reasonable. I was flying Air China and I must admit it didn’t have some of the amenities that one grows accustomed to on American flights. Namely, no air nozzels and very limited TV screens. That said, the service and food was wonderful and the airfair was very affordable. I had a window seat which let me finish Dune uninterrupted. I even got a little sleep.
For this trip, I experimented with a jet lag technique that I read about in some online article. Basically, the theory is that if you fast before your trip and then start eating on the new schedule your body will force itself to acclimate more quickly to help you find and hunt food. I stopped eating at 8pm on Thursday and didn’t start again until 5pm Friday. Now that I’m in Beijing, I will try and sleep and we’ll see if this theory works well. I really hope it does because this is a short trip and I don’t have tons of time to dominate jet lag before I have to fly home and screw everything up again.
There should be plenty of updates this week as I have a computer in my room. As a start, here are a few pictures of my hotel room.
Note the nice tall ceilings and the split brick columns. The pathway in the back leads into a second room containing the bed.
There are a bunch of ceramic pots and camel and horse statues adorning the mirrored glass shelves. It’s a pretty nice room.
Tomorrow I’m going to try and get in touch with Mika’s sister. My colleagues don’t arrive here until tomorrow night so this would be a great opportunity to do something fun. Stay tuned!