At the Abu Dhabi airport, making my way back to Indonesia after a month’s vacation in the States.
Flying so far east is weird. You’re flying towards the sun, which inner night owls instinctively don’t like. You’re experiencing a 24-hour Saturday in half as many hours as the day seemingly doubles in length. You watch sunlight rise and fall over Europe in stop-motion time. The 14-hour flight serves two courses: Dinner and Dinner. There’s no biologically understandable time to sleep.
I’m flying Etihad, UAE’s official airline, which gave me my Dubai layover on the way in and this timezone confusion on the way back. They also, I think, have marked famous historical oceanic shipwrecks on their in-flight tracker. Odd.
My favorite time zone trick was flying from Bali to Jogja at 6am: there’s a one-hour time difference so you leave at dawn and arrive at dawn, with the sun in constant rise behind the plane. I hadn’t slept yet either, lending to a feeling of running away from a day trying to start. Then I arrived back in Java, finally stood still for the sun to come up, and was reminded why I love Java so much in the first place:
Just a few more hours till I’m in Indonesia again.
mcljava 