To the Airport, Troddeth I Go

Today's weather:  High = 33 Low = 27

Cloudy

 

Reluctantly, I may add.  In some ways, I wish my airline were still on strike.  Yet there are important things that have to be done back in Vancouver and this is the best opportunity.  I always dread the trip out to Pudong Airport and the actual flight itself for many reasons.  The obvious one is the anticipated jet lag, knowing there isn't much to do in advance to prevent this 

 

Friends have suggested the idea of breaking up the trip into parts, which I've researched myself but haven't found any workable solutions yet.  The best I can think of would be to do a brief stopover in Japan, and then another one in Hawaii for 2-3 days.  That would work if the flight tickets were cheap, but the demand for Japan -- Hawaii flights is very low and so the prices end up being too expensive to make it worthwhile.  Given enough time, there may be a way to make this work, but it's unlikely the school would be on board with financing such a trip.  And so it's a nonstarter.

 

Jet lag is a major issue with going eastbound (i.e. Shanghai to Vancouver) but not the other direction.  I think the reason for this is you're going against the relative motion of the sun with respect to the earth, as opposed to westbound flights when you're going with the sun motions.  That is to say, for eastbound flights the day progresses in an accelerated way, it gets night, then the next day begins, but it's really the 'same day' as when you started due to the crossing of the date line.  This messes up the body.

 

For westbound flights, on the other hand, it just ends up being a really really long day.  So when you arrive in Shanghai it gets dark just as the plane lands and your body is tired anyway so it's easier to adjust.

 

Trips to Pudong have also worked the effect of bringing back all these bad memories of being forced to leave the city involuntarily, either for emergencies or other reasons.  Even though I know I'm returning, it's hard to distinguish that from past trips when the outcome wasn't as certain.  And there's also the possibility that eventually I'll be leaving Shanghai for good on a future trip, and making this same dreaded trip to the airport.  But let's just hope that doesn't happen.