jet lag
well here I am. after arriving in NYC yesterday evening and staying in a hostel in manhattan for the night, i have just settled into a house in Washington DC with Maria and John, my homestay hosts, where I will be for the next 12 or so days.
to be honest i was rather anxious about entering the US. I have been here before. One year before 11/09/01, or 9/11 as many remember that particular day (those wacky Americans put the month first, then the day, then the year). Since that most destructive and infamous of days, I have heard and expected US immigration to have become a bit more of a challenge. In particular, a young man by the name of Hisham Moustafa, who occasionally relaxes the shaving routine, who recently disappeared in the Libyan desert for two weeks, who is Muslim and Arab looking, and who even had an uncle who professed he would not get on a plane with him (satirically?), might find this process especially daunting.
So there I was at immigration, careful to smile and speak in clear and concise english, battling over whether to empasize the Peter on the immigration forms - my middle name. However, I should not have concerned myself. An upstanding young gentleman such as myself had no trouble, and I flew through, leaving only my finger prints and dental records innocently behind me. (actually no dental records were given, although the white coats, that strange light, and later that feeling of de-ja-vu i vaguely and queerily remember, tell me something was slightly amiss... along with that strange new lump i can feel under my left eye.
Nonetheless, I found myself no a bus on my way to manhattan and to the hostel i had booked on 30th street near 8th avenue. there, i was stuffed into a small two-bunk bedded room and then stuffed myself into the tiny closet they called a shower. after returning to a state of comfort I grabbed a chicken teriyaki sandwich from subway and returned to the hostel to check my emails and relax. after chatting with some argentinians about Maui and Honolulu, i was invited into a game of texas hold 'em with 3 young germans. these vibrant germans (oxymoron?) liked a drink and we proceeded get more and more disinterested in the game, prefering instead to discuss languages, masculine, femine and neutrals (in language, ie. the gender of words), and then just the feminine. I politely said goodbye and left to bed at about 1am after staying awake for well over 30 hours.
ofcourse, it would be rude of me not to mention Japan, which i didn't get to see enough of. my 24 hours there consisted of going back and forth from the airport to withdraw some cash, eating wedges for dinner, checking email, bowing my head, and buying a cable channel card for $10 only to get access to one movie channel, which was showing 'the ring' - i dont even like horror movies that much.
this morning i got up at about 7:30am to get to dowtown manhattan for a bus to Washington DC. I felt fine actually, but this feeling only lasted until the bus started moving. then tiredness and grumpiness set in, and accompanied me for the 5 hour journey south. some hours into the trip, hile trying to sleep on my back with my head on the two seater and legs high up over the chair, I began to notice this incredibly annoying sound every few seconds like someone blowing their nose. I could have sworn it was this guy a couple of rows back. I couldnt believe how many times he had to trumpet his nose. he just went on and on and on. my temper began to boil as I wondered how long it would take for me to abrogate my social temprement, arise from my frustrating sleeping position and approach this guy and tell him to shut the damn hell up. it just kept knawing away at my fragile, jet-lagged mind, but luckily enough, i did retain some sense of awareness and reality and figured out it was not him, in fact it wasn't anybody... i still don't know what could have made that sound. perhaps my mind was just trying to piss me off.
so im now at John and Maria's place. they have been very nice and we've already had some interesting conversations. I'm looking forward to the next couple of weeks and tomorrow I will meet John, who will put in more detail for me what the hell im doing here in the US. He is the executive program producer of Al-Jazeera english news channel and he is producing a 2 part 'Inside Iraq' special here in DC. I'll get to look in on Jasim al-Azzawi and his guests (like John Bolton, Clare Short, Muwafaq ar-Rubaie - the Iraqi national security advisor and possibly more) and perhaps meet some lobbyists here in the states. shuold be a great experience. i will let you know more about it when i do.
to be honest i was rather anxious about entering the US. I have been here before. One year before 11/09/01, or 9/11 as many remember that particular day (those wacky Americans put the month first, then the day, then the year). Since that most destructive and infamous of days, I have heard and expected US immigration to have become a bit more of a challenge. In particular, a young man by the name of Hisham Moustafa, who occasionally relaxes the shaving routine, who recently disappeared in the Libyan desert for two weeks, who is Muslim and Arab looking, and who even had an uncle who professed he would not get on a plane with him (satirically?), might find this process especially daunting.
So there I was at immigration, careful to smile and speak in clear and concise english, battling over whether to empasize the Peter on the immigration forms - my middle name. However, I should not have concerned myself. An upstanding young gentleman such as myself had no trouble, and I flew through, leaving only my finger prints and dental records innocently behind me. (actually no dental records were given, although the white coats, that strange light, and later that feeling of de-ja-vu i vaguely and queerily remember, tell me something was slightly amiss... along with that strange new lump i can feel under my left eye.
Nonetheless, I found myself no a bus on my way to manhattan and to the hostel i had booked on 30th street near 8th avenue. there, i was stuffed into a small two-bunk bedded room and then stuffed myself into the tiny closet they called a shower. after returning to a state of comfort I grabbed a chicken teriyaki sandwich from subway and returned to the hostel to check my emails and relax. after chatting with some argentinians about Maui and Honolulu, i was invited into a game of texas hold 'em with 3 young germans. these vibrant germans (oxymoron?) liked a drink and we proceeded get more and more disinterested in the game, prefering instead to discuss languages, masculine, femine and neutrals (in language, ie. the gender of words), and then just the feminine. I politely said goodbye and left to bed at about 1am after staying awake for well over 30 hours.
ofcourse, it would be rude of me not to mention Japan, which i didn't get to see enough of. my 24 hours there consisted of going back and forth from the airport to withdraw some cash, eating wedges for dinner, checking email, bowing my head, and buying a cable channel card for $10 only to get access to one movie channel, which was showing 'the ring' - i dont even like horror movies that much.
this morning i got up at about 7:30am to get to dowtown manhattan for a bus to Washington DC. I felt fine actually, but this feeling only lasted until the bus started moving. then tiredness and grumpiness set in, and accompanied me for the 5 hour journey south. some hours into the trip, hile trying to sleep on my back with my head on the two seater and legs high up over the chair, I began to notice this incredibly annoying sound every few seconds like someone blowing their nose. I could have sworn it was this guy a couple of rows back. I couldnt believe how many times he had to trumpet his nose. he just went on and on and on. my temper began to boil as I wondered how long it would take for me to abrogate my social temprement, arise from my frustrating sleeping position and approach this guy and tell him to shut the damn hell up. it just kept knawing away at my fragile, jet-lagged mind, but luckily enough, i did retain some sense of awareness and reality and figured out it was not him, in fact it wasn't anybody... i still don't know what could have made that sound. perhaps my mind was just trying to piss me off.
so im now at John and Maria's place. they have been very nice and we've already had some interesting conversations. I'm looking forward to the next couple of weeks and tomorrow I will meet John, who will put in more detail for me what the hell im doing here in the US. He is the executive program producer of Al-Jazeera english news channel and he is producing a 2 part 'Inside Iraq' special here in DC. I'll get to look in on Jasim al-Azzawi and his guests (like John Bolton, Clare Short, Muwafaq ar-Rubaie - the Iraqi national security advisor and possibly more) and perhaps meet some lobbyists here in the states. shuold be a great experience. i will let you know more about it when i do.
the picture above was shot over the South China sea i think on my way from Melbourne to Tokyo. those colours really appear as is shown.
posted by Handsome Hish at 2:50 PM
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