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It may come to as a surprise to some of you that tomorrow I will return to EA as a regular full-time employee (with benefits and bonuses). This was something I had arranged a long time ago. I don’t want to say exactly how long ago but I will say that well before I started any of my travels I already knew when I had to go back to work.

I last worked on February 19, 2016. If Wolfram|Alpha is correct, that’s three months and eighteen days since I had to wake up early and clock in for the man. It’s been a lot of fun and I absolutely have appreciated every single day that I didn’t have to work and had the freedom to do whatever I wanted.

Since 2010, I’ve had several of these wonderful extended periods of freedom. I’ve learned that these are extremely valuable parcels of time. At first, I used to use the time to just stay up late, play video games, and eat terrible food. I realized though, it’s better to use some of the time for more productive things.

For this particular sabbatical, my focus was travel. I feel very lucky to have journeyed to Hawaii, San Diego, and most recently London. Each trip was fun in its unique way and it was very rewarding to just go out on adventures. I remember getting back from Hawaii, spending one short week back at home, and then having to jet down to San Diego. I normally don’t travel like that and it felt awesome going from one vacation spot to another so quickly.

I also was thankful to have the time to take that improv class in March. I guess it seems so long ago now but spending those Monday evenings in March re-learning and practicing improv concepts was so fun. As I mentioned before, I would have taken the second class but my travel plans in April and May prevented that from happening. It looks like July will be a good time to take the next class as my travel plans are at a rest for now.

As much fun and rewarding the travel and improv classes were, in general, I cherished every single day where I didn’t have to get up early and go to work. The fact that I could stay up as late I wanted to, doing whatever pleased me, and then waking up whenever my body felt like it was a true gift. Sometimes when I describe to people a typical day like that, I feel they kinda gloss over it and perceive it as a boring day. It’s actually not. We’re constantly forced to shoehorn our time into daily schedules that are frequently set external factors. We’re forced to wake up at a certain time to get to work at a certain time. We’re forced to get to home at a certain time to pick up the kids and get dinner made. We’re forced to get to bed at a certain time because if we don’t we’ll be a zombie tomorrow morning. For the most part, none of that really applied to me for over three months. I controlled my own life and it was very good for my soul.

Alas, I’ll have to tuck away my freedom again for the foreseeable future, hopefully for not too long. Weekends will mean something to me again. I will again not enjoy Mondays.

To think I was just in London. Oh well, I need to get to bed and set my alarm clock.

Though I would have preferred to have traveled to and out of Heathrow, my journey to London had me landing at and departing from Gatwick airport instead.

London is lucky in that at least six airports service the greater London area but nearly all of them are painfully far away from the city centre. London City airport is actually quite close but several restrictions prevent it from being a truly usable international airport. First, it has a short runway, which prevents large aircraft from landing there. This rules out just about any trans-Atlantic flights from using London City. Don’t even think about seeing a Boeing 777 or the Airbus 380 on that tarmac. Second, the airport does not operate during the evenings, ruling out night arrivals and departures.

As such, most international flights arriving from overseas use mostly Heathrow and Gatwick airports. Heathrow is 22km from London and Gatwick is almost 50km from the city centre. You can see why I would have preferred Heathrow. Alas, I had no choice.

By car, it can take upwards to an hour to get from Gatwick to London. Luckily, there are much faster options. There is a train service called Gatwick Express which goes back and forth from the airport to Victoria station in the city centre. Those are the only two stops, so it’s convenient and easy to use. The trip takes about 30 minutes each way. Trains leave every fifteen minutes and run about 20 hours a day. The station is also right in the airport itself.

Gatwick Express isn’t the cheapest way to get to and from the airport but it’s certainly the most convenient and hassle free. I chose this option because I wanted the most stress-free way to enter and leave London. I bought and printed out my return trip tickets before my flight. Doing so saved me a few dollars as it’s more expensive if you buy tickets at the station.

Even in my jet-lagged and tired state after getting off my trans-Atlantic flight, I was easily able to follow the signs and get on the first available Gatwick Express train. My 30 minute ride into London was uneventful and comfortable, allowing me to see some of the English countryside.

My train back to Gatwick on my last day in London had an interesting moment. I was one of the very first people to board this particular train car. So while I was all settled in my seat, more passengers came inside the car and put their luggage away. I lost track of how many people were coming in. I looked at my watch and saw there was about two minutes before the train was going to leave the station for the airport. Seconds later, I saw a middle-aged man jump up from his seat across the aisle from me. He had a piece of paper in his hand and he looked really worried. He was saying something in a language I didn’t understand but he made his way to a guy sitting in front of him. He spoke to the guy in somewhat broken English so I didn’t catch everything he was saying. I did hear him ask something like if this train was actually going to Gatwick. The other dude said yes, this was the train to Gatwick. This set off the middle-aged man in a massive panic. He began speaking in the foreign language again (it sounded eastern European) and ran back to grab his luggage and a bag from the luggage racks. He was in a hell of a hurry because he knew the train was going to leave and there was no stopping it until it got to the airport. All this time it seemed like he was cursing under his breath.

It was clear to me that this man was trying to catch a flight and his flight was definitely not leaving from Gatwick. Yet here he was scrambling to gather up his luggage and trying to get off the train car before it departed. He managed to open the train car door and heaved his stuff out, with him following shortly after. Not 20 seconds later, the train left the station.

His situation falls under one of the worst nightmare travel scenarios, mixing up which airport your flight leaves from. Actually, maybe he didn’t mix that up. Let’s assume for the moment he always knew his flight was leaving from say Heathrow. His mistake might have been buying tickets for the Gatwick Express when he meant to buy tickets for the Heathrow Express, which is a similar train service but leaves from Paddington Station instead. How do you mix that up though?

In any case, it sure looked like that whatever flight he was trying to make, it was not leaving from Gatwick. I felt really sorry for him because it’s not an easy mistake to recover from. If he needed to get to Heathrow, he’d have to get his ass to Paddington Station and then take the train from there. For the other airports like Stansted and Luton, he’d also have to get other stations and then take trains as well, except those ones take longer. Depending on how much time he gave himself, it’s possible he could have made his flight but making a huge boner of a mistake like this doesn’t make it seem likely.

Since that day, I’ve been curious to know what happened to him. Did he make his flight? What exactly did he get confused on? Seeing his situation just reinforces my triple-checking of all parts of my itineraries. I make no assumptions and I leave nothing to chance. One little lapse in judgement or forgotten detail might mean a missed flight. I hope I never have to experience that man’s travel panic myself.

It’s been four days since I arrived back from London and it’s been an interesting four days. Like I mentioned in my last post, I’m suffering from jet lag. I suppose it’s not unexpected but the effects are sure manifesting themselves in ways I hadn’t expected. To me, jet lag meant wanting to sleep during the wrong time, like the daytime, and being wide awake when I should be sleeping. For sure, those symptoms definitely plagued me the first two days or so but then I got back into a more regular sleeping schedule.

So while I’m sleeping at the right time now and also getting more sleep (closer to eight hours), I’m experiencing this odd dazed mental state in the late afternoon. Sometime after 3pm, I slip into this mental fog where I feel like I’m not really all there. I don’t feel physically tired and there’s no desire to take a nap. I just kinda feel mentally dull and far from being lucid. It’s not a great experience.

I’m guessing that while my body is rested, part of my brain thinks it’s time to be asleep still. If you examine when the mental fog sets in, it’s exactly when I’d be normally going to sleep when I was in London. It’s hard to believe it’s just coincidence. There might be another internal clock that is still adjusting to the time change. Well, whatever it is, I start to feel like an idiot
(or an even bigger idiot) around 3pm and it doesn’t go away until I wake up the next morning.

I feel like the first thing I should write in-depth about is jet lag since it’s currently what I’m dealing with.

As many of you know, I wrote in some earlier posts my strategy to defeat or mitigate the effects of jet lag once I was in London. I started by shifting my sleep schedule prior to departing for my trip. I think this actually did help. I arrived in London at about 7am. I had slept very little on the plane, perhaps an hour at best. This was not what I had intended. The plan was to sleep as much as possible while on the plane, simulating a good night of sleep. This was so I could then spent my first day being rested. Unfortunately, I just wasn’t able to sleep that much.

I arrived at my hotel sometime after 8am but my room wasn’t ready. That was ok since I felt some fatigue but it wasn’t that bad actually. Also, I knew I couldn’t just sleep in the morning. I had to delay my sleep until London night-time to quickly adapt to the new time zone. So I dropped off my luggage and decided to walk around the area. I wound up walking to Buckingham Palace and randomly lucked out and watched the changing of the guard. I then walked to Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster. I then wandered off to Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, and Trafalgar Square. I did a lot of walking considering that I was operating on about one hour of sleep and had just endured a trans-Atlantic flight.

I finally got back to my hotel, well after the 2pm check-in time. I went to get my keys but the front desk informed me my room was still not ready and they could not give me a definitive time when it would be ready. Before I could even get annoyed, they made a quick decision to upgrade me to an available deluxe room. This was of course acceptable to me.

Once I got into my room, my plan was to unpack, take a shower, and then grab a large coffee from the Starbucks across the street. I did all those things. I returned to my room with my coffee and sat on the bed while I watched British TV. By this time it was about 4pm or so. I was going to finish my coffee and go out, get my Oyster card, and then continue to see what London had to offer. After drinking the coffee, I began to feel very fatigued. It was as if I hadn’t had any caffeine at all. The hotel bed was so comfortable and I was so tired. I wasn’t even really in control at this point. I had to put my head down on the pillow as I watched TV. It felt so good to be resting. I knew sleep was coming and it was unavoidable. I reconciled this by deciding if I just napped for one hour, it would still be ok. To that end, I would set my alarm on my tablet, which was right next to me. I remember looking at it and seeing the time, almost 5:30pm. It was the last thing I saw before I fell asleep in London.

I woke up sometime later, not really sure how long I had slept. The TV was still on though the program I had been watching was over. The room was darker than before because the sun had gone down and the sky was dark blue. That was not a good sign. I looked at my watch and it was almost 10pm. Whoops. This was exactly the opposite of what I should have done. I slept too soon and too much. I was really afraid I’d messed up my sleep and now I’d be jet-lagged one extra day. I immediately jumped up and realized I felt a lot better. I was feeling more rested and I was hungry. I went out to get some takeout dinner from Victoria Station next door. I also picked up an Oyster card.

At midnight, I decided I had to try to sleep again because that’s when my body should be wanting to sleep. I wasn’t sure how the five-hour nap was going to affect that but it was worth a try. To help things along, I took a few melatonin pills and a sleeping pill. To my delight, it worked as half an hour later, I was very groggy and fell asleep. I slept for about eight hours, most of that uninterrupted. I woke up feeling rested and ready to explore London.

From Sunday on, my body was synced up to London time. I didn’t feel any effects of jet lag at all. I was awake and rested in the mornings. I didn’t feel the need to sleep during the daytime. At night, I felt tired and fatigued around midnight, which was perfectly normal given all the activities I had done during the days. This was something that allowed me to maximize my time in London. Except for that one initial afternoon where I had the errant nap, I really didn’t lose anytime where I was sleeping instead of seeing something important.

Of course, jet lag works both ways. It’s also something I didn’t really think about while I was in London. After all, I’d be an idiot to try to adjust back to Vancouver time while still in London. When I arrived home on Sunday, I did my best to stay awake until night-time but I succumbed to a nap from about 7pm to 11pm. I knew I was in trouble when I wasn’t tired at all at 4am. I tried going to sleep at 5am and took a sleeping pill to assist me. I woke up at 9am feeling wide awake.

At 6pm on Sunday, I started feeling really tired but I knew I couldn’t go to sleep then. I pushed myself to stay awake until midnight. I was able to sleep until 5am but no more. On Monday, the same thing happened. The fatigue starts rolling in about early afternoon. I stave it off until about 1am. I woke up at 6am this morning with no ability to go back to sleep. I am definitely not getting the amount of sleep that I should be receiving. Currently, it’s 11pm and I’m about to nod off. I think it’s time for bed.

I’m guessing I’ll need a few more days before I’m back to my old schedule.

Thanks for the miracle of modern air travel, I have returned home to Vancouver after a full eight days in the great city of London. I had a fantastic time in London, my second time there and first time as an adult.

Due to London being London, I had a few small apprehensions about the trip. First, would I go mad on a flight that was close to ten hours? Would I get swallowed up in a bustling and busy city of close to 9 million people? Would I get lost on the London Underground and find myself on the way to the icky parts of town? Would I get pick-pocketed? Luckily, none of that was a problem even in the slightest. London was full of interesting things to see and do. Every day was packed with things to do from sun up to sun down. I was able to visit two of my friends who now live in London so that was extra special.

Over the next few days I’d like to go in-depth with a few posts about my trip. For now I need to deal with this jet lag. It wasn’t a problem at all when I arrived in London. I was tired for about half a day the first day but after the first night of sleep my body was basically in sync with London time. Now that I have returned, I have to deal with the reverse. My body wouldn’t let me sleep for more than four hours last night so I’m pretty tired right now and it’s “only” 1am. I’m guessing after tonight, my body will be back to west coast time. Anyways, I think I’ll be heading to bed shortly.

It’s about 7:30am now and I went downstairs for breakfast an hour ago. The transit station was full of activity with lots of people on the move, getting to where they need to go. Man, lots of people get up early! To be where they were for 6:30am means many of them probably got up at 6am at the latest. I don’t know how people do that.

As I was walking to A&W, I could smell the aroma of breakfast from various other food places around me. I detected mainly coffee and baked goods. The Safeway had been already open for half an hour at this point. I saw lady walking out of there with a grocery cart full of food. Who buys groceries that early in the morning?

There wasn’t a lot of people in A&W so I got my breakfast quite quickly. Other than my toast being a bit burnt, everything was pretty good. A&W serves Van Houtte coffee and the blend they use is very bold. I added a bunch of sugar but it was still bitter as hell. I drank it all though as I needed the caffeine.

It’s still eight hours until my target bedtime but I don’t think that’s realistic right now. I don’t feel tired per se but I would describe my current mental state as lacking in concentration. I kinda feel spaced out slightly. So while I’m awake, my brain is probably having a difficult time doing anything other than preventing me from sleeping.

The interesting thing is, I gotta go to the currency exchange in an hour. So this is perfect. I’m not exactly all with it and I’m about bring a large wad of cash downtown and have to bring it all back (converted to quid). How could that go wrong right?

It’s just after 5am and I’m feeling ok. I wouldn’t say I’m full of energy but I’m not ready to fall asleep either. The push to adjust my sleep schedule is going alright so far. I drank a can of Coke for lunch and then around 9pm this evening I had a grande coffee from Starbucks. It’s probably my natural tendency to stay up late plus the caffeine that’s keeping me awake. It’s light outside now and the sun is supposed to be up in about ten minutes. I might go outside and watch that but it’s kinda cloudy today.

In 45 minutes, A&W opens so I think I’ll go get their breakfast. I have a coupon so it’ll be cheap. For $5, I’ll get two eggs, three slices of bacon, two pieces of toast, and a small coffee. More coffee means more caffeine! I’ve also decided to exchange my currency for British pounds today. I’ll be using a real currency exchange for the first time. They offer much better rates than any of the stupid big banks. Interestingly, I’ll be converting a big wad of American greenbacks to quid. I have US dollars left over from my two previous trips, plus the exchange rate between US/GBP is much more favourable than CAD/GBP. All the currency exchanges open at 9am though, so even after I have breakfast I’ll have to sit around for almost two hours before I can head downtown.

It’s unlikely that I’ll be able to stay completely awake until 4pm, my target time, but I hopefully I’ll be close. Like I said before, if I can make it to noon today, that will be fine.

I’m going to London this Friday so I’ve decided to adjust my sleep schedule to fit London local time more. Starting tomorrow, I’ll be staying up way past my normal bedtime and seeing how far into the afternoon I can go before going to bed. The last time I wrote about this, I got some helpful comments from some of my readers. It seems the general consensus is to just deal with it when I get there. I’ll try to push the odds in my favour a bit by doing the adjusted sleep schedule as well.

Like I mentioned previously, the goal is to make it to 4pm and sleep until 12am. I think my body will be able to make it to around 7am or 8am and then it will get tough. If I can make it to noon, I feel like I’m close enough to London time that it won’t take much to make that final adjustment. The side benefit of doing these adjustments is that I’m planning on getting breakfast at various places that I usually don’t have the chance to. I’ll also get to see how shift workers sleep. This should be interesting.

Last week I was at Walmart and I always check the soup aisle to see if Campbell’s Chunky if on sale. If it’s $2 or less, I go and buy a couple of cans. It’s this type of thrifty behaviour that’s allowed me to save tens of dollars over the years. Anyways, next to the cans of Chunky were the normal cans of soup, including Italian wedding. Despite knowing about this type of soups for years, I’ve never had it. I just thought it was because I hadn’t been invited to the right Italian wedding.

It turns out that Italian wedding soup did not become popular because it was a soup that was always served at… Italian weddings. The name came about because of a botched translation to English from Italian. The more proper term would be “married soup” due to the delicious bond of green vegetables and meats in the soup.

Now that we got that out of the way, I can tell you how I liked Campbell’s interpretation of the soup. It was simply delicious. The chicken broth was clean and not too salty. In general, I really like soups with chicken broth. The combination of spinach, beef meatballs, and the acini pasta is what makes the soup so good. It’s a marriage made in culinary heaven, if you could marry three ingredients that is. In particular, I quite enjoyed the spinach and the pasta. I thought the spinach might be relegated to a goopy mess as it sat in a soup can but it still had some texture to it. I love pasta, especially when it’s in a form that’s close to rice, like orzo. The acini wasn’t too cooked, so I didn’t feel like I was eating a soft paste.

Not sure why I waited so long to try Italian wedding but I bought two more cans this weekend. I also keep hearing this thing called “lasagna” is pretty good as well.

So my right eye is infected with something. Late last evening I noticed some odd discomfort in my right eye. It just appeared out of nowhere. I went to the mirror and saw the white of the eye was all red. Nothing too ghastly but it definitely not normal. My eyelid and/or my eyeball was also tender to the touch.

I thought maybe it was a stye because I’ve had one of those before. It didn’t look like that though. There was no “pimple” like bump on any of the eyelids. My other thought was it might be conjunctivitis but I’ve never had that before. It’s easy to be an Internet doctor so I decided I’d just go to bed and see the doctor in the morning. I washed the eye out with some warm water and went to sleep.

I woke up in the morning and when I looked in the mirror, my eye had some crusted up discharge. Again, nothing too gross but definitely not normal. I decided to go to a walk-in clinic and this time I chose to go to one a bit further than the two downstairs from me. The two closest to me are extremely busy all the time, to the point that they normally stop taking patients around noon. This other clinic is way less busy and when I called to make sure they were still taking patients, they even offered to give me an appointment time.

The doctor took a look at my eye and he really wanted to rule out a foreign body of sorts that might have gotten into my eye. He didn’t see anything, which I suppose is good. He wound up giving me a prescription for antibiotic eye drops, something I’ve never had to use before. Hell, I haven’t really used any eye drops at all for most of my life.

The doctor said he thinks this might be the early on-set of conjunctivitis since the symptoms are still minor in number and severity. I’m to apply a single drop to the eye twice a day for a week. That’s good timing since I’m on a plane to London in one week. Let’s hope this gets all cleared up before then.