July 2025 – Page 2 – dangermouse.net

The iron grip of jetlag

The ongoing jetlag just won’t let go. I went to bed about 10:30 last night. I was very tired and fell asleep quickly. I woke up, after having several dreams, and felt like I had slept a good long time and it must be about 06:00 and time to get up soon.

It was 02:30. And I was awake and couldn’t get back to sleep. I turned a light on (dimly) and read for about half an hour to see if I could get tired and sleepy again, but it didn’t work very well. I went back to bed and mostly laid there awake counting the hours until dawn. It’s been pretty much like this every night since I got back from Europe some ten days ago now. Meanwhile during the day I am tired and my brain is foggy, making it difficult to concentrate on much. I’m hoping at some point my body will just flip into the correct time zone and sleep through the night properly.

I’ve been getting some exercise to try and help convince my body that it’s daytime during the day. I took Scully on a couple of walks (with my wife). We did a long one down past the harbour and she suggested taking our sketchbooks. So here’s my sketch of Oyster Cove and the HMAS Waterhen naval base:

Tonight I had three more ethics classes. The topic on Junk Food is a really good one, and there is some very interesting discussion by the kids on the ethical question of whether it’s okay or not that companies make profits by manufacturing food that is unhealthy for us. And what, if anything, can be done about this state of affairs, and whether any solutions would be better or worse than the status quo.

Games milestones and sketching back home

Friday was busy with ethics classes. I added a new class to Friday at 11:00, so I had even less time in between than previously. I did pick up groceries in the morning before my first class though.

In the evening was online board games night. There were only three of us participating this time (normally we can have 4–6). We played Jump Drive, Knarr, Splendor, Luxor, Cat in the Box, and Nova Luna, all on Board Game Arena. I won the game of Splendor, which is unusual—I’m normally very bad at this game. But I was surprised when Board Game Arena popped up a triumphant dialogue informing me that it was my first win ever at Splendor. I didn’t realise I’d been that bad at it!

And then later when I won another game—I forget exactly which game it was after—BGA informed me that I’d just won my 50th all-time game on the platform. Which I also found a little surprising, given how much we use BGA and how many games I’ve played overall. Honestly if you’d asked me how many games of just Jump Drive I thought I’d won, I would have estimated about 50. Clearly my estimations of my own competence are too high!

Today was a combination of trying to be lazy and staying at home, and actually going out for long walks with my wife and Scully. Before lunch we walked out to the kitchen shop because I wanted to buy a steel steamer tray for our pots, not necessarily to steam anything, but rather to use as a spätzle maker. I’ve been inspired by our trip to Europe to make spätzle at home, and I needed something with holes in it to push the dough through into the boiling water. I found a steamer with multiple stepped sizes on the bottom that could fit either our smaller or larger cooking pot. I also bought a silicone bowl scraper to use to push the dough through.

This afternoon we went on another walk, over to the Flat Rock Brew Cafe, where we sat and both did some sketching. I had a beer while doing mine, and my wife got a coffee. Here’s the outdoor seating area where we sat:

For this one I used the new coloured brush pens that I bought in Vienna, for the first time. So it’s a bit of an experiment. I wanted to colour the faces of the people, but the pens are too dark and I realised I should have left them blank instead. Oh well, live and learn!

And here’s the front of the establishment:

Tonight I used the new steamer to make spätzle, and we had it with vegetarian sausages, fried mushrooms, and sauerkraut. A real central European dish! And the spätzle turned out really well, so I’m very pleased with my purchase.

Persistent jetlag

It’s taking forever to shake off this jetlag from my Europe trip. Last night I went to bed about 10pm. I slept and later woke up and felt like it must be around 6am. I thought I’d just lie in until the alarm went off for my wife to get ready for work. But I tossed and turned for about two hours, unable to go back to sleep, and no alarm. So I risked a glance at the clock (normally I avoid looking at the clock during the night when trying to fall asleep again)… and it read 3:45. And I was now wide awake.

I got up and went to the living room and read a book for about an hour, to see if that would make me feel sleepy. Then went back to bed and tried to fall asleep, without much luck. At 6am I gave up and just got up and had breakfast and started my day.

For some reason this was worse than the night before, when I slept longer. I felt after that I’d have a good chance of sleeping through the night and essentially being over the jetlag. But now it feels almost like I’m back at square one. I suspect it might have been caused by the nap in had in the morning yesterday.

So today I just toughed it out, staying up and active, despite hitting a tiredness cliff in the early afternoon. Hopefully I’ll sleep longer tonight. It’s weird. I can adjust to jetlag quickly when going somewhere – I had essentially no problems at all in Europe after arriving there. But coming home is always much tougher.

Anyway, I didn’t do much today beyond teaching my Outschool ethics classes, and making a new Darths & Droids strip. So not much else to say.

Catching up on sleep?

I’m still suffering from the jet lag issue of waking up way too early and not being able to go back to sleep. I was awake from about 5am this morning and even though very tired I just couldn’t nod off again. I finally got up at 06:00 and had my breakfast.

But then around 08:00 when my wife left for work, I felt really tired and decided to go back to bed and see if I could sleep some more. I ended up getting up again after 11:00, although I felt like I was mostly dropping in and out of a light doze rather than getting a deep sleep. But it seemed to help since I didn’t feel as awfully tried this afternoon as yesterday. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a better sleep tonight and not wake up so early again.

Still, I took it easy today. I had to go pick up Scully from my wife’s work at lunch time, and we walked home together slowly. I watched some videos and cooked some vegetable soup for dinner, and had three ethics classes in the evening. I had a kid show off Labubus during one of the classes—I’d only learnt what they are two days ago!

European sketches scanned

Today I worked on my new ethics class for the new week, on the topic of Junk Food. I have some interesting questions to get the kids to think about what junk food is, such as whether a single small piece of chocolate counts as junk food, or only if you have a lot of it. How much junk food is okay to eat and how much is too much? Why do companies sell food they know is unhealthy, and should there be rules or laws to restrict junk food sales or advertising? Who should be responsible for getting people to eat healthily?

I also worked on a new Darths & Droids strip. I need to get ahead and build up a buffer again, after exhausting the one I’d built up for my trip.

And I completed touching up the scans I did of all my sketches from Europe. I filled my book of 60 pages, so there are quite a few. Here are some that I like:

Bonvivant Cocktail Bistro in Berlin, where we had that marvellous vegetarian 5-course meal:

The Astronomical Clock Tower and Old Town Square in Prague:

The Graben square in Vienna:

Buda Castle, in Budapest:

The steps we had to climb to reach Bratislava Castle, in Bratislava:

The view over Salzburg from Salzburg Castle:

And the Karsltor gate in Munich:

If you want to see all 60 sketches, I’ve put them in this album on Flickr.

This evening I did my first class on the Junk Food topic, which went okay. I had a scratchy throat at the beginning and for a while I thought I might have to stop the class because I couldn’t talk any more, but it seemed to get better as I went on. I’ve been sneezing a lot and having a stuffy nose the past few days, which I’m not sure if it’s a cold or just being run down from the jet lag and lack of sleep. Hopefully I’ll sleep better tonight and recover quickly.

After the class I made a couscous salad with beetroot, cucumber, feta, and walnuts for dinner. Very quick and easy, after I chopped and boiled the beetroot earlier in the afternoon.

Back to work Monday

Well, it was really back to work Sunday evening for me last night, but today was my wife’s first day back in the office, and I had my fullest day with six Outschool classes to teach, beginning at 8am. I got a bit more sleep last night than the previous few, but still woke up a bit early, I think just before 6am. Hopefully one more night will see me sleeping through until a normal wake-up time, and I can declare the jetlag defeated.

The new next door neighbours have not started moving in yet. They are doing some renovations of the apartment before moving in. I mentioned three days ago they were removing the wooden shutters from the windows. Now they’ve ripped up all the carpet—I guess to either install new fresh carpet or perhaps wooden floors. And today they started painting, which caused a paint smell to permeate into my place even with all the windows shut. It was quite bad late morning as I was doing some classes, and Scully’s nose was affected and she started coughing.

They left a box of Lindt chocolate balls outside our door on Saturday, with a note apologising for the renovation noise and saying they expected it to be finished in two weeks, after which they’d be moving in, and looked forward to meeting us. As it turned out, the buyer of the apartment was one of the people we met briefly when they inspected the place, as we came out of our door while they were in there, and they asked us a few questions about the place. We were enthusiastic about our love for this as a place to live, and about the surrounding neighbourhood, so maybe that inspired them to buy it!

I took Scully out as soon as my classes finished, and walked her over to my wife’s office to drop her there for the afternoon. I wore my running clothes and ran all the way home, taking a longer route than runs along a bike/pedestrian path for a lot of the way so I could avoid car traffic, and to make the distance up to 5 kilometres. It’s the first time I’ve run this route and it was nice to have a change of scenery.

Tonight, another slightly early night and hopefully a full sleep through!

Lazy recovery day 2

I had another short sleep, broken by becoming wide awake around 5am due to the ongoing jetlag. So I was pretty tired again for most of the day. Hopefully tonight I’ll be able to sleep through to a more normal waking time.

This morning we went to visit my in-laws, to tell them about our trip and show our travel sketchbooks. They were pretty impressed by our sketching, and also the fact that I managed to fill a 60 page book on one trip! (As in 60 double-sided pages. I drew on one side of the page only, and produced 60 drawings.)

I did some more tidying up of the scans I did, but still have almost half of them to go before I upload and share them.

This afternoon I had my first Outschool ethics classes since getting back from the trip. I had three classes. They were a bit tough to get through, given how jetlaggy I still am, but I managed okay. Tomorrow will be more of a challenge if I don’t get a good night’s sleep tonight.

I didn’t do much else, besides cook pasta for dinner.

Another lazy recovery day

Jetlag meant I didn’t get a good sleep. I went to bed very tired at about 10pm but was wide awake at something like 04:00. I’ve stayed awake all day since and am again very tired. Hopefully I’ll sleep longer and wake up at a more normal time tomorrow.

We didn’t do much today. I pasted my travel diary into HTML pages for my website and copied all the photos from my dSLR camera onto the computer. I worked a little on Darths & Droids, since I need to get back into producing new strips again quickly.

My wife and I took Scully on a couple of walks around the neighbourhood. She’s very tired too, having probably been playing with our friends’ dog for the past weeks while we’ve been overseas.

Oh, and I scanned in all of the sketches I did on my trip. I need to polish up the scans before uploading them somewhere.

Did some housework, cleaning, dusting, etc. Watched some TV to relax. That’s about it.

First easy day back home

I went to bed last night about 9:30 to try and sleep through the night to adjust back into this time zone. I was tired enough to fall asleep quickly but around 04:30 I woke up and started feeling awake, finding it difficult to get back to sleep. After tossing and turning for a bit, I got up around 05:30. I had some breakfast and waited for the sun to come up.

Once my wife got up she planned to go to an exercise class at the gym from 09:30. I tool this as an opportunity and encouragement to get back into my running, so I set out for a 5k run at the same time. Not having done one for three weeks I was a bit rusty and took it easy, but managed to complete the distance in a time better than I expected. I did careful stretching afterwards to avoid stiff muscles, but my leg muscles are really a bit sore now. I’ll rest up tomorrow and maybe do another run on Sunday.

We didn’t do very much today. The highlights were:

Going grocery shopping to restock perishable food supplies. A lot of fruit and vegetables and dairy stuff.
Driving out to pick up Scully from our friends’ place. We went at lunch time as they were working from home, so we had something to eat and told them about our trip. Scully was of course super excited to see us again.
Transferring photos from the trip off my phone onto the computer. I tool over 1100 photos on my phone. Plus another 500 or so on my dSLR, which I haven’t transferred yet.
Taking Scully for an evening walk.
Cooking fried rice for dinner. I said to my wife, our first night back home, what do you want me to cook? And she picked the most time-consuming and complex thing that I regularly make. There’s a lot of vegetable chopping and other prep work involved, including cooking the rice and a fried egg separately before getting the wok out.

Oh, we wondered if when we got home new neighbours would have moved into the apartment next door, which sold just before we left. But nobody’s in there yet. Though today we did see some people go in and remove the wooden shutters from the windows. Perhaps the new owners prefer some other form of window shading such as curtains or blinds.

We’re off to bed a bit early again tonight as we’ve been tired all day, but staying awake to force ourselves into the right time zone.

Europe trip days 19 and 20: Munich to Sydney

On Wednesday morning the alarm sounded at the appointed awful hour of 05:30. Munich Airport is a long way from the city centre, something close to 50 kilometres away judging by a map I looked at. The way to get there is by the S-bahn, which left from the Hauptbahnhof, right by our hotel. I thought we might have to walk an extra block, but it turned out there was an underground S-bahn entrance right outside the door of the hotel. We gladly took this to avoid walking on the streets in the 10°C morning. It took us into a network of tunnels that eventually led to the S-bahn station.

We found escalators going down to platforms, flanked by ticket validation machines. I didn’t see anywhere to buy tickets, and guessed there may be machines on the platform, so we went down, but there were none down there. I left my wife with the bags and dashed back upstairs to see if I could find tickets. Coming up the escalator I spotted the ticket machines across the tunnel. I went over and fiddled with the machine to buy two tickets to the airport. While doing this, a young man approached, speaking Hindi I think, with barely a word of English. He seemed to want help using the ticket machine, and used his phone to translate from Hindi to English. The English that came out was pretty broken and it wasn’t entirely clear, but it seemed he wanted to buy train tickets to Frankfurt. I was trying to get my own tickets and back down to my wife as fast as possible, so really didn’t want to deal with this. Then he translate some more stuff on his phone and the message I got was that he wanted me to buy tickets for him, and he would transfer money to me somehow. At this point I figured this for some sort of scam, grabbed the tickets I’d just printed out for myself, and said sorry and ran off.

I returned to my wife on the platform after validating our tickets and just in time. The next train to the airport pulled in as we walked down to check the departures sign.

Once there we found a Lufthansa check-in area. We went to see someone there and explained that we had a connecting flight from Frankfurt to Singapore, with just 75 minutes transit time, and we were wondering if we could get our seats moved to one of the earlier Frankfurt flights to give us more time to make the connection. The woman at the desk said she couldn’t make that change and we needed to go to the Lufthansa service counter, a short walk away. We went there, and explained the same thing to the woman at the reception desk. She said that a flight to Frankfurt had been cancelled and a lot of people were waiting to have their flights rescheduled. She asked us when our scheduled flight was and we said 10:00 (almost three hours away still), and she said we might have enough time and gave us a ticket with a printed number and told us to go inside and wait. We went inside the barrier and saw a dozen or more people waiting. The tickets being called were in the 40s. Our ticket was 65. We waited about five minutes and no other tickets were called.

My wife decided to go for a walk while I waited and see if she could find something to eat. While she was gone, a few tickets began to be called. I overheard one staff member ask a passenger if they already had a boarding pass, and I realised we should have actually checked in and got our boarding passes before coming here, to make sure we had plenty of time to get them sorted. My wife returned a few minutes later with a coffee and a couple of pain au chocolat for us to eat. We still had 15 tickets to wait, so I suggested we go back to the check-in counter and get boarding passes and then return here. So we did that, and a different woman at check-in issued us boarding passes all the way through Frankfurt to Singapore and Sydney. Armed with these, we returned to wait at the service counters, where our number was still a dozen away.

But then, for some reason unclear to me, our number was called next, skipping ahead of all the others. We didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth and went to the counter, whee we explained our situation again to the next Lufthansa woman there. She was sympathetic, but said that because the flights had all been issued on one ticket, she couldn’t change one leg of the trip. I asked if she thought we’d have enough time to transfer at Frankfurt and she looked at our boarding passes, which had a gate number listed for the Frankfurt-Singapore flight. She said it was a good gate to have, relatively easy to get to, and we should have enough time, if we didn’t go too slowly. She said she’d worked at Frankfurt Airport for 25 years and knew it like the back of her hand, and when we got there to go quickly and we should be able to make the next flight. She was extremely sorry she couldn’t help with moving us to an earlier flight and wished us luck.

So now we still had over two hours to wait for our 10:00 flight. At boarding time we went to the gate and boarded the plane. The plane was very empty. All the seats in the half-rows in front and behind us, and also across the aisle from us were empty. Boarding was completed very quickly and we departed a few minutes early, which was good. Munich to Frankfurt is a very short flight and we landed 42 minutes after take-off, a few minutes ahead of schedule, giving us more time to get to our Singapore flight.

Now the fun started. Frankfurt is a very big airport. Our plane had pulled in at a far gate along one of the terminal arms, so we had a long walk, several hundred metres, to get to a central hub. The time we’d missed a connection here some years ago we’d had to catch a train to transfer to a different terminal. But we knew our gate number and found signs leading towards it and after maybe 10 or 15 minutes of walking we reached the correct arm of the terminal without having to use the train. Here was a passport control area, obviously because gates on this arm of the terminal were used for international departures. Fortunately the queue was short and we were through in just a few minutes. From here our gate wasn’t too much further and we arrived with some time to spare.

Our flight to Singapore ended up being delayed about 15 minutes, but eventually we boarded and settled in for the long hauls across the globe.

Our flight arrived in Singapore around 07:00 Thursday local time, or 01:00 in Central Europe. So we were tired, but had to do a long journey across Changi Airport to our next departure gate for Sydney. Changi is if anything even bigger than Frankfurt. We had to walk 10-15 minutes from our gate to a central hub, then catch the Skytrain from Terminal 3 to Terminal 2, and then walk further. We stopped at some seats as we had an hour or so to kill. Now the tiredness really hit us. But after a bit of a wait we had to move again, giving ourselves 15 minutes to walk the remaining distance to our next departure gate. By the time we got there and went through a security screening, boarding was almost beginning. We got on board and the plane departed on time for the final flight leg.

We landed about 19:00 Sydney time, 25 hours after we departed Munich Airpot. After clearing customs and immigration we caught a train home and got there close to 20:00, a total of 30 door-to-door hours after leaving our hotel in Munich.

Tonight we’re just going to bed to try to sleep out the jetlag. We pick up Scully from our dog-minder friends tomorrow.