I have done some crazy things in my life in terms of long trips/krazy travel/extreme sleeplessness, but I don't think I've ever done anything as hard as staying awake for 2 10-hour days of meetings while adjusting to a 12-hour time difference and recovering from a 24-hour trip. Holy crap. I don't even remember how much Diet Coke I drank, how many times I pinched myself, or how often I tried the old "holding your feet off the ground to stay awake" trick, but all I know is it was a struuuuuuuuggle.
I also have no idea what time it is. That is not actually true. I know it's 9 AM in New York where I am now, 6 AM in LA where I was 8 hours ago, and 6 PM in Dubai where I'll be 14 hours from now - so more appropriately, I have no idea where my timezone allegiance should lie. Probably Dubai, since I'm drinking Veuve in the Emirates lounge at the moment and thus evening seems most appropriate.
There you go, Jessie's Travel Tips: drinking. Drinking and sweatpants, actually, since I have never loved anything more than the $35 sweatpants I bought at LAX after deciding that I could NOT survive another 24 hours with jeans pockets digging incessantly into my butt cheeks, fashion be damned. Oh yeah, and don't do anything that comes remotely close to using your brain. Stay away from that Economist and those free international newspapers in the lounge and fork over $5 for a festive array of Star, US Weekly, and OK! - that's all the mental capacity you should be trying to retain.
At any rate, my meetings in LA were great, as was the huge 6-course team dinner at a fantastic Italian place near the beach in Santa Monica on Friday night, where I think I may have talked half the American company we're partnering with into relo'ing to Dubai. ("No, but the streets are paved with gooooooold!") Also great was drinks with last night Hill at Chateau Marmont - where much to my great chagrin, we did NOT see Lindsay Lohan. (I did see Zach Braff at JFK on the way out to LA - disappointingly nerdy and unattractive in person.)
And with that, I think I'm going to go serve myself up some more Indian food and have a shower before boarding in an hour. Bye-bye America!
