not sure what this means

In the past I’ve mentioned reading an article about which direction of air travel causes worse jet lag. This apparently depends on whether your body clock is longer or shorter than 24 hours. I no longer remember which is which, but I’ve always been part of the majority group, which has a hard time going from America to Europe, but a very easy time in the other direction.

On the present trip, however, the effect has been reversed. In Malibu I was the most boring house guest in history, falling into half-day stupors of sleep even as my hosts were in a sociable, entertaining mood. That was completely unexpected.

And now in Paris, I’m feeling much the same shot-in-the-arm effect that I usually feel going in the other direction. If this holds up it will be good news for the rest of the semester, because I had reached the point of needing three weeks of recovery time whenever I returned to Cairo from the U.S. Indeed, this is one of the reasons I’ve stopped going to to the U.S. very often.

There are at least three possibilities I can think of.

1. It’s a total fluke based on physiological contingencies of the moment, and says nothing about future patterns.

2. My body clock has suddenly reversed polarity for some reason.

3. Perhaps most likely, the 10-hour time difference has different effects from the 7-hour or 8-hour differences to which I am much more accustomed. I’ve simply never flown from either Egypt or Europe to California before, and those extra 2/3 hours may be the culprit in this reversal of normal patterns.