the jetlag club

Slept 2 AM-1 PM, which is not a promising start. Usually the one night layover in Europe will help more than that.

But my colleague Jonah sent me THIS ARTICLE, which suggests that an internal feeding clock may have more do do with it than the daylight clock.

The solution may be a long fast, and being surrounded by hundreds of millions of fasters (this being Ramadan) it shouldn’t be hard.

Incidentally, I did the Ramadan fast all the way until my sabbatical, in order to be on the same playing field as most of my students. What is it like? I found that going without food is not horribly difficult, but going without liquids is really very hard. By sunset you’re dehydrated, a bit dizzy, parched, and I found it hard to concentrate or do much of anything but eagerly await Iftar.

And it becomes all the harder the more that Ramadan drifts towards mid-summer. When I first arrived in Egypt, it was a December holiday, but since it starts 12 days earlier each year (due to the lunar/solar calendar discrepancy) it’s now an August holiday, and those who do it in Egypt in July will be heroes.