What I Learned This Weekend


If you’re jet lagged from flying from London to Singapore and Singapore to Tokyo and Tokyo to Singapore in less than 7 days, you won’t run very fast. I went out for a run this evening around 8:30, and didn’t manage even 3 km before turning back, knackered. I find myself in a quandary; if I don’t run, I feel tired and gloomy, but if I do run, I feel dreadful anyway. Hopefully next week, when I’m caught up on sleep, I’ll feel stronger again.

(Of course, in Asia there’s no such thing as jet lag. Suck it up and keep moving.)

Sicario is not light entertainment to lift your tired spirit. Well, perhaps I should have paid more attention to reviews. My friend Nick told me it was a good film, and he’s been to Juarez (to do due-diligence on what the movie implies was probably the only non-drug related enterprise in town). It’s a good film, but it certainly isn’t relaxing in any way.

La Serpiente is pretty good at coping with vomit. Admittedly, she threw up over the dining room table last night, and later over her bed, but she was quite stoic once we’d cleared the vomit off her, and then slept through until 7 this morning, when she cheerfully woke me from where I’d conked out on the sofa. She struggled today (a combination of a lack of sleep and of food will get you in the end) but did pretty well under the circumstances.

La Serpiente is good at jigsaw puzzles. A twelve-piece jigsaw she can finish in about five minutes. We require more challenging toys.

I struggle to tidy. Left alone in the flat for an hour, I managed to almost summon up the willpower to discard a mug of worn-out and dried-up old pens. Almost.

The cable car in Singapore is reasonably priced. If you’re a local riding it all year, that is. For mere mortals, going up the cable car to Mount Faber is an extortionate $29. If you live here, a year’s pass is only $39. Mind you, I’m not sure how often you’d want to go up to Mount Faber in a cable car – although La Serpiente has been demanding it, I don’t expect it to be part of our weekly schedule. But who knows how often she’ll want to look at our flat from a long way away? (And I did get a membership card with a flagrantly ridiculous picture of my bearded phizzog on it.)

If you possibly can, avoid getting any flight to Singapore that lands at 3:30am local time. I don’t think I’ll have recovered before next weekend.


Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.