Foreign Policy Blogs

Fighting Jet Lag; Jet Lag’s Winning

Fighting Jet Lag; Jet Lag's Winning

Source: Science Daily

I’m back in South Africa. Most years when I come back I start off and sometimes finish in Melville, in Johannesburg. It’s an area with which I’m intimately familiar, and it gives me a comfortable place to settle in, re-adjust, and recover from jet lag. I’ve been coming to South Africa and traveling internationally regularly for fifteen years, and yet I’m still lousy at dealing with jet lag. Perhaps it’s a lack of discipline on my part (I cannot sleep on planes, so when I get to a bad, any bed, I know I should fight of sleep, but I never do), or maybe I have an especially stubborn circadian rhythm. Whatever the reason, I usually need several days to make myself get on a normal schedule rather than forcing it at once.

My posts here for the next few weeks will often take the form of diary entries–light on links, heavy on observation, reliant on my own knowledge and background but also my own prejudices. For some of you, my work might be too much self-indulgence. For others, it might represent something akin to real reportage from someone who often traffics in opinion journalism.

 

Author

Derek Catsam

Derek Catsam is a Professor of history and Kathlyn Cosper Dunagan Professor in the Humanities at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin. He is also Senior Research Associate at Rhodes University. Derek writes about race and politics in the United States and Africa, sports, and terrorism. He is currently working on books on bus boycotts in the United States and South Africa in the 1940s and 1950s and on the 1981 South African Springbok rugby team's tour to the US. He is the author of three books, dozens of scholarly articles and reviews, and has published widely on current affairs in African, American, and European publications. He has lived, worked, and travelled extensively throughout southern Africa. He writes about politics, sports, travel, pop culture, and just about anything else that comes to mind.

Areas of Focus:
Africa; Zimbabwe; South Africa; Apartheid

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