Middletown, RI

Now that I’m back on the continent, things have more or less returned to normal.  One thing that I noticed in driving from Montreal to Ottawa was how sparse everything is here.  Even looking at Montreal from the plane, it amazed me how small it looked.  I remember seeing Hyderabad from the plane and the city is buildings packed together as far as the eye can see.  You can’t see the edge of the city.  I’ve also noticed that my driving habits have suffered from spending so much time watching Indian drivers in action.  I was driving way too agressively, although part of it was that I just wanted to be home.

I had to do some shopping over the weekend since my bag was lost.  It didn’t get back to me before I had to leave again, so I had to buy a few days worth of clothes and some new shoes.  Normally, this wouldn’t have bothered me since I could use some new clothes anyway, but it was kind of a drag having to do it during the Christmas season with less than 24 hours at home after a three-week trip.

I came to Rhode Island last night to teach a couple of courses in Middletown.  Flights were delayed and everything was running late, but at least I made my connection (I feel for you Joe…).

I haven’t been hit by extreme tiredness yet, so it looks like I’ve beaten the jet lag.  Not too bad – 10 ½ hours time difference and I’m right on schedule without missing a beat.  I think I’ve come up with a system to beat jet lag; maybe I’ll write a post about it later on.  It’s mostly about understanding your sleep cycles and extreme sleep deprivation.  It pretty much worked for me on the way there as well, although I had a couple of days where I would turn into a zombie at around 3:00 in the afternoon.

I thought that I would be really sick of Indian food by the time I got back, but my god I’m craving it.  I’ll have to find a good place in the area.

I’m teaching in Middletown for two weeks.  Lara and the kids are coming down on Wednesday and we’re all going to stay over the weekend.  I think that maybe we’ll head to Boston at least one day (it’s only about a two hour drive or so).  Who knows what we’ll do the other day.  Maybe we’ll just toot around Providence, or go to Cape Cod or something.  It’s unfortunate that the weather is chilly.