CHAT Jet-lag et al. (was Re: future past)

Philippe Caquant wrote:

(snip much)
> There is also the case of the speleolog who lives in a
> cave for several months, without any watch or other
> possibility to know the 'real' time.
IIRC, studies have shown that if left to our own devices, we begin to run on
something approaching a 25-hour day.

It was not 10:00 p.m,
> but 10:00 a.m ! I had not slept 15 hours as I thought,
> but 3 ! It was not night, but day ! The people I had
> seen on the street hadn't got to bed yet ! They lived
> in the night, while I was living in the afternoon !
> The whole afternoon I just lived, I had to live once
> more !
>
The only amusing story to come out of my mother's decline into Alzheimer's:

One morning at 5AM my sister (who took care of mother) was awakened by the
blaring of the TV from the living room.  She came out to find mother,
cocktail in hand, waiting for the 5 (PM) o'clock news, and wondering what
Nancy was going to fix for dinner.
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I'm not sure what happened to my internal clock when I went halfway around
the world from Florida to Indonesia in 1971 in essentially one hop. Miami-LA
felt normal enough; 1-2 hours wait; LA-Honolulu; 1-2 hrs.layover.
Honolulu-Sydney left about 9PM and was one long flight, blessedly half
empty; I stretched out across the cnter seats and slept the whole way.
Arrived Sydney at 7AM; several hours layover; Sydney-Jakarta arrived there
about 2 PM. Reached the guesthouse around 4-ish, took a nap and was awakened
for dinner at 7.  I never had any further problems.

The odd thing was, that in the States (Eastern time zone), both by choice
and by careful class-scheduling I had become a rather late riser (10AM or
so) and late to bed (l-2AM)*.  In Indonesia I tended to wake up
automatically at 7AM, sometimes earlier, and seldom stayed up past 11PM.
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*In my retirement now, that's still my schedule, but I used to be slightly
ashamed of it, until Prof. J. McCawley, during his 1 or 2year tenure at
Michigan, announced to the class that he was absolutely NOT to be disturbed
before 11AM, but was available to confer with anyone between 11 and 3 AM.