Sweet, Sweet Jetlag

It's really odd how this kind of perpetual motion affects me over time. Jetlag feels so familiar now that I almost welcome it. Not unlike a Starbucks in Germany, it's something I normally want nothing to do with, but its familiarity is comforting in a strange place. Today that strange place is Incheon, S. Korea. It's 1:30am here and I just woke up from sleeping 8 hours. We flew overnight from Europe, everyone converging in Frankfurt from their respective "break" locations. I managed to finagle myself (and Matt) into business class which was a major victory for the day. When you're talking about sitting in a seat for 10+hrs, the difference between business class and coach is akin to the difference between a handjob and a punch in the nuts. Just so I didn't get too spoiled, the airconditioning unit on the plane was broken and couldn't be used until the engines started. They announced before we boarded that it was 40 degrees (celsius) on the plane, that's 104F. Now, a 777 is big (as planes go). It fits a lot of people. It takes ages to get all those people and their shit crammed into this tube and be ready for take-off. So for about 30-40 minutes I sat sweating like Meat Loaf, which is exactly what you want to do before sitting in those clothes for the next half a day.
Me sweating...


The sun sets on Siberia...


And rises over Mongolia...


Sometimes I wonder...
Where the fuck am I going?

I spent most of the flight watching 7 episodes of 24 (season 4 for those who care). As soon as we landed I wished I'd slept. It was noon when we landed which was 5am in Europe. We got in a strange bus and drove through the rain to the hotel. We're doing a festival in Incheon which is a couple hours from Seoul. We won't even see Seoul on this trip. Just the airport, hotel and gig. These are the trips that sound great when you list where you're going, but in reality it's just lots of travel and you don't see much of anything. After a few hours I couldn't last and crashed. I slept from about 4:30pm till midnight and now I'm killing time in yet another dingy hotel room that is so depressing that (not unlike the jetlag) it almost feels good, like I'm in a sad movie. A lot of great people lived their lives in sad little rooms like this. There's a poignancy in these rooms. That and about 30 years of someone else's grime. It makes me wish I had a guitar. I could pretend I'm some brilliant but miserable bastard like Nick Cave or Leonard Cohen and I could channel the melancholy into a soundtrack for places like this. It also makes me wish the hotel was nicer.
The view from the Paradise Hotel, Incheon...

Bleak.