It was a rough couple of weeks leading up to our Southeast
Asia trip. We hadn’t been sleeping much
in the month of June or July, as we were constantly ticking off the various
items on our mental (and physical) to-do lists.
In the midst of packing up our Boston life, setting up our new Brooklyn
life, and finishing our actual work (oddly enough, the partners at my firm
don’t let me bill for “mattress browsing”), we forgot to get excited for (and
plan) our travels.
We had the genius idea of staying up the night before our
flight, so that we could finish planning our vacation (thanks, Vin), finish
buying our new bedroom furniture (thanks, Vin), and finish drafting various
motions in hopes of not logging in remotely from across the world (epic fail, Rucha). It made sense, we thought,
because our night time was Asia’s day time, and we would of course get an
uninterrupted, satisfying sleep on our flight.
(Yes, we’ve traveled before.)
By the time the sun rose, we realized we were too tired to
take the subway and NJTransit to Newark Airport. We wanted to take a cab, but didn’t want to
be subject to any surge prices as it became later into the day, so we just
called a rideshare at 5 AM, six hours before our flight. It made sense, we thought, because we could
enjoy some complimentary food and other amenities in the Priority Pass lounge.
We got to the airport so early that the Priority Pass lounge
was closed. We sat on worn leather seats
outside of the lounge, because god forbid we are not the first people in the
lounge after the aggressive furniture shopping and answer-drafting that took
place the night before (well, a few hours before).
When the lounge finally opened, we were too early for much of the food,
and so we instead continued working on our earlier tasks, debating whether it was appropriate to have a beer at the crack of dawn because it was nighttime in
Asia.
I was excited for my long sleep on the flight. We were in a row of four, sandwiched between
two passengers who at first seemed unassuming, quiet, and contained. Unfortunately, the man sitting to my right decided
it made sense to take up the entire armrest and lean into me for the duration
of the 14 hour flight. Unable to fall
asleep with this man’s shiny head in my neck, breathing heavily into my
clavicle, I stayed awake and tried to do more work and watch movies that made
me cry, to lubricate my dry eyes. Despite
my exhaustion by the time we reached our layover in Tokyo, I willed myself to
indulge in lots of free rice and seaweed snacks (and a bowl of hot ramen – that’s a
little snack, right?) at the Priority Pass lounge, like a hero. It’s hard to eat, sometimes, but I did it.
En route Kuala Lumpur, I passed out about 20 minutes into a
Liam Neeson movie where one of his children is again captured and he proves
he’s great at killing.
I woke up most likely in the middle of a REM cycle, because
I could barely walk and didn’t know where we were. Vin confirmed we had finally reached Kuala
Lumpur, and I followed him to a taxi with one of my eyes still closed.
We finally got to our hotel about two hours after we landed. We both collapsed onto the comfortable bed, eager
to finally get a full night’s rest – only to discover we were wide-awake. Vin and I just continued shopping for new
furniture till we fell asleep.
