Wednesday

Today has been an interesting observation of situational incongruity, something I'd never experienced before coming to Asia; a concept I'm growing comfortable enough with to somewhat attempt coining here. I've been living twelve time zones from where I grew up for almost thirteen months now. So it's been quite a while since I've experienced that odd disconnection between the clock, measuring increments of solar movement in relation to the curve of our horizon, and my physical expectation of elapsed time based solely on observed habitual intervals. Jetlag is measurement incongruity: the time which has elapsed in memory does not align with the time of day. Right? Eventually the memory of elapsed intervals fades into an expectation centered around the clock itself, and jetlag fades. This morning I woke up at six for a party at the White Palace convention center. US Consulate HCMC was throwing an election day party. We got into our cab at seven and arrived at the venue thirty minutes later. The party started at eight am, just as polling closed across the US eastern seaboard. Usually, I follow election returns sitting at Café Europa's solid wood bar, beer in hand, "I Voted" sticker on my shirt, surrounded by neighborhood regulars. Early this morning, suit-and-tie US expats and Vietnamese notables piled into a room with twelve chandeliers and a brace of huge televisions projecting a red-yellow-blue map of US states and each candidate's accruing tally of all-important Electoral College votes. I was enjoying coffee and the circulating platters of local fruit-and-pastry breakfast fare. I was sleepy. Situational incongruity can be divorced from that memory of elapsed intervals characterizing the disconnection referred to as jetlag. It was a really weird setting, even after all this time: evening things done in the early am. How about "setlag"? [Cavin]