Jet-lagging

Well, I've been up more or less since 2:30 this morning.  Alas and alack!  As is commonly recommended when traveling, I stayed up until my normal bedtime, hoping to sleep through the night without incident.   I even eschewed (I love using that word!) the tiny bottle of gin from the transatlantic flight and instead sedately drank water.  In retrospect, that may have been a mistake.  At least I can look forward to having the gin tonight ... if I need it.  I expect that I'll probably crash long before then.

I am not sure what woke me up, if anything.  All I know is that I have been wide awake since 2:30 and none of the usual techniques have helped.  I finally gave in at 5:30, got up and dressed and have been organizing various odds and ends, feeling quite virtuous.  Feeling so fatuously virtuous should put me to sleep.

For the past half-hour, I've been watching the John Isner-Gael Monfils tennis match live from Melbourne.   Monfils is an excellent, often brilliant, player, and he had John Isner, also excellent, on the ropes in the third set.  But then Monfils lost his focus enough to let Isner back in.  They're currently on serve in the fourth.  Monfils may rue the outcome in that third set, as well he should.  Update:  Monfils lost.   We've now moved on to cover the match of local Vaud tennis hero, Stan Wawrinka, with Marin Cilic.  Surprisingly, because watching a tennis ball bounce back and forth can be soporific, I am still wide awake.

Yesterday, I didn't have much time to see the most recent changes in the third phase of the development that my apartment belongs to, principally because I arrived here as the daylight was waning but also because I wanted to unpack while I was still conscious enough to remember where things should go.  As always, it was a small shock to see how gray it was below the clouds when the Alps had shown themselves so scintillatingly white in the blue sky above the cloud cover.  It is always a pleasure to be greeted by Mont Blanc, the eternal Snow Queen of the French Alps.  Her entire mountain court was splendidly attired as well. 

When we bounced a bit on the tarmac while landing, many of us were surprised to see a large greeting committee of several police cars, airport security personnel, and several others standing about in fluorescent green vests.  This was extraordinary.   This morning's on-line Tribune de Genève gives the reason.  No, it was not because there was a special welcome party for our flight, as we were at first flattered to believe.  The group was there to see the huge new Airbus 380 (l'A380) take off from Cointrin Airport just after our plane landed.