DocAndersen
I traveled a lot for ten years. Lots and lots, over 1.1 million mile sin ten yers. During that time I stayed in a lot of hotels. I normally tried to stay in Marriotts because, well because of this story. The first time I went overseas was an interesting trip. I had a “child” passport when I was in Thailand. A Child or Minor passport (in the US) expires when you are 18 years old. But, by the time I was traveling internationally again I was a few years past 18. I ended up filling out the passport application so that I could travel to teach a class in Amsterdam. When I was 11 years old, I had no problem sleeping on the plane. I figured it would be no problem a few years later to, well sleep on the plane.
Boy was I wrong. I couldn’t sleep at all. As you get older your circadian cycle gets more and more set. So traveling internally without preparation can be tough. I slept about an hour on the way to London, then not at all on the short flight from London to Amsterdam. In retrospect, I should have done the direct flight from Chicago to Amsterdam, but I was being a good corporate citizen and took the cheaper flight!
I was fried when I got the hotel and thought, well I have nothing to do, I will take a nap (I was two days before the class started on purpose). My coworker wasn’t arriving until much later that day, so I laid down and went to sleep. I was really tired. I was asleep for at least 3 hours. I regretted that the next day but the sleep was interrupted by a noise.
I was startled awake and suddenly confused.
I couldn’t for the life of me, remember where I was.
I picked up the hotel phone and called the front desk.
I said “where am I.” in retrospect a literal question. I got a literal answer
“you are in room 1012 sir.”
‘No, what country am I in?” I asked the follow up literal question
“Holland sir.”
I hung up and sat there for a few minutes. Then I remembered why I was in Holland.
In the future, I learned a few tricks for international travel.
1. Make sure you leave early in the morning and do not sleep until you are on the transatlantic portion of the flight.
2.Get out and walk when you get to the hotel!
But the first time was the hardest. I do know where I am now!
-
Have you ever awakened and wondered where am I?
-
Yes
-
No
-
Q: Have you ever awakened and wondered where am I?
Yes (8 votes) – 80%
No (2 votes) – 20%
Travelling always has this kind of funny stories
I sadly have many funny traveling stories!
We will read them!!!!
Thanks! I have a couple for tomorrow planned!
even when I was still in the same time zone, I’d wake up and if I wasn’t in my bed there would be a moment of panic and terror as I tried to remember where I was…
I felt that terror, ergo calling the front desk! Sadly I was scared enough to be literal!
the adrenaline helps me wake up
based on the art I’ve seen, I believe that.
yeah, the things I admit to in my art are pretty incriminating. should call my style de facto
I would call your style De Ledante.
but that is simply quibbling.
As long as we agree that this season is tree-free I am ok!
except that I never agreed to that…
for now, yes you have not agreed.
But I am going to keep trying!
I have already promised to release evil trees, and I am a man of my word
I think you should release evil trees. May I recommend a state park that is in need of wild evil trees?
I shall release them into the Los Angeles national forest, since I am lazy and don’t want to drive far
That sounds like a wonderful ecological nightmare, for somebody else!
also, they’re being released on the west coast. so you’ll have the rest of the country plus the rockies as a buffer zone
i may have to get my congressman to propose a containment law for evil trees west of the Rockies!
then your representative better be a democrat because republicans love evil anything…
I am not sure that is fair…
it isn’t fair to the nation, that’s certain. but don’t get me wrong, I also hate democrats…
That leaves the independents, how do you feel about them?
I’ve got a soft spot for third parties, but obviously it is going to depend on their politics. I don’t want to make any blanket statements…
Honestly, i voted for John Anderson back in the day. I worry that the two parties are too powerful for a third to even make a difference.
they are, but only if everyone believes that. if enough voters back a third party, it would be a viable strategy…
in a system where the voters choose by the majority, that would not be possible. In a system that uses an arcane system (Electoral College) designed to move power from the cities to the rural (and at the time wealthy) voters, it would be possible.
we’ve seen the failure of the Electoral College enough times for me to distrust it…
Anytime the popular vote winner loses the election, the system has failed. Except that in those cases the failure is by design.
the electoral college was invented specifically to keep demagouges like trump out of office. it had one job, and it did the exact opposite of what it was meant to do
Interesting.
Actually, it was wholly invented to placate wealthy southern landowners. Who, wrote the constitution and ultimately the electoral college. It prevented the big cities of early America from having too much power.
In particular, Adams (Boston), Hamilton (New York) were in mind as having ideas that were too liberal. Funny how it has worked out. I did not vote for Trump, but he found a loophole in the system.
you’re correct that it was made to protect wealthy landowners from mob rule but it was also in place to prevent the populace from electing a king. the framers didn’t trust the unwashed masses to vote in their own best interests. and they were right to think so
The funny thing is, if you read the Federalist Papers by Madison, you will see a different constitution. Madison saw periodic reviews of the systems to ensure they are effective.
The Electoral College has only elected a president 3 times that didn’t win the popular vote, which is bad. But it has done so twice in the last 20 years which might be worse.
we definitely need to adopt a Madisonian approach
we do, Madison was based on his Federalist work, selected to work on the constitution.
The piece that he fought for a 10, or 20 year review cycle.
he lost.
the resistance against such a system is understandable, but without an adaptive model then you’re left with antiquated system that we have, which can’t react effectively to our unforeseeable circumstance
I personally wonder how much longer we have to wait before true electronic voting on our phones or computers.
We would need 3 tier authentication (something you know, something you have, something you created) but it is possible now.
completely possible now, has been ever since blockchain. how feasible it is, hard to say…
agree but disagree
blockchain has to evolve. Right now it is too slow.
330 million voters
18 hour voting period. 20 million-plus transactions per hour. Many hours way more than that.
Well past hte capabilities of any blockchain from handling today.
it used to take months to calculate all the results. blockchain is already faster than that. so it takes a week to sort it all out? big deal
but I did say feasibility was an issue. I suspect if the votes were handled at the county level, it might work
in fairness, I think you are 10 years away from that. More likely in 2020 you will see secure communication systems for election officials.
in 2024 we will see secure electronic voting.
2028 would be the arrival of blockchain structures for voting.
your timeline sounds much more realistic than optimistic. at any rate, most of the tampering we dealt with in 2016 was social engineering rather than physical, so blockchain wouldn’t have helped…
There in lies the rub.
Wither tis nobler in the minds of humans
to change their social media
rather than their minds.
you can’t change your mind if you don’t have one to begin with…
I haven’t experienced it yet. I don’t know, maybe I don’t travel too far to the more distant lands.
from the comments it happens to some people at home as well!
It has happened to me but only right after wakeup from a dream.
really now that is interesting certain types of dreams or just when dreaming and startled awake?
To me happened, but in severe flu.
I haven’t had that experience while sick. Sorry to hear about that!
I have on several occasions. Sometimes, in my own room or at s host’s place. I wake up startled and wonder why things look different.
It can be very scary. I developed a routine because of that one time!
I have had dreams at home, startled awake and had no idea where I was!
That has to be scary, right?
Sometimes it happens right in my own home.
I think that would be very scary for me. It hasn’t happened but would be really scary.
Very rarely have I been so disoriented. Maybe because I don’t travel out of the country.
over the course of the years I was traveling it happened just that one time. But, i always followed my routine after that!