Well, TPP wishes he had known this over the years because those darned trans-oceanic flights and the resulting jet-lag hasn't gotten any easier over the years. Supposedly, and it is a research study, your stomach can reset your circadian clock quickly by simply fasting for 12-16 hours before you would normally eat breakfast at your point of destination. Hey, it's not like airline food is all that worth eating anyways. Of course, airlines tend to arrange their trans-oceanic flights so you arrive early in the day, but they wake you up a couple of hours ahead and provide you with a breakfast. So the idea is to not fall for this jet-lag inducing feeding and wait until you can grab an egg mcmuffin upon your arrival in Hong Kong having flown from Detroit (this used to be one of the longest flights you could take). In a way it's comforting to find out that your stomach rules in such matters. Naturally, when they say fast, they are talking about food, not booze, since it would be totally insane not to have a drink or two to help you forget that you are hurtling along 500 mph at an altitude of 40,000 feet in a ridiculous aluminum tube, however, no matter how hungry you might be TPP cannot recommend getting a "big breakfast" after arriving in Sydney just to reset your sleep cycle because it will truly ruin your GI tract for days to come. Better not to sleep than to have hotdogs for brekkies.
In a carefully orchestrated conspiracy, all trans-Pacific flight begin late at night. Nominally the idea is to arrive early in the day at your destination with the whole day in front of you, which works time-wise, but seems to have left an important biological component out of the equation, the traveler. There you are, newly arrived in a foreign country with the whole day ahead of you, and you are a jet-lagged, sleep-deprived zombie about 6 hrs to early to occupy your hotel room because they have yet to purge their previous night's guest, so you don't get to shower or change clothes in a futile effort to look human. The actual door to door trip took 33 hrs, and now some 10 hrs beyond that, fatigue is beginning to become an issue. But if you cave in too soon, you never will get into sync with the local time. Unfortunately, the weather here is wet and cold, quite atypical based upon all of our previous visits, so that hasn't helped the situation. A nice local amber ale has helped. But in the grand scale of things, this was a trouble free, incident free trip and everyone arrived in better shape than expected. Hotel is situated quite centrally, and the F1 is quite excited about the proximity of Chinatown and its many eateries. Asian presence in Sydney has continued to increase with each visit since the Phactor first visited 30 years and five international botanical congresses ago. Decent coffee is now common here, very different than the near ubiquitous instant coffee situation 3 decades ago, and fortunately coffee shops have gotten on board with free wifi, so it costs less than an internet connection in my room, and comes with a decent cup of coffee.