Jet lag is a nightmare from which no one is exempt.

I had strongly believed that my recent irregular (but sufficient, I would say for sure) sleep schedule was proof that I had finally become a global talent, in the sense that there was no fixed timezone in which I could produce results. This was seemingly supported by the fact that I got through all the scheduled events for the conference without any problems, and my supervisor and I successfully stepped onto the plane to fly to Barcelona for a connecting flight to Helsinki.

But, here, dark clouds abruptly started to gather. Explaining what happened in detail would make me run out of space on this postcard, so here is a quick summary: my supervisor missed the connecting flight, and to make matters worse, my baggage was lost instead of his. When I reached Tokyo as planned, some unplanned paperwork was waiting for me to process. In the end, I got a fever and felt sick for about a week after coming back home. I, as a Ph.D. student, needed to find out the cause of my illness to make my future business trips successful.

First, unexpected accidents could not be the primary factor because I research robust inference; hence, I am robust, too. Next, the possibility that I am not truly a global talent was addressed. This is also not true. I was communicating with foreign global talents in Morocco, and of course, my jokes made in English at the venue possessed impeccable humor. Further deep analyses have led me to draw the conclusion that I had been under the influence of jet lag.

Therefore, here is a lesson to be shared. Jet lag is a nightmare from which no one is exempt.