Readjusting

I've been back in Perth for two weeks now, however there are some things that are taking a bit to get adjusted to. Obviously, the main one of these is the time difference i.e. jetlag. Sweden was six hours behind WA time when I left here. With the move to winter time over there in late October, this difference became seven hours. Then with the introduction of daylight savings here a few weeks after that, the difference increased again, so that I had to set my watch forward eight hours upon touchdown here. The jetlag itself took me about a week to get over. But I still occasionally think to myself "What time would it be in Sweden now?" and decide whether it is night or daylight (almost invariably, it is dark). An interesting side-effect has been that I got so used to people sending me instant messages when it was early afternoon in Sweden but almost bedtime here, that the idea of someone messaging me from a location where it is the same time as me seems completely foreign.

Another thing I've had to readjust to is a US styled keyboard. I used a Swedish keyboard for six months. Although, I will admit it likewise did take me a while to adjust to it from the US one I had been using here. The differences would probably not have been so noticeable if you were just typing letters of the alphabet. The real difference comes with all the symbols like (, ), [, ], {, }, &, $, @, \, etc. which I use a lot in LaTeX, my language of choice for typesetting my thesis. These are in different places on a Swedish keyboard, and almost all require the use of the Alt Gr key. By contrast, most are accessed with the Shift key on a US keyboard. But old (or even six-month-old) habits die hard. Consequently, I've been pressing the righthand Alt key on my keyboard here (same spot as the Alt Gr key on a Swedish keyboard) and trying to get all these symbols, but to no avail. Nothing prints. I guess it will take me a while to unlearn this behaviour.

In other news, I've ventured back to the gym here, after not using one in Sweden. I've learned that restarting from scratch is hard work. Firstly, I've had to drop the weights down in value as I have lost a lot of strength. Secondly, my arms hurt for several days after my first session back. I had become used to cycling and hence mainly using leg muscles, rather than using my arms. And really, all this furious typing away on my thesis isn't quite doing the trick!