Crossing the Pacific to Sydney

Traveling across so many time zones instructs you not that time is relative but that it's arbitrary.

When you've made the easy cross from Washington to San Fran on the other coasted, traveling West into time, you have flown 5 hours and 56 minutes but the time zones say you only took 2 hours and 56 minutes.  

Okay, we're used to that.

But that's nothing when you cross the great expanse that is the Pacific Ocean to Sydney, Australia and that invisible international date line, east to west.  Your flight "only" takes 14 hours and 30 minutes but, by  agreement, your clock says you left 10:40 pm on November 18 and you're arriving in Sydney at 8:10 am on November 20 th, that's 33 hours and 20 minutes.

Sleeping and reading and watching and listening and sleeping in a reclined chair in a dark flying cabin is fairly disorienting in and of itself and then you look at your watch and you're lost.

Time says one thing.  Your mind and body say something else.