My last day in Asia last December I was in Bangkok, bored and hot and faced with a full day to kill. My flight left at midnight. After hiding out in the air-conditioned comfort of my hotel as long as I could, I took a klong bus/boat down to the Jim Thompson house and from there gave up entirely and spent the rest of the day in several of Bangkok's many air-conditioned malls. I rationalized that I never go to malls at home, so this was a new cultural experience. Indeed, the infinite stalls full of cell phones and dried squid snacks and Hello Kitty merchandise were fascinating. Eventually I wanted to sit down and watch a movie and spend quality time with more air conditioning. My English-language choices were the Chipmunk Movie and I Am Legend. In retrospect I wish I'd chosen the former.

I Am Legend is a pretty good movie through the first two thirds and then it strains credulity, even for a movie about most of the world's population being wiped out by a supervirus and the remainder turned into flesh-eating zombies. I mean, there's a limit.

I watched the movie, hung out some more, wandered back to my hotel and took a shower in the mop closet and left for the airport. I slept a few hours on the flight to Seoul, had a 12-hour layover, and slept a few more hours on the flight to New York. I got home, slept a few more hours, and started a full two-week process of getting my internal clock back on track.

The zombies haunted me at every turn. After three weeks in Asia, I never had any idea where I was when I woke up, and starting on the flights home I had vivid dreams about the zombies regularly. I wake up terrified and it takes an hour or so to settle back down, usually with the lights on and fiddling around onlineIt's tapered off somewhat, but last night I had another.

In this one, a coworker and Realty Chick's friend the conductor and I are hiding out from the zombies. The conductor says one might have scratched her. For some reason the scratch is on her upper gum. She shows it to me and I matter of factly go to my bedside table and pull out a pistol. I'm not sure what was more unnerving -- the potential for zombies, or gun ownership. The conductor looks at me incredulously, but I explain that if she's about to turn into a zombie, I'm going to have to shoot her. We sit down a few feet away from each other and wait.

Conveniently, I woke up at that point, sitting bolt upright and sweating, although to be fair it was hot last night. I read an article by Calvin Trillin about chicken wings in the New Yorker food anthology and had a glass of water. Eventually I fell back asleep.

Last week I was discussing this with some other coworkers. One can't drive and has anxiety dreams about being forced behind the wheel of a moving car. Another has the garden-variety dreams about showing up for a final exam after a whole semester of missing class. Another has violent dreams about being hunted down. Me, I've got zombies.