Insomniac

On Monday I had an “Oh shit! What time is it?” morning. My day usually starts at 7.30am should my class begins at 9.30am. I give myself ample time to get ready in the first hour and to travel in the second. All this include buffer time which means time to go view the morning KL skylight from my bedroom window and to enjoy Eurosport while sipping my morning coffee before driving off with Valerie. So even though I woke up at 7.45, there is still no cause for alarm. But on Monday, the answer to my “Oh shit!” question was 8.25am. There was certainly a cause for alarm.

Everything had to be done double-time. ‘Make haste’ as one would put it. That would be the reason that I was almost panting and beads of sweat were rolling off my forehead. Even though 10 minutes late, I kept my cool in taking my seat. And then I realized I forgot to shave. I now looked like Keanu Reeves on the Tonight Show. Naturally good looking but lack of facial hair care just put people off.

As for today, it is the second time for the past 3 weeks I felt sleepy during class. The first time was yesterday. When this happens, my mind and focus is about 70% of its sharpness. As you’ve may guessed it, this is not good.

Well, there is a pretty simple explanation to all this. It is lack of sleep.

The thing is, I already spend my whole weekdays going to class. During the night I do the assigned homework. I usually finish around 12 or 1 and that should be a peachy time for me to go to bed, right? Wrong. Well, at least for me I think. This is when I catch up with the primetime reruns on TV that I missed earlier. When that finishes, it’s time for live football matches. Now those I could not possibly miss. If I miss those, I would wake up an unhappy man the next morning. Only then, I would doze off…usually with the TV still on (my mother hates it when this happens but that’s a different story). So if I’m lucky, I would get around 4 hours of sleep.

The amiable solution would be to recover during the weekends but come on, the weekends are the fun part. This is when you go out and spend leisure time. At night? Well, if you’d check out the latest ad by Astro promoting its sports channels, the tagline says, “From dusk till dawn”. And it’s beautifully true. 7 to 1 is the English Premiership double header, 1 to 3 is the Italian Serie A coverage and the Spanish Primera Liga took over from 4 to 6.

I know this is medically unhealthy. Only recently I heard on the radio that an adult needs to sleep at least 6 hours a day to reduce the likelihood of getting diabetic. This, of course, came from a study done by a group of overseas university students. I did not take the information wholly but it did make me stop and think.

But one thing that bothers me most when I don’t have enough sleep is dreams. You see, based on my personal experience, when you sleep when your body forces you to i.e. your are so tired that the body just shuts down to recharge its batteries (this usually happens when you fall asleep when you are not planning to) which is what I’m experiencing right now, it is very much likely you would not experience any night dreams. My theory is that the brain has used up all it energy (well, not all because then you would be braindead) that it becomes incapable to generate dreams anymore. It just focuses on revitalizing itself. I’m a firm believer in this because when I decide, “Alright, I’m going to bed”, I wake up the next morning with a memory of sweet (although sometimes weird) dreams. Just like last Monday when I became so frustrated with my inability to complete my homework because I was stumped halfway through I decided to call it a day. Although my nightly adventure feels very similar to John Constantine’s life where I was battling demons with the coolness of expression it was still a proper dream.

Ah, here we go…insomnia - chronic inability to fall asleep or remain asleep for an adequate length of time. I think I have this. Oh dear, the word ‘chronic’ doesn’t sound too good does it? Well too bad because I still haven’t done today’s homework and there’s a test tomorrow. Later on Chelsea will be entertaining Liverpool in the Champions League Semi-final first leg. Oh the inhumanity!

For the readers, please note that the author is now giggling uncontrollably and it is unclear whether this is caused by a surge of excitement or a clear sign that he is on the verge of insanity.