Monday, March 24, 2008

HPL

The Duff had spent another week sleepless as usual. The experiment from the previous week was a complete failure. While he managed to go to bed early, he found himself thinking too much, focusing too much on what was playing on his ipod, and even watching shows by his bed. As such, he had gone to the lands of faerie at his usual stipulated 4.30am each day.

And the weekend tipped everything over the edge! On Thursday night/Friday morning, he managed to get home only at 5 after partying the night away with his colleagues. Even then, he only hit the sack at 7. Friday night was an all nighter on the desktop, catching up with his favourite shows until 7 once again. The hours spent hibernating during the day was of course marred by interruptions and the sunlight just burning away at his REM allocation. Saturday night was with his posse of guys, table swimming and suppering.

As for last night? He was up throughout studying for 2 tests that he'd be facing in 2 hours. Such is his folly. His typical drag-ass routine of enjoying first and struggling later. Try as he might, his impulse control is next to nil when the promise of immediate utility dances ever enticingly right 2 feet ahead of his eyes.

The Duff shall be posting his test results here for all who want to see, as a punishment for his well-realised sloth.

As he psychically recites to me now in his dungeon of toil, he is perpetually disgusted by the state of his surroundings. It is a small 2-bedded room with rusty window grilles, uncountable geckos and their droppings laced on every open faced surface, a creaky overhead fan that threatens quick doom and decapitation in an instance, enough mosquitoes to start the next malaria outbreak, and an entire army of ants streaming menacingly across the common aisle to the ant trap that had lain forgotten for months until now, when a stumbling scout chanced upon it and called upon his brethren to retrieve this trojan horse.

His nose has just started running due to the dust and coupled with the moisture supplied by the ample greenery, his footrot has returned. He cannot wait to leave this place, even if the next destination in his course is on another continent. Bittersweet Symphonies.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Stoner

The Duff stayed up all night last night, working through his homework at his usual snail's pace. By the time he had finished, it was already 4am, and he thought he might as well not sleep. He did afterall sleep through the entire weekend, almost. 80% of it at least.

So his new daily timeline is something like this. He gets up around 7.45, rushes through his things and sets off for school by 8, and arrives in class in the nick of time at 8.05am. He has a high paced, power packed schedule until 5pm, with an hour's break inbetween for lunch and a short chat with his colleagues over his Nescafe 3-in-1 Intense coffee, which gives him the boost for the last 4 hours.

However, he finds that no matter what, he will stay up late each night as he surfs/ 'studies'/ chats/ suppers until 3 or 4am. Then the cycle starts again. That's why he manages to sleep so much on the weekends, as he replenishes the week's store of required sleep. In a way, he's rather prepared for the eventual work schedule of his job, flying to different timezones and having his biological clock rewound to that of one of Saturn's moons.


Anyway, due to all these factors, he sleeps quite a bit in class, especially when the teacher doesn't engage his brain in any activity other than rote learning. Whenever he doesn't need to think or visualise, his brain switches off, and his eyelids switch on their electromagnets. His classmates all jerk him around because of this, and try as he might, he always falls back into the same habit.

And as he daydreams sometimes to keep himself awake, he constantly brings himself back to his days in the university, where the same old habits had existed. Even in junior college, this pattern had emerged, albeit to a lesser degree.

Truth is, most teachers suck, and The Duff is a horrible student. These 2 factors make for horrible learning, and studying worse so. Therefore, he is challenging himself to sleep early for this week. Its a short one, just 3 nights, of early sleep. Nothing past 1am.

Small steps. To a large goal.