one of the many reasons why i hate adulthood is the introduction to a whole myriad of problems: bills, taxes, general illness, downloading laws, work problems, relationships, the uncertainty of the future, etc. to think that when i was eight years of age, the main concern i had in life was whether there would be anymore episodes of Sonic the Hedgehog on air during the evenings. that and my Chinese spelling test. once you cross the big 2-1 however, for a moment, it seems that a set of problems has been washed away. little did you know that by washing them away, you have done nothing more than make the problems much clearer in sight. one of these problems, irritatingly, is sleep.

now, i have never had problems with sleep during the pre-adulthood days. most of the time, once the head meets the pillow, all i had to do was think of blackness and the next moment i opened my eyes, i would be greeted by a great burst of sunshine and God's General Soundtrack of life during the morning. there was a period of time when i would wake up, only to be greeted by a great burst of the father's groin rather than a healthy dose of vitamin D. let's just say that it was a matter of bed level and the father's need for discipline in his children to wake up before eight am.

i generally require only three to four hours of sleep to function on a daily basis. three to four hours with a lot of coffee and cigarette breaks in between to function on a 'safe-enough-to-not-inject-the-wrong-drug' basis, that is. this happens mostly when i'm doing the afternoon shift the previous day, go drinking with Pangkeng after work, get home by midnight, wash up and check my mail and fall asleep by one am; only to have to get up at five am to do the morning shift again. surprisingly, i still have enough energy left behind for a gym session after work.

on average days though, the body wakes up only under one of two requirements:
- it is eight am (give and take five minutes)
- it has already slept a maximum of six hours (give and take five minutes)

you see, six hours is the maximum that my body can tolerate in terms of sleep. and i'm not kidding you when i tell you that the sleep regulation system that runs in my head can be quite the stingy bitch. any more than six hours, and the body would start tossing and turning about. the body would start feeling the humidity of the morning heat. the noisy jingle-jangle of the parent's keys when they leave for work in the morning. that's what my body usually does to kick me out of bed. well... i mean, it's either that or visuals of the 'great burst of the father's groin'.

between those, i would gladly pick the former, thank you.


have you ever been ill to the point of being bed-ridden?

bed-ridden is one of those words that i learned during Primary school and if you ask me, it's a truly depressing word for a kid under the age of ten. for some reason, i always associate 'bed-ridden' with a deeply-ingrained image of Miss Havisham. i'm thinking it's those PETS worksheets that us Singaporean kids used to tackle during the primary school days. one of the comprehension passages was an excerpt taken from Great Expectations. i'm unsure as to which particular passage it was because it's all so long ago and i've burned and buried most of my childhood together with all the bad memories. the only thing that i'm sure of is that at that moment when i read that excerpt, it left a very deep impression upon me.

the clocks in Satis House all stopped at twenty minutes to nine.
Miss Havisham dressed in a bridal gown.
skin that had not seen the sun in years.

i found myself thinking the same thing when i was down with the tonsillitis the previous few days. i hated the bright sunny mornings so much that i left the curtains permanently down. i kept myself huddled underneath the blankets because i couldn't stop shivering. plus it felt good. my usual habits of smoking, blogging, gymming, writing, creative thinking, wanking, thinking dirty thoughts, were basically the last things on my mind. yeah, i pretty much laid in bed the whole day with absolutely zero motivation for life. it was an awful feeling. if memory serve me right, there was actually one day when i only spent up to two hours our of bed. i tried sitting out of bed read a novel, but ended up falling asleep in the chair. i thought to myself, 'Ahh.... fuck it. since i'm already so well-adapted to sleeping, might as well do it in the bed, no?'

before i knew it, i was fast asleep again. it was during that bout of sleeping and resting though, that i've discovered a good bunch of colleagues who actually gave a damn about my existence at work. kegal laughs sent an SMS in her meena-flavored English after she heard about my 'thOng-cilitis'. according to her, 'that's badd mann'. what can i say? i like a girl who knows her Sean Paul. there's also 'the blurness' who actually gave me a call and entertained me for four minutes with her whiney sing-song voice. they say that she has a crush on me when i'm just there to free-load on her Marks & Spencer Aloe Vera Moisturizer. there's also my smoking buddy whom i have never mentioned in the blogs before. she's tall, she has big boobs and she has the biggest-sized ass that God could have ever placed on a 1.72m tall woman. she sent her regards. my beautiful preceptee. Pangkeng.

these are the people that kicked my ass out of bed. and i'm thankful that they did.
you guys might never get to read this. but really, all of you guys... for lack of a better word...
kick ass!

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