Sleeping few more minutes can save money

Alarm was never successful. The meager success it has is only in disturbing sleep. My experiments with the alarm on relationship between its distance from bed and its awakening strength have not yielded conclusive evidence of any relation. No correlation, certainly no causation.

The distances ranged from inches besides the pillow to several feet away. The only effect the distance has is the amount of time you are awake before sleeping again. This wakeful time ranges from few micro seconds to nearly a half minute of awareness of surroundings. When the alarm is just besides is the best, at least there is an excuse that it is too close to wake you up. The worst is when the alarm is kept at some walking distance. The action in this case is multi step. It involves walking towards the alarm driven by some unknown force and stopping it. The next step is to stand firm, half open the eyes, make a convenient note that it is still not morning, stare at the alarm, look around, cook up a few reasons why it is not bad to sleep five more minutes. Then set the alarm again and keep it besides the pillow. Yup, that’s right. True, a dreamer is an optimist. Believes in alarm again to wake you up five minutes later. And equally true, optimist never learns. Ends up waking half an hour later if it is a working day. Two hours, if it is a holiday.

Experiments are still continuing. These are only initial findings. Should publish results after more experiments.

One of the most startling observation from a recent experiment is some thing different. That the intervention of variable called strong reason to wake up is not enough to make the alarm wake you up.

4.45 AM 28th Jan 2006, Saturday. Alarm ringing. Previous night's late night movie is still unreeling. Hand goes involuntarily to the alarm. Bang the idiot. It is too soon, I know my watch runs 2 minutes fast. Few more minutes, nothing will be lost. Snooze.

Wake up again, this time voluntarily. 5.15 AM. Shit. What now? No problem. Just run. 15 min flat, ready to hit the road. 5.35 waiting at a junction for auto rick. Approaching light of an auto from far. Bad luck, it is occupied. Two more such autos. Observation from these three instances show that, in need the rick sound reaches you before light from the auto does. 5.40 still waiting. Finally there is a savior, 5.43, inside an auto, running full throttle. 6.00 AM Get down the auto and start running. Rush thru the under pass to reach a distant platform. Helplessly watch the last coach just passing. Sob. Chennai Shatabdi leaves Bangalore by 6 AM. It left at 6.02 AM. Feel like kicking self. Look back for reasons. Make some mental notes of Dos and Don'ts in these scenarios. BTW, waking up to alarm is not one of them :). I still think it is bad luck that I didn’t get an auto few minutes ahead. Surely I could have got in to the train if I got up at 4.45. But that is not the real reason for my missing train after all.

Any way, I have to go to Chennai. There you go, LalBagh Exp is at 6.30 AM. Several things can be done in 30 minutes. But, I can bet, buying ticket at Bangalore City railway station is not one of them. Some ingenuity there. In the same 30 min, I could cancel Shatabdi ticket and buy one for LalBagh. Cool. I save money for doing this too. Confirming the hypothesis, sleeping few-more-minutes can save you money! Some additional benefit. Get some exercise too, for running on the platforms and for standing 4 hours in the general compartment of LalBagh.

Competitive wealth

How much is enough? It is said that if one has just enough cash to survive and a little more left to have fun, then one should consider himself lucky and stop complaining. But who will pay for my luxuries? Who will cushion me against future shocks?

How will I feel good when I am not passionate about my work? I need at least some wicked satisfaction that I am higher in the pecking order by the money I make. Or to be exact my credit worthiness- How much will a bank bet on me if I go searching for a loan now. This is competitive wealth. What is important is not how much one needs/has but how one earns compared to others. Ostentatiousness commands respect. This race is for winning easy esteem. But the real excitement is playing the game. Ask any researcher.


Now what is competitive poverty?!! Yeh, there is competition to be poor too. Remember seeing college kids humiliating themselves by staking how poor they were in childhood? This really is an exercise of stressing superior cleverness. To show that, one has landed up at that place in spite of minimal social/financial help compared to compatriots; possibly because of one's brain power.

Chimps and humans

Its official. It seems, scientists have conclusively proved that Chimps are closer to humans than to any other apes. There is suggestion that the genus Homo should include Chimps from now on. Apparently, "In terms of life on earth, chimps and humans are really not that different to each other".
Jared Diamond has called humans the 'third chimpanzees'. The second being the promiscuous bonobo.
Doesn’t that explain our shamelessness?
Missing link in the evolution can be found every time you see the laloos and the deva gowdas. The purpose of their existence -ape the chimps and provide humor. The next research problem for the scientists is to find whether these dhoti clad folks are closer to humans or to the Chimps.