yyjolene

http://yyjolene.wordpress.com 

see ya! 

 going by the melody the band is playing downstairs, i reckon the deceased is a female. a mother. (it's playing shi shang zhi you ma ma hao btw). sighh. it's the first time there are THREE funerals happening simultaneously at the void decks around my block, i'm starting to find the tunes soothing to listen to. i don't get irritated like before. oh, and before these 3, there were 2 more, but they kinda left already. i wonder what's going on. why this time of the year? why FIVE together? :( 

The Uberman sleep schedule is a method of organizing your sleeping time to maximize your REM sleep and minimize your non-REM sleep. The goal of the sleep cycle is that you are actively in REM sleep within a couple of minutes of falling asleep and remain in that state until you awaken. I originally read about the schedule on everything2.

In essence, someone utilizing the Uberman sleep schedule is actively modifying their sleeping habits so that they can immediately jump from waking to a few minutes worth of stage 1 sleep straight to stage 5 REM sleep, as described in this discussion of sleep stages.

It is important to note that there are no studies as to the long-term physical or physiological impact of this sleep cycle. I really don't know if this cycle is causing long-term damage to myself or not, and if this concerns you, I wouldn't attempt the cycle. However, the benefits are fantastic.

The Uberman's Sleep Schedule

Sleeping Hours
The Uberman's sleep schedule revolves around forcing yourself to rely on six twenty to thirty minute naps spread throughout the day for your daily dose of sleep. I stuck to thirty minute naps, currently having them starting roughly at 2 AM, 6 AM, 10 AM, 2 PM, 6 PM, and 10 PM every day.

How & Why It Works
Over the course of a normal eight hour sleeping period, your body moves through a continuous cycle of five distinct sleep stages. Of these, stage 5 REM sleep has been found to be the part of the cycle that provides the benefits of sleep for your mind.

Essentially, the trick of the Uberman's sleep schedule is to trick your mind into entering REM sleep as soon as you drift into a sleeplike state. Unfortunately, the only real way to do this is through sleep deprivation of sorts.

Adjusting To This Schedule
Adjusting to this schedule (as you might imagine) will make you feel like you've put your body and mind through a blender for a few weeks. Here are some general tips for adjusting that I found to be greatly helpful.

• Do the adjustment when you are in complete control of your schedule. I converted to the cycle during a three week vacation; it would have been impossible to get through a normal work day while adjusting to this cycle. I was by and large a zombie.
• Find a large project to work on while adjusting. If you don't keep busy, you will revert to a normal sleep cycle. In my first failed attempt at switching (on vacation more than two years ago), I didn't have an ongoing project to keep me focused.
• Use physiological "tricks" to teach your body the cycle. I found that using a dawn simulation trick worked nicely. Every time I went to lay down, I set my monitor to wait thirty-two minutes, then begin running a program that had a strobe effect along with some excessively loud music. I also used two alarm clocks, and during the day I would adjust my blinds such that the sun would start shining in my face roughly a half an hour later. These would force me to become somewhat conscious for a while, which was all I needed to keep going.
• Days 3 to 10 are the hardest and least productive. I spent the adjustment period working on two projects, one involving programming and another involving writing. At the start of day three, I stored a backup of these projects because I knew that my thought processes were starting to become nonsensical and bizarre. For the next week, I continued to "work" on the projects, but utterly failed to make any sensible progress (interestingly enough, the fiction I wrote in this period was entertaining in a Thomas Pynchon meets The Electric Company kind of way). Don't expect to be hugely useful during the actual forced adjustment to compressed REM sleep.
• Convert to a more nutritious diet. I've found that drinking a great deal of orange and apple juice makes the Uberman schedule easier to follow, as does eating plenty of vegetables and avoiding fatty foods like the plague.

You will discover that after day ten or so, you will automatically begin waking after about thirty minutes. Quite often, I find that when a dream ends, I just awaken automatically. Although I still use an alarm clock, I now do my 10 AM, 2 PM, and sometimes 6 PM naps at work on my breaks without an alarm and have no problem waking up from them, feeling utterly refreshed.

Benefits

The obvious first benefit is more free time. I currently clock in between two hours and fifty minutes and three hours and ten minutes of sleep per twenty four hour period. Compared to my previous sleep cycles (roughly nine hours a night), I have an incredible amount of time to do things that I wished I had time to do before I switched.

Although the first benefit is pretty much the only reason you need, I also found that switching to this cycle makes me feel generally healthier. As I noted, I started off this "experiment" by switching to a more healthy diet rich in fruits and vegetables. After my body finally adjusted to the quick batches of REM (about day eight or nine), I began to feel truly GREAT! I actually feel more energetic at this point than I did before this started.

Drawbacks

One drawback is that I hit a wall if I stay up for more than about five hours without a twenty to thirty minute nap. My concentration and energy seem to vanish in a matter of minutes and I absolutely have to go take a nap. This can create some problems in social situations, but one can somewhat shuffle the naps around to adjust for this.

Another drawback is that my appetite is substantially larger and I will often crave strange things that I don't recall craving in the past. One great example of this is grape juice; I now drink this regularly, but before I switched I don't recall ever wanting it. My speculation is that my body isn't producing enough of some chemical that it would normally produce in stages 3 and 4 deep sleep.

Other Effects

One particularly noteworthy effect (I consider it a benefit, but others might consider it a drawback) is that all of my dreams are very intense and I find myself remembering them as well, down to minute details. Personally, I don't have any difficulties handling the imagery that my dreams produce, but many people have difficulties with their dreams in a normal sleep schedule - if that is the case, Uberman is simply not for you.

Conclusion

Uberman's sleep schedule is a potentially dangerous way to increase your waking hours. Although I found success with it to this point, there still may be physical and psychological dangers that I have not yet met, and there may be grave difficulties for others attempting the cycle.

kanye west, kanye west. *shakes head. poor guy. what he did at the VMAs will probably be remembered by all for(ever) a long long time. what possessed him to jump on stage and spill those words? rashness? loyalty? or maybe, he was drunk. blame it on the ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-alcohol, blame it on the ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-alocohol. ;)  poor guy. he'll probably be remembered for this like how justin timberlake will be remembered for for the superbowl incident. now, there's even a facebook quiz poking fun at him. "where will kanye interrupt you?". hahaha. netizens nowadays. *shakes head again. but really, what made him do that??? 

my arm near the wrist looks like a sweet potato now. the purple kind. for the past 2 days, the cold hot pack my dad bought has been my trusty companion, relieving the throbbing pain when it gets a little unbearable. the pack is so cool!!! haha, it's my first time using such a thing. it's filled with liquid, but when you touch the little metal disc in it, it crystallizes really quickly to form a thicker, gel-like substance that radiates heat. exothermic reaction!!! hahah. after the gel cools, it solidifies. and it can be recharged! simply wrap in a towel and boil it for approx 15-20 min. then ta-da! it converts back to the liquid form again. i quick google reveals: 

They are filled with a super-saturated solution of sodium acetate trihydrate and water. The solution can remain undisturbed at room temperature. When you hit the metal disk, you create a small area of crystallization. Once the reaction starts, crystals rapidly grow around the area, which is why the bag becomes solid. The crystallization process also lowers the energy of the system, which releases heat.
Heating the bag later, causes the crystals to melt, and then to re-dissolve in water. Once the bag cools, the solution becomes super-saturated. This readies the warming bag for the next use.

i've been bringing it around and boy, is it useful when it gets too cold. =)

there's a heart-shaped clearing in the foliage of the tree outside. the love-shaped hole is right outside my window. how nice.=) too bad it's too dark outside for a picture. 

 you know, i thought i wouldn't miss HC. not the least bit. in fact, at some point last year, i really wished time would speed forward so i could get out of the hole i was in. but now, that the last day of term 3 has come and gone, with tm the start of our 1 week study break, i'm beginning to miss having lessons with the class. watching a bit of "Talent" and the class montage video didn't help dilute the nostalgic sentiments. although things were awkward at times, class time were the best. i wouldn't say the same for other parts of school life though. oh gosh. should i go for the pseudo-pe session tmr? sometimes, my actions really contradict my words. but i'm afraid if i were to stay, i would find it hard to leave, and that it would affect my mood to revise after that. but if i dont, i might just regret it afterwards... what should i do??? i've got the hours in the morning to consider.  

miss lin showed the remaining parts of the movie during what was left of GP lesson yesterday. i can't belive a 1 hour 40plus min movie took one whole school year to watch. just like the title, the show is beautiful. "An unforgettable fable that proves love, family and imagination conquer all." how apt. oh, a quick google revealed that the son- Joshua, whose expression when he saw the tank was priceless- was born in 1992. which means he is just one year younger than me! he was (and perhaps, still is) so adorable. 

 my mum said something to me which was very thought provoking. i mentioned to her how some friends and i seem to have drifted apart and that i wonder if we will still remain as friends after some more years. she told me that sometimes, we have to let go and allow others to do what they want, even if it means drifting apart from old friends. we should just let them know that we'll be there for them when they need us, and not cling on to old memories and feel upset when they neglect us.  it takes a lot of fate(yuan fen) for two people to remain as friends for a long long time, so we have to cherish those people and not take them for granted. like how she has a friend who shared the same class as her from pri sch all the way up to sec sch. that friend of hers is now a family friend and they meet up often, for coffee sessions and special occasions. 

i think my mum is really wise. i hope that i can be just as experienced as her when i reach her age, or better, earlier. =) 

I'm so tired of being here 
Suppressed by all my childish fears 
And if you have to leave 
I wish that you would just leave 
'Cause your presence still lingers here 
And it won't leave me alone 

These wounds won't seem to heal 
This pain is just too real 
There's just too much that time cannot erase 

When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears 
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears 
And I held your hand through all of these years 
But you still have 
All of me 

You used to captivate me 
By your resonating life 
Now I'm bound by the life you've left behind 
Your face it haunts 
My once pleasant dreams 
Your voice it chased away 
All the sanity in me 

I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone 
But though you're still with me 
I've been alone all along 

the haze is back! as a result of the smoky smell that hangs so stubbornly in the air, i have been feeling super uncomfortable and very restless all day.  i've been trying to sit still while praticing math in my un-air-conditioned room, but ended up walking all around the house, and taking a walk downstairs. there is this rule in my house: no turning on the air-conditioner before the sun sets. part of the grand scheme of saving the earth ( and money from electrcity + water bills). oh, which brings me to this. my mum's friends can't believe how little we spend on such bills. like, although we live in a technically speaking 8-room flat (uhm, 2 four-room knocked into 1) our bills amount to less than a four-room flat. hahaha. it's not like we scrimp like siao or use candles at night, but somehow, we use relatively little energy. 

ok, back to the topic. so, as a result of me walking about, i realised some things.

Number 1: the MOE is really bent on turning us into super-knowledge-bins by the time we graduate. Why? i went into my brother's room, saw his bio notes lying on the table and flipped through them. my eyes then widened with horror when i saw (super) familiar diagrams in his notes. they are learning cell membrane, cell structures, enzymes, respiration etc etc etc at our level!! i remembered how much i learnt for these topics for O levels, and boy, they are learning so much more. i think they are almost at our standard for these common topics. SCARY. what are they going to learn when they reach JC then? our uni stuff??? 

Number 2: i discovered how much i hate cooking fried rice. there was leftover rice in the fridge, so my mum called back to remind me to make that into friend rice for whoever's at home. (read: the brother and i) and it turned out to be really awful. not that my cooking skills suck. but cus we eat brown rice mixed with white grains at home plus the fact that i really cannot bring myself to add too much oil when cooking. for those who cook, you should already have an idea how my lunch turned out to be. the rice stuck to the pan, the brown layer of the brown rice came off and everything was mushed up. gross. 

And now for Number 3: it's utterly random, but i came to find out that there is a newly opened tu tu kueh stall at the coffe shop near my place!! hehe. i love tu tu kueh, but only the coconut ones. so i got myself a box of 5. muching on it now, as i type. yumm. i like to watch how the kueh is made- flour first, scrape the centre off a little, pile coconut in the dent at the centre, scoup more flour and cover it up, flattening the bottom. then, place a white square piece of cloth over it and place it on the steamer. it looked so fun. =) 

back to work soon! 

sitting here, silently, i would make a portrait of peace
except that my mind's overwhelmed with you. 
you, you, you.
i sift though the countless pictures 
of our very limited time spent 
till they are wrinkled and in a mess, in a mess.
how do you organise a head?
but yet, i remain dumbfounded, in a complete loss-
what are we, who are you and what am i doing?
it all seems so pointless, but yet, this thought keeps me going
at least, for now. 
perhaps, i will stop. perhaps i might crash. or it could turn out to be nothing but a passing phase
maybe not. 
and while i try to navigate around this room stuffed to the brim with your presence,
i'll continue to exude the aura of peace,
the calm before the storm.



 

 it just dawned upon me that i'm really quite childish, when all the while, i've been thinking i'm not. is this just thinking on my part or am i just relatively more childish than that someone? i wonder. 

someone, help. i'm so hooked on to lambert's voice, i hear him in my head everywhere i go. just when i thought i've forgotten, it comes back again. ahhhh. it's like the repeat button is stuck, i keep hearing him over and over and over again. =( it's not exactly unpleasant, but in such large doses, i can't function properly!!! ARGH.  

Mad World
By Gary Jules, Adam Lambert <3
Watch: The Kiwi Bird on Youtube

All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for the daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere

Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I wanna drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow

And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it’s a very, very
Mad world, mad world

Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy birthday, happy birthday
And I feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen

Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher tell me, what’s my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me

And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it’s a very, very
Mad world, mad world

  

 

hahahah. finally, there's someone i'd use the word "hot" to desbribe. What other adjective could you use on Adam Lambert? (apart from gay.) he looks so good from afar, in casual/styled up hair, lake blue eyes lined in eyeliner and has got  voice to match his super unique stage-personality. plus, it didn't hurt that his style, is one of my fave genre of music. (rock, the other being jazz).
i said afar, cus when the camera panns in, you start to notice his less-than perfect chubby chin and (gasps!) not so elegant crowfeet. oh, and he doesn't deny that he mght be bisexual. BUT, all those imperfections is what makes him so accessible, despite his rock star image. i'll definitely get his album, the second idol since kelly clarkson that i'm actually looking forward to. during the competition, i thought for sure, like many others, that Lambert was going to win, hands down. no doubt about it. and boy, was i shocked by Allen's win. like WHAT?!?! but then, on second thoughts, perhaps this is the best outcome for both. Lambert's so unique, it'd be hard for him to not be famous. so, it's good that Allen won. at least he'll get the attention Lambert gets. =)

Jolene just won herself a watch and an indie album today. =) while on her way home. feel free to ask her the details. =)))

i just realised, when i'm in pain, i dont scream/shriek like most girls. i exclaim. hahahah, like shout/ make a loud noise. ok, it's 0530h. just woke up in pain, after i accidentally hit my head against the wall lightly when i turned. BUT, because there's a huge bruise on my head, i jolted awake in pain. it's still sore now, even after placing ice on it. damn. today, will be my first day of school. sighhhhhh. i really can't let anything like what happened in the past week and a half happen to me anymore. appendicitis followed by a near concussion. seriously. i'm unbelievably down on my luck.

after knocking my head and knocking myself out as a result, (hah. snorts) my mummy made me bathe in pomelo leaves soaked in water. for luck-turning i guess. hahaha. my parents are usually not the superstitious kind, but everytime when i hurt myself in the uncommon ways, they'll get worried and do stuff they dont usually do. =) i remember in primary school, when i got mumps, they bought some blue powder from the medical hall, mixed it in white vinegar and wrote the chinese character "hu" on my mumps with a calligraphy brush. according to my neighbour, the tiger will eat up the pig which is the mumps/swelling lahh. hahahhaha, cute right! i ws laughing when my dad wrote it on my cheek. it was so funny yet heart-warming.

i got to pack my room soon. it's in a mess after the blocks-prep. graaaaaahhhhhhh. have to take bio soon, and i'm expecting econs too. i forgot my bio already!! boohoo, it was my 2nd subject i studied for, after math. damndamndamn.

there's smth really wrong with me and i think the root cause of it is not being able to take blocks. i dont know how to describe this feeling. it's like slogging so hard and anticipating like crazy for smth that doesnt come and hence, doesnt go. ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!
there's like a whole lump of crap stuck in my system and i need to pass it out. it was supposed to be vomitted out last week, but NO! now, i think i'm suffocating. and there's still more chem to cram in. i dont think i can hold all these in much longer. it wont be a pretty sight when it comes flooding out. BLEH.

instead of doing my exams, the past week was spent at home and in the hospital. 2 days of fever before my doctor realised it was appendicitis. it was a wonder to him and me that it ddn't hurt. spent one day under observation (waiting for a vacant surgery slot), half day being sick to the stomach with nervousness and the other half semi-conscious. finally, i'm out. didn't really manage to revise during this time and boy am i worried i'll forget the stuff i've studied over the month-long holiday.