The jet lag route to heaven

When I landed here in Seattle, a few months back - I was sleeping at 4pm and getting up at 1am. Weird but that's extreme jetlag for you. IST is 12.5 hrs ahead of Seattle (that's without day light savings ofcourse), so all hell broke loose when I landed in Seattle after a weary, gruelling 26.5 hrs of journey time(Hyderabad - Frankfurt - Portland - Seattle). But in a way it was good, because it was an opportunity to experience the freshness of early mornings. Unfortunately it didn't last long, soon I was back to sleeping at 4 am. My friend commented on how I was sleeping IST in seattle - that's not exactly true but, yeah(btw, in that vein I used to sleep East US time in India).
The point I am getting to is, for people who are on the border line as I sometimes get to - sleeping at 6 am - 8 am and getting up at 2 pm in the afternoon, there's 'another' way to get back to normal sleeping times, by normal I mean sleeping around 9 - 11 pm. Just extend the jet-lag principle, you are halfway into it anyway.
This for example is an excerpt from my sleeping routine some time back:
Day...Sleeping time
1 .....4 am
2......5 am
3......7 am (when you are used to sleeping at 4 am, so far is manageable. The pain starts from the next entry)
4.....8:30 am
5.....10 am
6.....2 pm (This was a little too much for me, but keeping the end result in mind, I endured)
7....4 pm (Note, I have reached the time stamp I was sleeping at when I landed in Seattle, from now on is familiar territory!)
8... 5 pm (End in sight, keep it going)
9... 6:30 pm (Going good, a few more days before I stabilize)
10... 7 pm
11... 7:30 pm
12... 9 pm
13... 9 pm
14... 8 pm
15.. 9:30 pm (More or less stabilized)

So it took me around 13 days to stabilize to 'normal' sleeping time. That's ridiculous you say, not to mention the pain of staying awake for an extra hour or two or more every day so that you can go down the time line. Well, the point is, it works and I have tried it out both during the recent winter break and during the last quarter loaded with assignments and quizzes. Besides, it was only day 4 - day 7 that seemed really tough for me, days 1 - 3 and days 8 - 13 was familiar turf. This method is more suited for people who have 'real' flexibility in working hours and other committments; if it were not to be so, this wouldn't apply to you anyway since you would more or less be having a set routine. Having said that, you need to be more or less desparate to take this route, having given up on all other methods.

So how do I come about sleeping at 4 am anyway. Well, I have always been good at procrastinating things and so if I have a deadline tomorrow, say in documenting some work, I don't start still late into the night at 11pm. So that I sleep at 6 am the next day. Now, keep repeating this 6 am thing and you would soon stabilize at 4am, when I say stabilize, it means the body is ok with sleeping at 4 am but it's not a 'great' feeling getting up at 11 am.

On the other hand, sleeping at 10 pm and getting up at 5 am is actually heaven, especially if you were to go out early in the morning for a jaunt or run. Even if you don't that's fine, I am sure you would have a window or two to open up. The freshness of air, the cool breeze and a more or less heightened state of awareness resulting in better functioning of body and mind are a few things that make it worth your while if you were to sleep early and wake up early.

A few things.....

Actually a lot of things have happened since monday, i.e. about 5 days back. I would report briefly on those 'things' below...

Silent Movies: I had my first experience of watching silent movies at 30,000 ft asl. I mean, I never realised how predictable a storyline could be until Lufthansa dished out them movies 'muted'.

Erratic sleeping: I have slept at real vague times..you know night outs or all nighters..6 am, 10 am and maybe even 9 pm the next day..But how about 5 pm or 7 pm...I don't remember doing that in the past decade..And getting up at 1 am..What do you do when you fall into such situation..Like if it were 4:30 am , I might have thought about umm..uh..umm..the american slang or umm..you know..umm the way I need to speak out here to be heard..But yeah, so, ok what does one do when one gets up at 1 am and try as hard you can't sleep 'cause you have slept already for 8 hrs?
Well, Seattle isn't an easy place to get around atleast for an incoming grad like me, so what you do is look at the maps..yeah simple..you have the university map, you have the north seattle, east, west..and you have the metro bus map..So yeah that took up some of my time..But then I kept looking at my watch and finally I couldn't take it any more..So at 3 am I took off for a jaunt out..walking..without much winter wear..must have been 5-8 degrees or 45 F...But I guess it was worth the view of the union lake and the boats in glistening night lights right beside the place I am put up right now.


Running:
So after that sleeping thing and the walking thing on wednesday morning, I went out for the running thing...in the rain...but it was fun and I got to know the neighbourhood a little better... and yeah I had my first experience of a frost bite..unmistakable..despite the winter gear I had..A good 25 minutes..must say seattle has quite a few hills and big ones at that...
I ran today morning too, but it wasn't good probably because I slept through my dinner yesterday night..


Culture shock:
You come out of the Sea-Tac airport and what do you see? .............................................................Yeah open space. I mean the population of Seattle is 500,000 and washington state 5.85 million and how do you compare that with back in India..Well, Chennai is 6.5 million thereabouts...so there you go..a mere 20 square mile city having a population equivalent to a 300 square mile state...But I am beginning to take in the beauty of the emerald city.

Every one's got a car..I knew that before I came here, ofcourse, but it didn't hit me till I saw them here..And the car-pool lane is empty!! I mean you would think, with the heavy traffic during peak hours, people would switch to car-pool big time..Well that's not the case..So yeah people here are pretty individualistic..I am not saying that's bad..but I am not saying that's good either..

Standard..Things are pretty much standard..no chaos..that's good, well planned cities..great!!! But the same deodorant odour from pretty much every one you pass by..? and the same smell from any restaurant round the corner..?
But there is diversity in the uwash district with lots of people in from different countries like china, vietnam, etc and yeah the multitude of restaurants representing different countries on the university ave..

Food: It wasn't a struggle from day one, thanks to my good-natured host, who did a good job keeping me well fed. But I brought out my latent cooking skills to the fore by preparing a mixed vegetable noodles for breakfast today..And that was pretty much the same thing I had at Mangolia for lunch..pretty cheap and you can take home what you didn't eat..which was about 75% of what I had filled up my bowl with..So tomorrow's lunch is well taken care off..

Cycling:
I realised after two days of walking to and fro from the house to the university, that transportation of some form is indispensible with. And since Seattle is biker and walker friendly( the other day I was standing at an intersection without a signal..and I was about to cross the road but I cross checked the map to see if I was headed in the right direction and this car a few feet away starts honking..I don't understand what's going on..I was not blocking the way..the woman in the car frantically signalled me to get across..back in India that's unheard of..so yeah pretty walker friendly), I thought it better to get the bike..since I am psychologically not ok with walking long distance, though ironically, that's not the case with running. The search for a good and cheap road bike wasn't easy..I checked out 'recyled cycles' a couple of times, but they said that the second hand bikes come in and are bought out pretty soon..Since I didn't have the time to wait there all day, I checked out 'Performance bikes', a neat store and they were having 'sales' so I opted for the 'Schwinn Fast-Back Sport 2006', a sleek, sexy red and black bike for about 450 $, a savings of 150$. Pretty costly, but a pretty good bike too. I had problems with the gear shifts initially, but then a couple of test rides and I was doing fine.

The Indian community: Probably not that big in the university here, there's not a single prof or student in my department here! But I met up with a few people here and that's enough for me..I would definitely look at getting some friends who come from across the globe including america though.

Sleep Running

Somnambulism - Walking while you are sleeping a.k.a sleep walking

What is sleep running? My definition : Falling asleep while you are running.

In both cases, you won't know that you are doing two things simultaneously, only the order of sleeping is different.
So when do people sleep run? Most of the guys who 'sleep run' are people who are sleep deprived. One famous example is that of the ultra-runner, Dean Karnazes(author of the book - UltraMarathonMan), who works by the day and runs by the night and sometimes manages only 2 hrs of sleep. So it isn't unusual for Dean to suddenly wake up and narrowly avoid colliding with an approaching car.
I had my first experience of sleep-running yesterday. I had slept for less than 12 hrs, the previous 3 days and only 1.5 hrs the day before yesterday. The irony here is that, try as I might, I was simply unable to catch up on lost sleep yesterday afternoon. So as the clock ticked 5, I got out of my weary, pathetic state and headed out to the stadium. I normally warmup by stretching a bit before running. But as I started my warmup, my eyelids were shutting down and I was practically standing there in a trance, not knowing what to do for atleast a minute. I decided to pack the warmup and do some jogging/running /whatever I could manage. Now, I might have been an unusual sight to the fellow runners in the stadium, but for atleast 3 laps(1.2km), my eyelids were open ever so slightly , just to avoid colliding with anyone and I think I was kind of meandering on the track, but I couldn't help it. After the third lap, I felt a bit fresh(refreshed from this kutty nap) and I ran strongly with my eyes wide open for another 4 rounds before calling it a day!