Give me sleep or give me - more sleep

I have always needed rather a lot of sleep. It is very aggravating for someone like me to need as much sleep as I seem to need to function even moderately effectively. There are all these things that I want to do ... but, like a child, I have to go to bed by a certain time most nights otherwise the following day is as unproductive as one of my best exam-study-period procrastination days.

I have a theory for why I need so much sleep (I have theories for most things). Generally, I'm aware that many of my theories are pretty crack-pot, but it's always gratifying to discover that someone else comes up with pretty crack-pot theories, remarkably like your own, without the remotest possibility that they would have ever had the distinct displeasure of meeting you.

My crack-pot theory about sleep is that my childhood sleep patterns are so finely ingrained, and so perfectly suited to the sometimes adult me that they keep bludgeoning into my everyday life, demanding I take a midday nap and go to bed around 10 and definitely no later than midnight on a school night.

An Aside: The repetition of 'crack-pot' is making me wonder why this term is used. So I looked it up in my dead-tree etymology book. Unfortunately, my dead-tree book is too concise and does not include an entry for crack-pot. If you google / wikipedia / doc-dictionary it, you might come up with something. My theory - yes, another one - is that the word is intimately connected with its imagery. This theory is just like a cracked pot: absolutely full of holes. But, like a well-worn, well loved pot, we can't help but bear an affection for it, can we? Maybe I should start calling it the ostraka theory?

Well, this crack-pot theory from the erudite bowels of the International Herald Tribune goes along the lines that there is such as thing as: "sleep's older primal pattern trying to reassert itself."

Admittedly, Professor A. Roger Ekirch, (who is a professor of history at Virginia Tech and the author of At Day's Close: Night in Times Past) is actually referring to an unusual interrupted pattern of night-time sleeping that seems remarkably civilised to me.

"... pre-industrial families commonly experienced a "broken" pattern of sleep, though few regarded it in a pejorative light. Until the modern age, most households had two distinct intervals of slumber, known as "first" and "second" sleep, bridged by an hour or more of quiet wakefulness. Usually, people would retire between 9 and 10 o'clock only to stir past midnight to smoke a pipe, brew a tub of ale or even converse with a neighbor."

How delightful is this sleep pattern? I could come home from work, eat & clean up, sleep my first sleep, spend an hour or so of the wee hours doing all kinds of auto-didact, polymathic things and then return for 'Sleep mark II'. Lo, I would wake up refreshed for an incredibly productive day at work where I would only have to work about 5 hours in the morning, have a delicious repaste for my midday nutrition, nap for a little bit and then work for another 5 hours or so. Perhaps I shall suggest this to my workplace who are so beholden to the notion of 'flexible work practices'. That's pretty flexible, wouldn't you say?

When I was in Viet Nam and with my father's family at que nha*, we slept with the tides. In the late afternoon, after another meal of rice, prawns and fish, most of the men and the guests would dangle around in hammocks until it was time to haul in more fish. I wondered then whether my sleep desires resulted from some kind of ingrained fishing tide pattern, part and parcel of my parent's genes (my mother's family were also fisher-folk). I just like that my obsessive need for sleep relates to some primeval and archetypal force - not that I am overworked, underexercised or just plain lazy.

* I'm going to post about this phrase really soon. But as a stop gap: it means 'ancestral rural home'. *

Ha Long Bay

The sky, a deep blue sea

A golden boat,

wind-driven, lists and tilts -

unmoored, it sinks.

And coldly, time flows on.

~ Tran Gia Thoai

A poem actually about a falling leaf, but I hijack it here to capture the ephemeral beauty of visiting Ha Long Bay. These pictures don't really do Ha Long any justice.

We were so lucky - it was just my sisters and I (and our tour guide and the boat crew) on our Halong boat. Such a delight to have the entire boat to ourselves, and hence, the entire Bay too. Miles, acres, gallons of water and grey overcast sky were ours alone to meditate on and enjoy. It was the most thoroughly peaceful experience, siting at the end of the boat and just widely arcing the bay, watching the sea eagles dip and soar overhead, and marvelling at the limestone cliffs in all directions.


I loved the looming limestone cliffs, wild and untrammelled by tourists' feet, who must admire from afar. I took these because I hope to head back one day and explore the cliffs more intimately and directly - to climb all over them with the backdrop of the deep blue-green sea and the overwhelming serenity of the place.



I watched this woman and her child - or grandchild - row almost a kilometre at a measured pace. I could not help but covet the peacefulness of the journey, although I do not actually know for what reason they were rowing.

The child looks to me like he is being berated, head hung in shame.


I wish to live in this house - I came home and told my partner we were moving to Ha Long.

I am sure that there will be satellite facilities and my workplace will be more than happy to accomodate me working from home, from the China Sea. And then I wake up from my dream. I am not a very strong swimmer, and nor is my partner, and living in one of these houses is clearly asking for trouble!

But still, I have long dreamed of my own home.

I used to be an insomniac and my trick to get myself to fall asleep was to picture a home; I visualise and decorate it thoroughly. I usually fall asleep by the time I get into the backyard. I still use this trick when I am having trouble sleeping. The house I imagine changes; sometimes I am so familiar with the home that I merely have to start and the rest of it fills itself in for me.

The houses have changed as I and my desires change. When I was in high school and desperately wanted more privacy than my large family could give, I visualised a large warehouse, the edges filled with book-shelves from floor to ceiling (a recurring decoration in all my homes), and my bedroom and bathroom in a loft, in one corner of the high-ceiling warehouse. I don't recall installing a kitchen. Currently, the home I picture is environmentally sound - using it's natural surrounds (it's built on the side of a cliff) for light, heating and cooling. It has solar power, and water tanks. The kitchen is large, full of shelves for my many herbs and spices, and hanging space for my cooking utensils. This is my current phase in life - attempting to live more consciously of my impact on my environment.

Ha Long is a 360 degree experience, inside and out.

Take them off!

This sign made me laugh and laugh and laugh. Lucky for me, I was wearing long trousers so I didn't have to walk into the pagoda pant-less. Nevertheless, many people stood and stared at me laughing at the sign. I was quite a tourist attraction - I'm surprised no one took a photograph of me. No one else laughed. Well, that's not entirely true. When I explained the sign to my sister (whom I've taken to calling the Accountant) what was so hysterically hilarious about the sign, she also joined me in a stomach enhancing chuckle.

I am sure the good folk at One Pillar Pagoda did not intend the meaning I took. But if you are vsiting Ha Noi, heed my advice: don't wear shorts - you may be asked to take them off!



This is not One Pillar Pagoda. One Pillar Pagoda has many many pictures of it, and when I was there it was surrounded by tourists (me & my two sisters being more culprits) and the beauty of the place was lost. This was a pagoda we visited at almost dawn one morning - Chua Tran Quoc. (Chua is the Viet word for pagoda, so this is Tran Quoc pagoda) The pagoda is on the edge of a Ho Tay ( West lake). To maximise the little time we had in Ha Noi, we got up at the wee hours - the first morning to see all the folks doing Tai Chi and other exercises beside Hoan Kiem lake. Our last morning in Ha Noi we rushed out to Ho Tay as my eldest sister (the Vegetarian) wanted to go to a pagoda that she could actually pray at. The Vegetarian prayed while the Accountant and I wandered around the grounds - empty of all people except for a young woman ineffectually sweeping the path.