Morning Walk: A Surprising Blessing

The Morning Walk Miracle: A Personal Journey

I am not a morning person, ok? My favourite when I was younger was to sleep till noon on weekend. I used to be proud of that. I am not that bad now as I changed to biphasic sleep and I always have a thousand and one projects going on so getting up early became a necessity. But my morning starts with checking my email, not walking and all. If you'd told me a few months ago that I'd become one of "those" people, I'd have laughed in your face. But here we are. 

My Forced Start

I started a half an hour walk everyday on doctor's advice as it can help manage blood pressure but I chose lunch time for not morning. Then on my friend's advice, I moved it to morning. I was already getting up early so I was willing to sacrifice my email checking and other projects time for the walk and shift them to lunch time. 

Honestly, I had not expect such a huge difference between lunch time walk and morning walk. It was easy to brush my teeth and get out rather than turn on the computer, but the difference in the feeling, and the outcome in the day, that was remarkable! 

The Quiet Calm

The first thing that struck me was the tranquillity - fewer cars on the road, fewer people around, not much noise from the shops and people, a huge difference that felt very...well, tranquil. Even though I followed the same route, it felt so much different. In a good way. 

Unexpected Benefits

Once I started, it became easier to keep doing it. Rather than it becoming a morning chore it became something I look forward to. It gives my day a great start. I would keep doing it just for the mental clarity. The sense of accomplishment that I get from this is also something I like. I find it easier to focus at work, I am not giving that credit to the morning but, well, I haven't changed anything else. I feel less stressed by getting a few things out of the, the morning walk, followed by pranayam, and then shower. By the time I make breakfast I am feeling like Bond. 

Beauty of Nature

I am lucky that my area is very nice and it is summer. I come across many front gardens, pretty trees and green fields. This will change in winter but there will the fall colours, and other things to enjoy, I am sure. 

Health Perks

I also started to notice some physical benefits. My energy levels are up, and I feel fitter. It was quite a dramatic transformation, that made me feel good about myself. Starting my day with a bit of exercise gives me a smug sense of accomplishment that’s hard to beat. I also noticed that it helped in my stamina for dancing (another story, another time), I don't get tired so easily, my knees don't hurt, and the soles of my feet are not sore. I have not gone for a trip since I started this but I think it will help me wander around a new city as well. 

A Personal Reflection

Although, I myself have hated this advice anytime anyone has suggested it before, still I m daring to give you this advice - try it! 

Give It a Go

I’m not asking you to commit to anything drastic. Just try one. Maybe tomorrow, or the next time you have an hour to spare in the morning, try a small walk - twenty to thirty minutes. Then feel the difference. Who knows, you might want to carry on. 

Why did the Sunny cross the road?

 "Sunny, why do you spend all your money on travelling?"

Ah, that's a good one! I get asked this a lot by my friends, and every time my answer is pretty much the same - because travelling is life, mate! Seriously, think about it. We're here on this planet for, what, eighty-odd years if we're lucky? Why wouldn't you want to see as much of it as possible?

The Thrill of the Unknown

Travelling is like being a kid again. Remember the excitement of exploring new places, not knowing what's around the corner? That's what every trip feels like. Whether it's the chaotic streets of Bangkok or the tranquil fjords of Norway, there's always something unexpected waiting to blow you away. And let's be honest, life's too short for boring routine!

It's More Than Just Sightseeing

Sure, ticking off famous landmarks is great, but travelling is more about the experiences. It's about getting lost in a new city, trying food you can't pronounce, and meeting people who show you that there's more than one way to live this life. I mean, I've had my best conversations with strangers in tiny cafés and shared meals with families who didn't speak a word of English. It's those moments that stick with you, not the selfies in front of monuments. Sitting down on the floor in an airport halfway around the world to charge your dying phone is as much of an experience as walking in slush in falling snow in Salzburg to visit a Christmas market. I have done both and look back at them as fond memories. 

Growth and Perspective

Travel has this sneaky way of changing you. You start seeing things differently, appreciating the small stuff. Like, I used to stress over the smallest things, but after you've navigated a foreign country where you can't read the signs or understand the language, everything else seems manageable. Plus, it makes you realise how much we all have in common, no matter where we're from.

Depend on the Kindness of Strangers

A quote I read in a hotel room wall in Vienna has become my favourite travel quote - "Travel is hard; it makes us depend on the kindness of strangers." This is so true! When you're out of your comfort zone, you learn to trust and rely on people more. And you know what? Most of the time, people are genuinely kind and helpful. It's a humbling experience and reminds you that despite all the bad news we hear, there's a lot of good in the world.

Why I Blow My Savings on It

People often say I’m crazy for spending all my savings on travel. But think about it – money can always be earned back. Time? Not so much. When I'm old and grey, I want to look back and remember the adventures, the people, and the places, not the stuff I bought or the bills I paid. Plus, every trip is an investment in myself. It’s like adding layers to who I am, each place, each experience making me a better, more rounded person.

This is Living the Life

I get so many stories from my travels, some good, some of trouble, but all of them dear to me, especially after the fact. Travelling adds a lot more experience to my life than just doing the 9-5 existence. 

The Final Truth

So yeah, that's why I do it. Travelling isn't just a hobby; it's a way of life. It’s challenging, exhilarating, and incredibly rewarding. It's about growing, learning, and embracing the unknown. So next time you see me packing my bags, know that it's because I'm off to find the next great adventure. Life's too short to just live and die in one little corner of the world, I think. What do you think? 

Installing Alexa - Amazon Echo in the bathroom

 This is the problem with serious events of colossal size - it's hard to move on from them. Once I wrote a post on Lata di there was nowhere to go. How could I talk about something trivial after talking about that superhuman human being? But this post will work for that. Lata di may be gone in her physical form but her voice will always be with us as a gift from the universe for ages. 

Here is the project outline. I am a big fan of Amazon Echo aka Alexa. I have several devices of different types and I want to buy a couple more. Two of these devices are close to each other and step on each other's toes when I say "Alexa!" One is an original Echo first gen in black. I bought it on pre-order before it came out. 

It still works perfectly. Too perfectly I would say because I have an echo dot second gen, this one in the kitchen. 

Most of the time when I want to talk to the Echo Dot the bigger Alexa from the living room jumps on that command like a big brother grabbing the younger one's dessert. The reverse also happens but not often, you know how sweet and decent younger brothers are :) (I am the youngest of 4 brothers). 

On the flip side, I don't have any Alexa in the bathroom and I wanted to have music in the bathroom. When I first bought my Samsung Note 20 Ultra, one time I was able to change the song from within the shower with the water running. That was an exciting day! It was also a unique day. It never happened again. Another problem with using the phone for music in the bathroom is that I have to remember to take the phone with me and set up everything beforehand - start Spotify, find my playlist, adjust the volume to the optimum level...you get the picture. I also don't want messages and emails to interrupt my music. 

If I had Alexa in there those things can all be sorted out because: 

1. Alexa has great hearing thanks to its multiple mic's. 

2. It can play music from Amazon Music or Spotify

3. I can adjust the volume at any time even from the shower. 

Then what's the challenge? There are multiple challenges: 

1. Alexa comes with its own power adapter with a 3-pin (in UK) plug on one side and a narrow pin on the other side. No USB of any kind.  

2. There are no plugs in the bathroom for that, for obvious reasons. I do have a socket for the shaver but even that has gone the way of the pharaohs. 

3. Bathroom is often full of humidity and steam and Amazon Echo devices are not waterproof. Why would you want to send your beloved Alexa on a suicide mission? 

In the words of Sheldon Cooper "...you know me to be a very smart man." Here is what I came up with. I bought an adapter cable that goes from USB-A to the thin Alexa pin  it was not very expensive and came the next day. I have a huge repository of power banks of different sizes. Seriously, I don't even know how many I have in total. Definitely more than 10 and maybe even more than 20. These are all collecting dust (I dust them often though.) except when I go out for an overnight trip and pick a couple of them based on "eenie, meenie, miney, mo..." 

Picking up one of the spare power banks of 10000mAh capacity, I plugged it into Echo dot with the new cable. Echo Dot came to life and responded to my commands. 

Then I put them both in a "produce bag" I recently got from a supermarket. It's a mesh bag that would block some humidity but not the sound. The idea was to hang the bag from some place in the bathroom using its cord. It didn't work. You need to keep the Alexa away from the toilet (germs), from the shower (steam, humidity), from the heated towel rack (heat) and once you do all that you run out of options. 

But there is a medicine cabinet, every bathroom has one (usually). I made some space in that and put the bag inside. Magic!

Alexa can hear me every time without fail even from inside the shower with the water running and the cabinet doors closed. The cabinet works like a speaker "cabinet" and adds some "reverb" to the music which is pretty cool. 

I don't know how long the power bank would last with the occasional usage this Alexa would see but I am expecting to change power banks maybe once or twice a week. But even if I have to change a power bank everyday, it's worth it for me. 

Now I can say "Alexa, play Lata Mangeshkar songs!"

What resolution is your life?

I have been fortunate enough to live through a period of world history in which technology has gone from a child's play to science fiction level. I have seen the time when mobile phones didn't use to exist and to now when there is one in everyone's pocket. Every year there there are many new models and they fight over features like dogs over a bone. One feature that is usually hotly contested is the camera. Let's forget about the point what is a camera doing in something called a phone and just talk about the state of the art. 

The most popular part of the camera and its improved features is resolution. A quick sidebar to explain - every digital photo is made up of tiny dots which are called pixels. Resolution is just the notation to show how many of these pixels are there in a photo taken by a particular digital camera (phone camera or DSLR). For example 1920x1080 which is lovingly called Full HD or 1080p means that the photo has 1920 dots widthwise and 1080 dots along the height. The more pixels there are the smoother and "higher definition" the photo will be. 

While this is the most publicised metric in a camera, people argue that that's not the best or only measure of quality. There is camera sensor size, image processing software, the glass (a fancy way of saying lens) and a few other things that contribute to the quality of a photo. But I want to ask what is the "quality" of a photo? 

Exhibit A: look at this photo below. 

This photo was taken in the 1990s before google was a verb and youtube was not even in its mother's womb. The "three moustacheers" in the photo are Harry, Fazil and yours truly. This was a time in our life when we had finished high school (we went to the same school) and were doing college. We were trying to find our place in the world and searching for our guiding star. From this search we used to take time, maybe once or twice a week, to go on an evening walk to this park about 2 miles from our homes. 

Obviously, you can see how "bad" the photo is. It was taken on a film camera, degraded over time and then scanned into the computer. [Kudos to my nephew Sagar for preserving and emailing it to me.] 

Exhibit B: This is a picture from a Matheran trip (a 'hill' station in Maharashtra, India) with Bhuwnesh and his family. Bhuwnesh and I became friends in US out of necessity because we were the new people there and all the other Indian colleagues were already settled in their lives. Plus, we got along well despite being very different in personality. That's the reason we stayed in touch no matter how many times he or I changed cities and countries. 

This photo was taken in 2006 from an Olympus camera which was 1.3mega pixels. Don't laugh, that's the best I had then.  

I also have a lot of photos which are taken with good cameras in high resolution but don't mean half as much to me. 

Let's take an exception, exhibit C, taken in 2020: 

This is a high resolution photo taken with a proper DSLR last year. Given the condition the world was in when my nephew Sagar married his girlfriend Harsha, I had no chance to go to attend their wedding in Canada. Had it not been for the technology I could not have watched their wedding ceremony on a  video call and I would not have been able to see their smiling faces in the lovely photos. 

My point is not that "Old is always good". My point is that it's not the resolution in the camera that matters, it's the resolution of your life that matters. Surround yourself with people who enrich your life, guide your mind to thoughts that add meaning to your life and make sure that your actions and words enrich other people's life. That's the resolution that matters the most. 

No News is Indeed Good News

I actioned this policy (see photo) almost 3 years ago in Feb 2017. I am happy to report that the policy worked brilliantly. I did not get depressed from the news any more even though I have a faint inkling that there might be things happening in the world.

The funny thing is that I didn't get depressed even during the last months of 2019 when I completely uprooted my life and moved across the country, and was stone-cold broke for a few months (still stoney broke but not cold).

That brings me to the conclusion that we (editorial 'we') get more depressed by the general news even more so than by the things that happen directly to us.

For those who may be interested I use a Chrome add-on called F.B. Purity to suppress the news, ads and other junk that Facebook itself pushes to the page alongside your news feed. For the actual posts shared by people in my friends list I simply unfollow the person if their posts contain news of the world.

Noise, Noise, off the wall..

An interesting read by Purba.
http://www.purba-ray.com/2016/09/dj-wale-babu-zara-volume-badhaa-do.html

She is quite right though. We do love our noise. It doesn't even have to be music, but usually we need something that can masquerade as music. I have even heard truck drivers on the highway honk their horns in short bursts of their homemade "melody".

While you do run into pubs and clubs which are too noisy for conversation the same thing is not so common in restaurants. Although, there are restaurants that have very loud music playing, the more classy (read expensive) ones have only subdued, soft music that is a good backdrop to conversation without getting in the way. I know some of these, but I have also been known to ask the management to reduce the volume if I go to the other kind of restaurant. I eat quite often in mall food courts during my India visits anyway.

The thing that drives me up the wall is the incessant hoking! During my recent trip, I had the pleasure(!) of being stuck in many traffic jams (Delhi traffic is off the charts right now!) and people honk for no reason at all. They are all stuck in traffic and everybody is moving as and when they can. But these people would still honk. Seems to me like they are clutching the last dregs of sanity by venting their frustration with their horns. Or they have gone crazy and think that the horn is a video game. I can't decide which!

One thing I thankfully did not run into this trip was a "mata ka jagran" near my house. They play what seems like a fake-bhajans, i.e. songs engineered from latest movie songs with religious words pasted on them. The only "mata" they would remind you of would be Katrina Kaif or Sunny Leone! And volume would be loud enough to rouse the whole neighbourhood, which I think is the idea. It's not limited to any one religion or god though. During Ramzan you can hear the azaan and the call to "sehri" just as loudly.

But coming back to music, it can sometimes be a real nuisance. During one of my India visits I had a young boy in a shop opposite my parental house who liked the song "Main tera boyfriend, tu meri girlfriend, tu mainu kehndi na na na na" a little too much. He put it in a loop and played it at top volume morning, noon, evening, non-stop. Normally, I am a "live and let live" kind of guy but that did get my proverbial goat. Finally, I went there and told him "Dude, change the song or reduce the volume! Or else!" It worked for a while!

You would find the same 5-6 songs playing all over the place - on the radio, in weddings, parties, discos and on TV channels. But new songs have a burnout time of about a month. They get phased out by other equally meaningless, blase songs in due course. Only the most obnoxious, loud and obscene ones would be remembered past 3 months, example Sheila ki jawani and Munni ki badnami.

Salsa is a woman!

My reasons why I think salsa is female:

1. Has various moods and speeds. 
2. Is sexy and spicy with a lot of glamour. 
3. You need to find the right music for her. 
4. Takes work to first get familiar with her. 
5. Is complex but fun if you love her enough to put in the time and effort. 
6. Needs constant attention from you. 
7. You love to dress up for her. 
8. She keeps you on your toes. 
9. Is more intoxicating than any wine imaginable. 
10. Makes your heart beat fast. 

And... 

She does leave you all hot and sweaty ;) 

Salsa Addict in Action

Jinke hothon pe hansi paanv mein chhale honge,
Haan wahi log tere chahne waale honge.

Translated from the original Urdu it means,
"Those who would have laughter on their lips and blisters on their feet,
Yes, those people would be  the ones in love with you."

Obviously a sher as deep as this can have multiple meanings where "you" could refer to a multitude of entities or concepts. But today, I would like to have it refer to Salsa.

5 days and evenings. I knew this was going to be a long streak of dancing and it was. I knew it would be legendary weekend+ if I survived it. And it was and I did! Barely.

Here's how it played out. Friday night, Tapton Hall social with SalsaBeat. Amazing night, lots of dances. That was a masquerade ball so some added fun there. Plus they have a regular Kizomba room at the same time so you can imagine that that makes me happy as a dog  with two tails.

That finished at 2 AM.

After a night (early morning) of a little sleep and a day of "cleaning my room" I was back in Sheffield on Saturday night for another social - this time by Parranda. Not as crowded as Friday (some people just can't handle two nights in a row - lightweights! :P ) but still a lot of fun.

So, that finished at 0100 or so. After half an hour of saying farewell to everybody, then I tried to find the Kizomba after-party that was happening in another part of the town. That was supposed to last until 4 am. Well, didn't exactly find the club but found the area and didn't like the looks of it. No good place to leave my car.

Missed that one then. Another night of short sleep (I find it hard to fall sleep quickly when my mind is all keyed up.)

Back on Sunday to Sheffield for a  3 hour Bachata workshop. That was quite an awesome workshop and overran by half an hour.

A quick supper and then off to my regular Sunday evening Salsa classes with Richard, followed by social dancing.

By now my left ankle started to hurt where the edge of the shoe touches the foot. But kept on dancing. Exit from there was almost at midnight.

Overslept on Monday morning and had to miss breakfast to make it to work on time. But still went to the Monday evening classes and social at Clowne. That was another great party. Even though the ankle was still hurting, I kept dancing and enjoyed it so much that I did not want to leave even at 23:30.

Overslept yet again on Tuesday morning. Yet again, missed breakfast to make it to office on time. But still went to the Kizomba classes and social in the evening. That was also fun regardless of the ankle that kept hurting. But I knew I could rest the next two evenings.

The moral of the story is, well, there is no moral, I am just proud that I made it through this long schedule and so happy with all my dancing opportunities that I had to share this since I could not create Facebook posts for all the fantastic events.

Now looking forward to the next weekend after 2 nights of rest!

Sunny's Salsa Saga - The Beginning

So I finally decided to write about Salsa. Let's start with why I didn't want to write about it at first and why I decided to write now.

Why not?
- Because when I started to learn Salsa I didn't think I had much to say.
- Then it took over all my spare time so I didn't have any time to write about it.
- Then I found that I had way too much to say about it and didn't have that much time.
- I didn't think I was qualified to write about Salsa, especially things that would sound like advice or teaching.

Why now?
- I just gotta!
- There is so much to say about it that I can't keep it in and can't say it all to all my friends for fear of boring them.
- I am really passionate about Salsa.
- All the advice and teaching stuff is just my experience and opinions based on my learning journey. If I can make that clear to my audience and not pretend to know more than do I will be fine.
- I have a lot to share and who knows some of it might even be useful to somebody somewhere.

What next?
There's way more to say than can be done in one post so this will be an ongoing series on my blog.
I would absolutely love to hear from my readers about what I write. Any comments, criticisms and above all their own experiences on this topic would be very welcome.
I am hoping that salsa people will comment and share their thoughts.
In this current post I will only give the background of Salsa in my life.

So we start...
I first started learning Salsa about 5-6 years ago. Why did I start? There's a story.

Once in a while I used to go to clubs with friends. Like normal nightclubs. And even though I could not dance to save my life, I still used to get on the dance floor and "dance". No, alcohol was not involved, I just get more courageous when I am with friends and the music is good.

Every time I went to a club, there would be one brief period, like maybe a few minutes when I would be a dancing and I would be totally in the zone. At that moment I connected so well to the music that I disconnected from my surroundings. Even at that moment, I wasn't doing any amazing "take back the streets" steps, in fact I don't even know what steps I did, if any. But that few minutes period was worth the whole effort of going out...call it Nirvana, meditation, happiness, what you will.

After a while I started thinking about how I could extend that period to more than a few minutes and achieve it more frequently. I don't really like going to clubs, so when I started looking for dance lessons I didn't look for that kind of dance. Salsa was very popular at that time in the UK and a friend of mine told me about this place on Charing Cross Rd. where you can have an intense one-day class in Salsa. Kind of like a crash course. A good place to start.

One Google search told me what there was to know about Salsa Rapido at Bar Salsa in London. I took the first 5-hour long beginners class and loved it! After paying for the class once, it was free to repeat during the next two months and I did it a few times.

Then I found a 10-week Salsa course with City Academy with a weekly class. After the intense-information-overload type class with Salsa Rapido the one-hour a week class that taught one or two moves every week seemed too slow even though the teacher was really great. I did meet several good people in that group though and it was then that I created a Meetup group called "City Academy Salsa" to connect with my classmates and other people who wanted to go out and practice together. The group still exists even though I dropped out of the course after 6 weeks. I made it open to join by anyone so it has more than 150 members today.

But, my Salsa journey did not continue that smoothly. After dropping out of City Academy I dropped out of Salsa. Honestly, I don't remember what changed. But I work as an IT contractor and move around a lot. So something like that happened and my Salsa stopped. I never forgot it though and wanted to get back to it. Recently when I moved again and it seemed like I would stay in one place for at least 6 months this time, the first social thing I sought out was Salsa.

Fortunately there was a local class every Wednesday and it was close enough for me to walk to it. So my Salsa journey started again, and this time for realsies.

More in the next post...

Happy Children's Day!

This is the risk in reading other people's blogs. Bikram has done a great post on the Indian youth who took part in India's struggle for freedom and it inspired me to write something as well on the occasion of Children's day.

Not that I can talk from a grown up's point of view, never having grown up myself. I have grown older but still a child at heart.

Since I have lived in the western world for a few years, and I am quite immersed in the western culture by way of movies and books, I have wondered more than once how my life would have turned out had I grown up in the US or UK. It would have been different!

For example, I would not turn pink every time I talk to a pretty girl since social life even in school days is quite mixed in this culture! But alas, I went to a boys-only high school. There are a lot of other things too, like Indian schools have hardly any extra-curricular programs. Or so it was when I was in school. These days with the sprouting of private schools everywhere and the evolving curriculum things are changing a little.

Then there are other things like learning to drive before you are 18, learning to dance, learning to throw a party etc. etc.

But then there is the flip side. There is no doubt that we had a hard life living in India and in a middle-class family. But that same condition taught me so much that I cannot begin to describe how much it contributed to the development of my character. The adverse conditions and hard life made me stronger physically and mentally. And even at that I cannot use the words "hard life" for my life without feeling a bit ashamed. My life was a patch of clover compared to what my dad started with and what a lot of Indian children didn't have and don't, even today.

Plus, I don't forget the things that I didn't learn not growing up in US. I didn't learn to drink beer, I never learnt to smoke, weed to me is still a form of vegetation that you need to root out, MJ for me was only Madan Jain. Those are some mighty important things never to learn.

So, on Children's Day I just wants to wish all the children in India a happy, healthy life and help them realize that they are really lucky to be growing up in one of the best, probably THE best culture in the world.

Do you want to change the world?

A friend of mine is supporting this. And friends support friends. That's the unwritten charter of friendship. So here is the link, click it, and follow it if you are on Twitter. If you don't feel like following it, that's also fine. But the overall message is positive, so even if you look at it, that's something in the right direction.

LetsChgOurWorld

I am going biphasic!

Before I am accused of trying to confuse my public, let me give you some basic information. Here is the link where I started:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/forums/health-fitness/1638-switching-biphasic-sleeping-start-here-3.html

In simple words, it’s a way of taking your daily sleep in 2 instalments instead of one big chunk. First part is a small nap of about 1.5 hours and then a core sleep of about 4.5 hours a few hours later. I had read about Polyphasic sleep before, the kind of Leonardo da Vinci is supposed to have used, where you take a 30 minute nap every 6 hours, sleeping only 2 hours in a 24 hour day. For obvious reasons that’s not possible for me to try when I am working, but I just found this biphasic stuff from this blog:
http://caloyelboy.blogspot.com/2010/11/on-biphasic-sleeping.html

and decided to try it.

So, I am going to try it tonight.

Now, I know the big question in your mind is “why”?

There are many reasons, one of them being just to try something new and unorthodox, but there are 3 main, important reasons.

1. Get extra time. Recently, I started working full-time again, and going from having all 24 hours at my disposal to having only 3-4 hours to do everything I want to do is very hard. All my projects I started in Second Life during my Idle period are suffering, and as I tried to catch up with them, my guitar was left forgotten. I can’t allow that to happen.This is one of the straegies to get some extra time and use it to work on all my crap.

2. Quality of sleep. I have been noticing it for a long time now that I don’t sleep that soundly as I used to. In my “youth” I have literally slept through earthquakes and hurricanes. But these days I don't sleep so well even if I am extremely tired.

One time I thought this was because of my over-involvement in my digital life and my brain is focused there. Maybe so. So, I turned off both my laptops, including the media laptop that's connected to the TV, turned off the TV instead of on screen-saver as I usually do, put the primary laptop in a corner instead of on my bed and went to bed. It was eerily silent in the room and dark, without the HDD LEDs and the laptop fans, but the sleep was no better.

Recently, it's been becoming a pattern to sleep about 6 PM on the Friday afternoon and sleep till 7 am on Saturday to catch up with the lack of sleep during the week, even though I get up about 6-7 hours a night. I love sleep, I really do, but 13 hours out of my 24 hours is a bit much. I do have things I want to accomplish.

So, this might help with that.

3. More energy, better well-being. People who have tried this have reported much better energy levels throughout the day starting from the morning. I feel tired and sleepy in the afternoons regardless of the number of hours slept.

My plan is to have the nap somewhere between 7.00 and 9.00 PM and the core sleep from 1.00 am to 5.30 am. If I get up that early in the morning, I will consider walking to the station to catch the train for work. One reason I take a taxi now is that the 1.5 miles, uphill walk in the cold costs about 25 minutes of my day and I don't have that much to spare right now. If the sleep works and I have the time and the energy I will try walking to the station at least on the days when it's not raining.

One side-effect of that will be I'd save some money on the taxi fare.

With the extra time on my hands, esp. in the late night hours, I will be able to do some nice work. I have been meaning to write more lately. And of course, blog more. There are also some new areas of hobby/self-improvement that I want to get into. This might give me time for that
So, the plan is to start tonight since it's Friday and the next 2 days are more or less my own. I plan to take the nap from 7Pm to 8.30 PM tonight, then core sleep from 1.00 am to 5.30 am.

I will try to keep a log, maybe on here. Watch this space..

The first couple of weeks are supposed to be hard on the body while it adapts, so wish me luck!