I don't know what's wrong with my sleep cycle. For years I've been the night owl mostly cuz night time was the only time when I could get most of my work done, without the distractions of my parents, friends, TV, etc. There's an eerie sort of tranquility in the quiet of the late hours. It's a time when I could do anything and nobody would care - nobody to yell at me to go offline (in the days of dial-up), nobody to correct my posture when reading. Even in New York City, things did slow down for a little bit - I remember the fleet of chauffered cars and limos lined up outside office buildings with their drivers waiting patiently to take their bosses home. Or the late night food vendors on the corner, catering to the night watchmen or drunkards walking off a night of partying. Night shift taxi drivers would be chatting to each other outside a bodega in Spanish, Punjabi, a million different languages. And how empty the streets! I could walk down Broadway or Park Avenue in the middle of the roadway without fear of an accident. Or maybe that was just the booze making me feel invincible.
I've tried before to return to a "normal" (ie, early to bed and early to rise) sleep habit but I always revert back to being a night owl. I've been trying for the last 2 weeks... it seems I'm now stuck on sleeping at 4am and waking at 11am. Sure, on occasion I'd wake early or sleep early, but that happens mostly if I have somewhere important to go in the morning. I've tried the siesta method of waking early and having a nap in the afternoon. But my 1-2 hour naps invariably turn into 4-5 hour snoozers. Maybe I should try taking sleeping pills for a week or so. I dunno... there's no guarantee that even those will work.
So I'm awake at 3:30 in the morning, doing what else but reading news websites. And blogging of course. I found an excellent news and commentary blog called China Weblog, run by a guy in British Columbia.
I wish I studied more Chinese... at least enough to be everyday literate if not outright fluent. It's pitiful that a Taiwan-born Chinese like me can barely read his own language. My mom suggested that I watch Chinese soap operas with her cuz they're all subtitled (but only with Chinese characters). She claims that watching enough of them will help me learn and I guess it could work. After all, TV was how I first started to learn English. Yeah Transformers, He-Man, Thunder Cats, Smurfs, GI Joe, and Muppets cartoons in day care... that's when it all started to go down hill. Maybe after law school I can spend a summer interning at AIT in Taipei. I looked into doing that a couple years ago but the application process was long and confusing. Who knows? I might even enter the Foreign Service from there on. At least I'd get to travel more.
