The science of sleep.

My blog's been asleep for some time. People who don't know me very well may jump at this stage and say "aren't you a PhD student? I bet you were busy with TA duties and project submissions and exams and what nots". People who know me quite well may nod their heads wisely and say "you must have been watching a lot of films lately". And people who are smart enough to read the title of the post would just give a knowing smile and continue reading about my sleeping stories. Yes, my blog was sleeping because I have been sleeping. A lot. Literally, a lot. I have been going to bed really early these days. Like around 2, 2:30 in the night. Which is btw, by my standards, EARLY. I wake up around 10 in the morning. Have breakfast and go back to sleep at 11:00. Then I wake up at 3:30 only by the noise of someone calling me on gtalk (which, is a wonderful thing in itself). After coming back from class I take another short nap of two hours duration. And then again at 2, I feel I should go to bed early. This has been pretty much my routine over the last two weeks. And I am worried.
Come on, I have every right to worry. Not that I slept less before. I have always had it in me. My friends used to kick me to wake me up. Sometimes, spray ice cold water. I could sleep for 16 hours at a stretch. Without any intoxicants. Actually contrary to popular beliefs, intoxicants if taken in ample amounts reduces your normal sleeping hours. Hostel life taught me that. Hostel life can be very educational. Even if you skip all the classes. I also learnt that sleep and hunger go hand in hand. If you are asleep, you generally don't feel hungry. If you are hungry, you feel sleepy. Morale of the story: if you are a single student living away from home and one night you don't have anything cooked for dinner and you've run out of maggi, lie down and close your eyes; you'll have the best sleep ever. This, I have perfected over the years.
Okay, I hereby list some more points about sleeping that everyone should know.
1) Coffee in the morning only makes you feel like taking a shit. Coffee in the night makes you all the more sleepy. So "coffee helps you keep awake" is a misconception. Advice: don't drink coffee if you have an early morning exam.

2) Insomnia is not a disease. It just signifies that you don't read. Or at least make the effort.

3) Films keep you awake. Good films, you wonder how good can it possible get and bad films, you speculate if the next scene is going to make it a better film than "Jodha Akbar". Nevertheless, they keep you awake. Advice: if you have an exam next day and need to stay awake to study, try watching films all throughout the night.

4) This is for boys only: don't let your parents come to your room before you wake up; or at least use a blanket, otherwise the poor fellas could be traumatized.

5) Sleeping is very inspirational. Seeing other people sleep gives you very innovative ideas. I shalt not emphasize further or else some people may try to get back at me real hard.

6)Sleeping increases your creativity. One of my friends used to dream about how to clear the difficult stages of computer games. And those tricks worked. Really. I, personally dream about things like the third world war where everyone dies. Only Sachin Tendulkar and Adolf Hitler survive and start playing some sort of a "identify the dead man" game.

7) I don't have any idea why some people refer to the act of having sex as "sleeping". I mean when two people are doing it(as Phoebe would say) the last thing they do is sleep. And by "last thing" I intended on a pun, if you didn't get it.

Thats all I can cook up right now. So much so for sleeping. All this writing and thinking and making up random stuff makes me all sleepy again. I will thus get back to hibernating. Wish you all happy sleeping!