Ramblings About Chucking My Alarm Clock and Singapore’s Weather

I have always struggled with falling asleep and waking up. Lately I have been winning the battle with sleep and found that somehow waking up at 7am is more of a battle than waking up at 4.30am. I am trying to change my night owl ways (genetically my body just refuses to shut down before 1 am) and not rely on alarm clock to do it.

I want to wake up using my natural body clock, which seems to be the best way. Somehow the sudden jarring sounds of the alarm clock in your ear just makes me wake up in a state of panic with my heart pounding and general grouchiness. Usually I emerge in a state of extreme shock from some vivid nightmare, very much like the movie Inception (no surprise, I didn’t like it). It is not a good way to wake up and no wonder they call it an alarm clock.

I also wanted to figure out what is the actual amount of sleep my body really needs. I know I have fitful sleep, and even though I have more hours, it is sleep of very poor quality. I think I need at least 6 hours of the proper sleep to function the next day without getting drowsy and zombie like.

In order to feel fully awake I need to open the curtains and let the morning light flood in as well as have a cup of coffee. In order to sleep I have to definitely avoid the TV and especially the internet three hours before sleep. It also helps to have an earlier dinner.

I feel so happy and love waking up early. It’s probably psychological but somehow the mornings are so much more hopeful than the nights. The mornings in Singapore these days are lovely and cool. Today it drizzled and the sky was grey. The day before the sky was gorgeous and it was a lovely 27 degrees celsius. I love weather like this. Meanwhile other countries like Japan are having terrible heatwaves. The temperature in Tokyo hit 35 degrees and some parts hit 38 degrees.

In Singapore the temperatures have never gone beyond 37 degrees. The highest recorded temperature was 36.0 °C (96.8 °F) on 26 March 1998 while the lowest recorded temperature was 19.4 °C (66.9 °F) back in 1934. Wow 19 degrees sounds just about perfect. Darn urbanization and global warming!

More recently the lowest temperature recorded was 20.2 on 14 March 2000. The highest temperature most recently recorded, was 35.2 in February 2010. I definitely recall the scorching unforgiving heat then. February is the hottest, but windiest month. So what B told me is true. He says that Chinese New Year is always the windiest period.

Another interesting statistic was that in November 1982 there were 29 days of lightning – all almost the whole month. November is also statistically the month with the most lightning storms, so it’s best to stay safe at home then. December is the wettest month with many years experiencing the maximum of 26 rain days.