The Snooze Button

For the past few days, I have been resorting to the good ol' Alarm clock to wake me. My dad used to do this effectively earlier on. Sadly, due to the distance between Dallas and Mumbai, waking me up everyday turned out to be an expensive deal for my dad. Hence walked in my new alarm clock to give company to my old cell phone and my new cellphone and between them 5 alarms to wake me up.

Everyday, I have trouble opening my eyes, until the sun is shining brightly and almost blinding my closed shutters. The alarms that I keep do not help me in anyway , because all I do is snooze them. Today when I snoozed my alarm at 7:30 and then was woken by the next ring at 7:39, I realized that there was something aberrant from the usual. Why did my alarm go of at 7:39 and not at 7:40 ? ( I am gald, that gave me an extra one minute more to get ready and catch my 8:16 train.)

I got to work and was yawning away , when I remembered the point that had bugged me in the morning. This prompted me to get online and do some research on why alarm clocks had a 9 minute snooze interval. I came up with some captivating answers.

Engineers believe their bosses come to check on them every ten minutes. Ho ho! ---I am one!!

Physiologists have found that a sleeper who doesn't want to get up will fall back into a deep sleep if left for longer than nine minutes. ----------------Very True...

Wiki said: "Well, I have researched this topic and yielded some theories. If the snooze button is 9 minutes then the digital clock would only have to keep track of the last digit, because the last digit would go down by 1."

So thats the digital clock. What about the analog one?

"Clock experts say when snooze alarms were invented, the gears in alarm clocks were standardized. The snooze gear was introduced into the existing mix and its teeth had to mesh with the other gears' teeth. The engineers had to choose between a gear that made the snooze period nine-plus minutes or 10-plus minutes. Because of the gear configuration, 10 minutes on the nose was not an option.

According to these clock historians, engineers chose the shorter snooze, figuring "less than 10 minutes" seemed more punctual and marketable than sending people back to dreamland for "more than 10 minutes." "

Have you realized how that has messed us up.. I get these amazing dreams in those snooze periods.. and just when I am about to get to the most interesting part of the dream .. RINGGGGG RINGGGGG.

And now I have to snooze my outlook calendar every 5 min, that reminds me to update my time sheet. I think the problem is not snoozing..it's just me PROCRASTINATING.

Well anyway thought for the day...

"Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy. - Edgar Bergen "

Waking up one morning

One morning I woke up with this question in my head. It kept haunting me.. What is fate? I asked myself. Can we explain all events in our life to fate and destiny, or is it that, the events and the consequences that follow are a direct result of the choices we make, or let others make or us, consciously or sub consciously.

Other than life and death, don't we control everything that happens to us and around us?The force we call god, i believe exists within us. We get the strength from within us to face situations that we never thought we would be able to. Hence I find it very difficult to understand that an external force affects our lives.

Isn't it strange that none of us have problems more than we can deal with. Ultimately we as human beings rise to the occasion and are quiet capable of dealing with the issues that bother us, without breaking down.

So if someone can tell me what fate and destiny are... and convince me.. I'd be grateful, then I can blame my choices and consequences to fate, and not to myself.

another one

In the hours of darkness many, the sky wept and cried loud
Defying her in her angst, my little home, stood too

The wind bellowed through, the Oak trees standing tall
Branches wilted from most all, flying fast at my window

The churning storm it turned, the gentle ripples of the brook,
Into the big swirl of water, that spilt onto the brick lane

My white fence, built around, she didn’t spare that as well,
It broke in places, leaving me open, more to her grief

In her anger, ruin she did, everything that stood put,
Plunging the world around, into a sinister vacancy

And then she cried, till she could no more
Deep sighs filled the silence, left by the wind behind

Waketh I the next morning fine, to see my world as it should
The bright sun had come by, and wiped her tears away

-Kavita

Apr 02 2007