A Different Way to Become an Early Riser
I've tried, for years, to become an early riser with little success.
It seems that the one problem I had was how motivate myself to actually get out of bed in the morning. I knew my life would be better if I got up earlier, but that "Just another few minutes!" mentality always caught me off guard in my sleepy state. It's just too cold and snuggling under the blankets is so much better. Or it's too hot and I just want to lounge about and not move. Or maybe it's just oh-so-perfect sleeping conditions.
There are some circumstances that force me to get out of bed and it's usually because there's something more exciting or important happening the next day. The first day on the job, or going on an adventure; it's under these circumstances where you wouldn't dream of saying, "No, I want to go back to sleep. This is so much nicer." Why do you think children can suddenly wake up early on Christmas morning?
Now the main school of thought is that when you introduce a change into your life, you should do so slowly and sustain that for a month. I agree with this, but when making that first step to wake up early, I think you need more of a shock and awe approach. Jolt your morning into action. Do something different. Here's just 7 different ways you can jumpstart your way to becoming an early riser.
1. Wake up somewhere else
I don't think this will work for everyone, but I've found I get surprisingly freaked out when I wake up somewhere else, like another room, on the floor, in someone else's bed. Perhaps it's my morning after dread, but it wakes me up pretty quick and has me pulling on my clothes and diving for the windows or a nearby closet. Or at worst you'll wonder why you're there and remember there's supposed to be something different about this morning.
2. Plan something exciting in the morning
Christmas. Only you don't believe in Santa Claus, do you? Never mind, go and plan something awesome for your morning, and I do mean awesome. This should be on the scale of 11 out of 10 and almost prevent you from getting any sleep the night before. If you sleep in, you're going to miss it. Those of you with girlfriend or boyfriends can probably find something exciting for the morning. Just don't fall back to sleep. That's lame.
3. Schedule your important meetings in the morning
This is putting all your eggs into one basket. It sure sounds risky, but the more risky it is, the more inclined you'll be to get out of bed. This is your movie-classic, "Oh my God I'm about to miss my meeting with the CEO and I'm going to get fired," moment. Present yourself with an ultimatum: Get up or get fired.
4. Drink a lot of water
When nature calls, hope that it's not a fax. And hope that you don't get a paper jam. Drinking a lot of water before sleeping will either result in you waking up with a burning rush to the toilet in an effort to empty your bladder, or take you back to your bed wetting days. Either way, you're going to wake up in a real hurry and if you don't, well I think waking up early pales in comparison to some other issues you may have.
5. Park your car in a clearway
I have literally sprung out of bed, run down the street in my pajamas and jumped into my car to stop it from getting towed. I've also had to park a few blocks down and walk back home amongst the morning commute a little sheepishly.
6. Arrange for a friend to meet you for breakfast
I think most people have a friend or two that are early risers. Invite them to breakfast, but ask them to meet at your place. The more annoying and persistent they are, the better. You know, the early bird who for some reason hasn't quite caught on that not everyone is awake yet? The one that calls you up at strange hours in the morning (8am? What the hell is 8am?) thinking that everyone is bright eyed and bushy tailed. Invite them to breakfast. I think for the most part, most early birds don't like wasting their time. If they're at your front door, they're going to get you up rather than let you off with an, "Okay, maybe some other day then."
7. Make a bet
High susceptible to people who just cannot lose, make a bet with someone. Don't make it as simple as waking up or you'll just call them up sleepily, drawl out that you won and then fall asleep again. Now that just sounded rather lame over the phone. Make a bet with someone over who can be at a certain location earlier. If you want that extra incentive, don't set a meeting time. Let's see who'll get up earlier!
Now, all of these ideas are great for a single day, but who is to say that tomorrow you're not going to sleep in again? Start chaining these together. If nothing at all, I'm sure you'll have a more active lifestyle. Every time you find it's a little hard to get up, plan something outrageous and jolt yourself back into shape. Don't use just one method to get yourself out of bed or it'll become routine. I've almost missed flights, had my car towed, missed breakfast and meetings and peed my bed by getting stuck in a routine. Okay, maybe not the last one. Mix it up and surprise yourself!
The Cyclist, The Pedestrian and The Cars
All it took was a cyclist to travel down an illegal T-Way in NSW and assault a bus driver to get this long, drawn out issue into the limelight. It's existed for years and years, but the tensions are getting a bit high as of late. In my opinion, it's all a bit of a misunderstanding between everyone due to a lack of proper infrastructure.
The Scenario: At an intersection, the traffic lights turn red, the cars halt and pedestrians start to cross the road. A cyclist filters between cars on the way up to the lights, slows down and makes his way through the pedestrians, then checking there is no more traffic crossing the intersection, crosses the intersection and keeps on going.
The Cars: They see a cyclist squeezing past them, possibly almost scratching their cars. Are they in such a rush that they can't wait in line like everyone else? And they're slower too! Everyone is now going to have to wait behind them and then squeeze past them again.
The Pedestrians: Aren't you using the road? Then obey the road rules. Why are you riding dangerously across pedestrian traffic? If you had a licence and I were a cop, I would have booked you ages ago!
The Cyclist: If I stay amongst the cars, I'm going to be in their blind spot. The cars will all take off around me and at this distance, they're not going to see me. I've got to get out of the way of danger because if there's an accident it's not a dented fender, it's broken bones for me. I've got to be up ahead where people can see me early and think ahead. I'll carefully move around the pedestrians although they're not paying attention to me. I know running the red is illegal, but being legal is dangerous and it doesn't matter if I'm in the right or wrong if I end up dead.
A few facts:
- At intersections, cyclists are often in the blind spot of cars and trucks, leading to a large number of accidents
- Unless under the age of 12, cyclists are not permitted to use footpaths and must, by law, use the road
- Cyclists are permitted to travel in lanes marked as a "Bus Lane", but NOT in lanes marked as "Bus Only"
- In a cyclist-pedestrian collision, the cyclist is more likely to be injured due to a higher fall and the speed of travel. In a cyclist-vehicle collision, the cyclist is more likely to be injured due to little to no protection
- As a general rule, pedestrians have right of way regardless of where or how they ended up on the road
- Motorcycles are considered to have little to negligable impact on greenhouse emissions and road wear, yet this reduction in impact is not recognised during vehicle registration or tolls
- Cyclists have no greenhouse emissions and negligable impact on road wear
A few observations:
- Vehicles on the road often block cycleways
- Pedestrians are often not aware of approaching cyclists, but the cyclist may be aware of them.
- Where cycleways are not available, footpaths are not legal and roads are dangerous, there is no place for cyclists to ride
- Motorcyclists are discouraged from filtering through traffic (and may be booked on technicalities such as "Overtaking on the left of a vehicle"). Being a road user, this discouragement should also apply to cyclists, even though the practice is safer for both cyclists and motorcyclists.
- The practice of filtering to the front of traffic on a motorcycle is a fineable offence. On a bicycle it is generally not.
- Motorcyclists have sustained damage to their vehicles from having to stop from colliding with jay-walking pedestrians. To my knowledge, no legal mechanism exists for enforcing compensation from the pedestrian to the motorcyclist
Doll Meet
My significant other and my housemate are interested in dolls. Yes, dolls. Dressing them up, posing them, taking pictures, creating photostories, you name it.
I think people should pursue hobbies on the side. I think that's a healthy thing to do so that you're not buried in your work, even if what you do for work is what you love. I don't know much about dolls as it isn't my hobby, but there are a lot of different things to learn about them. I don't think I have the interest or wallet to delve much further into them though. Up until recently I considered dolls to be a strange, strange hobby. I could understand the concept of people buying cars, photographing them, modifying them and racing them, but to me that seemed to have a functional purpose. At the end of the day, you could take them out racing. You could drive from A to B.
With dolls, I wasn't so sure. They seemed to end up sitting around. It wasn't until I considered that it falls under collector's hobby that I really got my head around it. Sometimes, that's the whole point of having a hobby. There are stamp collectors who could tell you an entire story about how a certain stamp was made, who it was sent to, where it originated from. Antique collectors will provide you with a whole history, from why certain materials were used and from which families it was passed down from. A hobby doesn't have to be functional, it just has to be interesting and each person has different interests.
So, back to dolls. Today was the opportunity to shoot something different. When your doll is significantly smaller than your usual subjects, your perspective suddenly changes. I generally use a 70-200mm lens for portraits, but the size of dolls changes everything. Normally with wedding photography, I'll try and capture the finer details. These are now even harder due to the tiny scale of things and I kept finding myself wanting a macro lens of sorts. It's ironic, but a small sensor, but high resolution point and shoot could probably outdo my current gear at taking those shots. Something like the Panasonic LX3 would do really well.
I'm not sure which doll community organised the meet (as I was brought along by my significant other and have next to no knowledge of dolls), but I'm going to assume it was Den of Angels.The meet was organised though The Faireground forums. Have a look there if you'd like more information.
Anyway, below are the photos I took from the day. As I am not familiar with the owner of the dolls themselves, I am happy to remove any offending images on request. Each photo has had basic corrections in Lightroom, but no Photoshop manipulation.
Sydney Night Noodle Market
Hyde Park is one of the nicest open spaces in the Sydney CBD and on any given day you'll find anyone and everyone ranging from your average office worker, taking time out for lunch in the park, to flair bartenders, throwing bottles over their shoulder and perfecting their skills. It made sense on paper to hold a night noodle market in Hyde Park, after all, where else would you find as much room for the huge variety of food vendors?
It's not every day that you are able to get off from work and let the evening slip away, sitting in the outdoors with friends and family. I've always seen night noodle markets in asian countries as being all about the food, rather than the atmosphere, but Sydney-siders have a different approach. The burly old asian men drinking Tiger beer were replaced with the corporate workhorses, sipping on wine. The plastic chairs and tables were still there, but every so often you'd see a blanket spread out with couples and families making a picnic out of it. You'd never see that in an asian country. The stray cats and dogs were replaced by the random household pet, brought along for company and the hot sweltering heat was replaced by a cool evening breeze. A VIP section for certain guests? It was a bit of a surprise for me really, to see what's usually a bit of a squabble turned into, dare I say it, a sophisticated night out for some.
As demonstrated recently at M-Fest, food fairs have quite a bit of a line. Forget about being able to roam from one stall to the next trying to get some variety - you'll be there all night, with one of my friends waiting in line for almost an hour just to get a plate of food. You can join the longest line, hoping that people are in there because the food is good and not because they're doing what you're doing and hoping everyone else is right, or you can join the shortest queue, get some food and run the risk of it lacking any flavour. Unfortunately, I picked the latter and for $10 received a large paper plate full of noodles that could have been shredded newspaper for all I know.
Personally, the key draw point for noodle markets in Asia is that the food is cheap, it's quick and it tastes fantastic. My selection of food unfortunately failed on all three accounts as did my partner's. Aside from that, I would have been willing to let it slide. After all, the food was produced in giant batches for the masses, not as it was ordered. Any other approach would probably have seen queues triple in size. After all the atmosphere was nice, right?
One of the problems with Hyde Park is that it plays home to the bat community almost as soon as the sun goes down and you can't exactly have a Night Noodle Market during the day, can you? I was hit by bat droppings twice when I was there, witnessed two other tables get bombarded and a family get up and move, table and all. Needless to say, I didn't have a great time and left fairly early once my food had been contaminated, but I can see that this was most likely circumstantial and would not necessarily reflect the state of the evening for others.
If you want to have a nice evening out in the park, the Sydney Night Noodle Market is a fair choice. Ironically, if you're looking for a genuine hawker style night noodle market, you'll be fairly disappointed as this isn't what it's about, but the real deal is fairly hard to find in Sydney and not without a premium.
Malaysia Fest 2009
I managed to make my way over to Malaysia Fest last weekend which is a general mash of Malaysian cuisine. I mean, let's face it, every time I go back to Malaysia it's either for the shopping or the food.
I've been pretty skeptical of Australian-Malaysian food after having tried the real deal. I'm not much of a food connoisseur, but Malaysian food in Sydney tends to be really crap, or just crap but expensive. So I wasn't too keen on emptying out my wallet that day even though I had an empty stomach. Despite my initial feelings, the food was pretty good. It was still expensive ($6 for a few sticks of chicken satay?) but at least it tasted good! We ended up going back for more despite the lines at each of the stalls.
There were some performances on their main stage and a small mosh pit formed. Seems like the majority of the crowd was around the 20-30 age. I don't understand and Malay aside from basic road and building signs that I've been able to figure out, so most of the music didn't make sense. It was amusing to hear a few western songs in a different language though.
All in all though, it was a very lazy way to spend a Sunday (as Sundays should traditionally be spent!). I managed to borrow a friend's 5D Mk II, a camera I've been considering purchasing for a while now, and had a fun play around with it. I think it's pretty much put the nail in the coffin for me as the difference in quality between my old camera and the 5D Mk II is light years apart.
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- Cendol!
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- M-Fest Guitarist
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- Satay chicken being cooked
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Twitter (mukimu)
- Got back in from BNE a little while ago. Really tired! Got a few pics that I hope turned out alright - I'll put them up soon! =) 1 day ago
- Haven't had a chance to take any photos since landing in BNE this morning. Will try harder tomorrow. 3 days ago
- The irony. @JuliaGillard retweeting that she's speaking live at the moment. 4 days ago
- Here's a follow-up smashed entry level Nikon and Canon cameras (with pics taken after they were smashed) http://bit.ly/c7saf7 5 days ago
- Couple of pics on my Flickr stream from shooting a Suzuki SV650S last night: http://bit.ly/aHe2QR 1 week ago
