Some articles I read recently suggest it is true the amount of sleep that is optimal varies among individuals, and the difference can be quite substantial. On one extreme, there are the 'long sleepers' who require more than 9 hours worth of sleep per day. Anything less results in sleep debt. The other polarity, the 'short sleepers', can sleep 5 hours and still function as equally happy and healthy people. Of course, these figures come with the usual caveats, that other factors such as age, physical well-being and quality of sleep need to be taken into account. But speaking from my own experience and observation, the reality is indeed so unfair.

I am a typical long sleeper who turns in as early as nine plus at night. In fact, this was my average lights off timing, in army speak, when I was in secondary school. Things changed in JC when I was forced by the rigmarole of playing catch-up in studies and juggling CCAs to sleep later by two to three hours. An improvement to my absurdly early sleeping time, but the con side was that I found myself dozing off during lessons more often than ever and while I was awake, having shorter attention span and being unable to concentrate. On the other hand, I hear of people who sleep under four hours and still managed to get by, if not doing better. And they did not show any symptoms of acute lack of sleep as I would if I had slept as much. So is it really true some people just have the advantage of being able to live on less sleep and thus having more effective hours a day to spend? I am inclined to believe so. And yes, I am very jealous.

Aside from spending a significant fraction of my weekend compensating the sleep debt (I slept a grand total of 14 hours of my Saturday away), my waking hours were spent on reading and more reading, from blogs to forums to magazines to tabloids to the 'hidden treasures' on my book shelf. I guess even though the internet provides a limitless range of reading materials for entertainment and knowledge acquisition, the joys of surfing the net pale in comparison to having a good book on the lap and spending the entire day getting lost in the pages. How I miss those halcyon primary school days when I could just spend the entirety of my December holiday reading R.L.Stine's. And with so many books on the shelf clamouring to be read, it might be a little hard to pry myself away from self-imposed imprisonment at home on future weekends.