Being here is much more fun and awesome than I could have imagined; even though I’ve been here for over a week and still haven’t unpacked the last couple boxes. Some of the days are a little hot but after watching the sunset and feeling the cool night air the days themselves aren’t so bad. Aside from a couple boxes and being too lazy to get my new driver’s license I seem to be all settled in…minus the bed which is on order. Only thing I miss is having people around. Maybe that will fix itself in short time.
After much packing … which was after much procrastinating; I finally managed to pack up everything and will be driving to New Mexico starting tomorrow. It should be fun, even though I’ll be without internet for a few days. 
Maybe I’ll have something constructive to post when I get the webs back … hopefully a review of the Wabi-Sabi book.
The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura is the first book I’ve reviewed since elementary school and with how much fun I had doing this review I fear it’s been too long since I did one. Hopefully I will continue to review the books I read and can manage to bring my vocabulary back up to where it should be. Enjoy.
The first time I heard of the book was in an article about perfectionism
and having a bit of a fight with perfectionism in my current web project
I thought it could be an interesting book. Upon the book arriving, my
first expectations were quickly put to rest as false; this book is not
full of information telling you what kind of tea leaves to buy, where to
buy them, what kind of tea to drink when. Instead a poetically versed
story describing the history and aesthetics of tea.
For a book with tea in the title a relatively small section is actually
devoted to the actual arts of creating the drink itself. “The Schools of
Tea” is a mere 19 pages long and yet it still tells the entire story
about the progression of preparing tea. I must admit while very
interesting this was probably my least favourite chapter, simply because
I have never had a desire to drink tea until recently. After reading
this book tea has become more than just another drink to pour into a
plastic cup, guzzle barbarically and refil the glass to repeat again. It
is something to be appreciated and enjoyed peacefully.
This is a book that while you may only read it once, every word is worth
reading. Even with no interest in tea, oriental culture or history the
chapters “Art Appreciation” and “Flowers” will open your eyes and give
you a new insight into the admiration and aesthetics of life.
I received a call from Harris a week or so ago informing me that the would like for me to start on the 4th of May. As you can expect things have been fairly busy around here. I had almost nothing packed even though what I wanted packed was pretty much set. My room has to be completely packed up when I move, and the boxes labeled one of three ways: stuff I’m taking with me, stuff I want after a few months and stuff I want mum and dad to hold onto until I move into a house or something. Between the packing, looking at apartments, finishing up some things for KillaNet (since I may not have internet for 2 weeks or so), reading and procrastinating coding; the sleeping thing just hasn’t been happening, so I thought I would try the whole biphasic or polyphaisc sleeping arrangement.
Most of the world is monophasic, they sleep 8-12 hours at night, all in one big chunk. That’s a lot of sleep. With a biphasic sleeping schedule the sleep is split between the night (usually around midnight) and the day (sometime around noon). Many younger children sleep this way and it seems to work pretty well for them. Next there is polyphaisc sleep; taking 3 or more “naps” during the day to get in the required amount of sleep. The most famous polyphasic sleep schedule is Uberman; taking 6 evenly spaced 20 minute naps during the day. This would be fantastic and I would have loved to try it, however, I don’t think work would agree well with it. So I went with the next best, a lesser known one named Dymaxion.
With the Dymaxion sleep schedule there are four 30 minute naps during the day; evenly spaced this usually works out to midnight, noon and 6 am/pm. Instead of starting with just the straight 30 minute naps I would lay down at the specified times and just sleep as long as I needed to, so they started out being 2-3 sometimes 4 hours. I was sleeping way more than I needed to. The last day or two I’ve been setting an alarm and trying to get up after the 30 minutes; it doesn’t always work and I’ve turned into somewhat of a zombie during the daytime but it’s getting closer and I think by the time I get to New Mexico and start work I should have it refined to the point where the 30 minutes is all I need for each nap. Hopefully my work schedule allows me to take a half hour nap right in the middle of the day, if not returning to a monophasic sleep pattern will take me a couple weeks and I’ll be zombified again. Seeing as it’s 5:51 am I guess I should go and take a nap, will post more about the adventures of Jim the Zombie in the next couple of days or so.