By Arthur B.W. Yong and Rachel Alcock
When we talk about sleep, we feel tired and go to bed. On average, most people sleep seven or eight hours a day. Out of curiosity, Arthur spoke with many of his friends about how many hours do they sleep a day? The answers varied from three to ten hours. For example, when undergraduate and postgraduate students, journalists and writers, financial planners, project workers and politicians have to meet deadlines, they have fewer less hours of sleep. Arthur and his friends can associate sleep with much information related to comfortable beds and accessories, bed time stories, health, illness, stress, insomnia, employment, shift work, finance, books, stories, songs, movies, playing computer games, travels, memories, dreams, nightmares and even jokes. There are many health references about sleep, dreams, nightmare and insomnia.
The majority of people like to sleep in on Sundays. People with a cold or severe illness frequently sleep more than 14 hours.
Some enjoy singing karaoke songs, ”A Hard Day’s Night; All I Have To Do is Dream and Sleepy Joe”. Arthur does. Many children have read the book, ”Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”. Some people have seen the movies, ”Aliens, Jaws, The Birds, Picnic At Hanging Rock, Psycho, Insomnia, Freddy Kruger and Friday the 13th”.
Arthur recalled, in 1969, the night before his Economics examination at Thornbury High School, he was in bed. He closed his eyes and tried to remember the text of all the relevant chapters of the Economics book, which he thought, was important. He hardly slept that night. He revised the text a few times. Arthur was very happy when he found out that he passed his examination with a mark of 86.
When Arthur and his team members compiled stories of local Chinese migrants for a book, ”Chinese Settlement in Whittlesea in 2008”, a journalist reported in the Whittlesea Leader, “People said Arthur never slept”. Arthur’s friend asked him when he dreamt, he spoke in what language or dialects. Was it in English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien and Hakka or Malay? Arthur replied it varied from time to time.
First published 2012
Image: Pixabay
