echo

I slept late on Friday night. That would’ve been fine if it was a normal Saturday, because I wouldn’t have to get up until 11:30 (at the latest), since I have to lead choir practice at 12.

Except I had an earlier meeting at 10:30. “That’s still fine,” I thought. 3am to 10am is still 7 hours of sleep.

Except I had an even earlier meeting. At 9. So I ended up sleeping from 3:30am to 8, for a total of 4 hours and 30 minutes.

Saturday morning, I got up, made a Mi Goreng for breakfast, and grabbed a 250ml bottle of Red Bull as I left home. I would drink it throughout the 9am meeting, literally the only reason I stayed awake. But it did its job, and boosted my energy levels so that I could go through a 1.5h meeting and two 1h practices straight after without feeling tired at all. I then had lunch at Wendy’s with some friends, going home at 3 when my non-geek friends got tired of me raving on about the x86 instruction set compared to the ARM instruction and how per instruction conditional execution is really awesome.

I didn’t feel sleepy at all for the rest of the day. I was pretty surprised, given how little use Red Bull (and coffee) was during the management project week (5 days straight arrive at uni by 7am -.-). I gamed away at TF2, clocking probably more hours on Demo than I had ever before (I usually play only on Turbine and Degroot Keep as Spy or Scout, but this day I played some Payload maps with my sister).

I would’ve slept by 2am on Saturday night, but I had only recently downloaded Taiko for my iPhone and I really wanted to hit a full combo on Oni difficulty before I turned in. After 2 close failures where I missed on literally the 2nd to last note, I finally nailed it. I turned in at 2:30.

Next morning was Sunday, so naturally I had to get up early. I set my alarms (yes, plural) for 7:40am so I would have plenty of time for breakfast and to get ready for church at 9. That would mean a total of 5 hours sleep. When my alarms went off, I felt so tired I could barely walk across my room to turn them off (if they were next to my bed, I can turn them off in my sleep). I stayed in bed and didn’t get up until 8:30am. I drove at 50kph and didn’t even try to accelerate to get through a set of lights that I could’ve made it through; I was still so tired I probably would’ve crashed if I tried.

Even so, I thought to myself, “I’ve done this before - two 5h nights in a row. It’s tiring but not that bad.” Oh, how wrong I was.

I went through 2 church services, attending the first one as a congregation member and serving in the second as the pianist. Being the pianist today required more focus than usual because there’s a very particular way things have to be done in that second service of the day. Heads usually roll if things go wrong. So that sapped even more energy out of me. On the plus side, stifling yawns is now a staple in my repertoire of skills.

Then came lunch, where I racked my brains to complete Sunday’s set of words for 7 Little Words (available for both iOS/Android) before my friends could.

All in all, I probably dug too deep into my energy reserve. 1 meeting, 2 practices, 2 services, and hours of gaming, all on the back of a bottle of Red Bull and 10 hours sleep over 2 days. Red Bull lets you borrow more energy, but you have to pay that back, and pay it back quickly. I napped for at least 3 hours this afternoon, and I’m still tired enough to get ready for bed before 1am. That’s where I am right now, typing this post on my phone in my bed.

Moral of the story: using your Mana Ring eats into your HP, and if you don’t want to get sniped by a roaming enemy you better go back to your fountain as soon as possible.