alarming patterns

my sleep patterns change every few years or so. when i was in school, i had to wake up at 6:30am everyday, and if no one woke me at that time, i would wake up by myself at 7 (which was a little critical as far as getting to school was concerned, but i managed). then college happened and everything went topsy-turvy. i have gone through phases of waking up unassisted and right on time, waking up unassisted but slightly late, waking up with multiple alarm clocks going off, having alarm clocks wake up my bro/mom who in turn wake me, etc.

the last 3 years have been fairly monotonous though. ever since i brought my n-gage, i started completely depending on it to wake me up. at the same time, i grew almost entirely deaf/immune to it's alarm. the only way i could wake myself at 9am would be to set alarms every 15 minutes from 8am to 9am. if i was extra sleepy, i would set alarms till 9:30 or even 10, just in case (and there have been not-so-rare cases of me sleeping through 2 hours of alarms, auto-snoozed for an hour more, till the battery ran out and left me to wake up 4 hours later...i kid not!!!).

on jan 2nd 2008, i got my new phone. the xda zinc. was thrilled by it. still am.

its alarm is about 1/5th the volume of the n-gage's alarm. it rings 5 times (which takes 25 seconds, as opposed to the n-gage's 1 minute), and auto-snoozes only thrice (as opposed to the n-gage's 20). it allows me to set only 3 alarms (as opposed to the n-gage's unlimited alarms, of which i would use upto 8).

disaster, i thought.

apparently not.

since jan 8th, i've been waking up *before* my phone alarm. sometimes by a margin of upto an hour. i have no clue why.