Finally! I’ve figured out a way to ensure that I actually get up on time (a general prerequisite to arriving at work on time and, thus, getting to play beach volleyball in the afternoon (without having to make up hours at work for skipping out early)).

It involves –
* me – regardless of how well or long I slept; and
* a radio alarm clock.

So the ‘silver bullet’ is not the most unnatural timbre ever to grace man’s ear; by which I mean the ‘ringer’ alarm. No! I could’ve (and have) slept through one of those trifles for up to 30 minutes, depending on sleep deprivation and success at incorporating the ringer into concurrent dreams.

The answer is quite simply the news.

ABC classic FM news subtly and gently breaks down the walls of sleep; words waft in an out, conscience slowly rises like the sun. This morning, the words “Taliban”, “gunman” and “hostage” wandered to and fro in my mind; encouraging lucidity of thought and clarity of being. And so it went for 3-4 minutes…

And then there was the weather…

How could someone possibly sleep through the monotonous drone of 32 repetitions of the word “Fine”…It would seem that the 28th of September 2006 will go down in history as the first day where the entire extent of Australia – from tooth to bight – was ‘fine’ or ‘mostly fine’. At least it helped me to awaken…

And to cap off the morning ritual (as I’m sure it will become), a first song of the day – today it was Argentinian guitar; yesterday it was Vivaldi; and the day before a student’s rendition of Shostakovich. The mind, full of alertness and willingness, slowly edges the rest of the incumbent torso to the edge of the bed to commence the day…

All that is left to do is to get to work and verify (read clarify) the garbled pieces of news heard through the drunken ears of a sleeper and write a blog post about this revelation that is “getting up on time”…