Thursday, November 26, 2009

Short Sleep Duration Kills

Couple of weeks back, I received an email forwarded by someone in my office and the topic really intrigued me. What else could be so interesting besides my very own philosophy of life - SLEEPING! So I just want to share some bits and bytes of the information I got with you.


It revolves about the story of a successful man, Mr. Ranjan Das - CEO of SAP India Subcontinent, who died at just 42 years of age. Very young age to die I'd say.

What could possibly go so wrong with this guy? He eats healthy food, he did regular workout at gym and he was a marathon runner! He was a total fitness freak! But he just collapsed after his gym workout and died of a massive heart attack, about one month back in October 2009.

Maybe some of you may ask, "Was it stress from work that killed him?". C'mon, who doesn't live with stress? If you are fit enough, you can conquer the bad effects of stress. So probably stress didn't kill him.


So what was it? It's sleep. In an interview on the Boss' Day Out, Mr. Ranjan admitted that he had very little sleep everyday (4-5 hours a day), the only thing that he's lacking (besides having balance diet and regular workout).

What will happen if I didn't get enough sleep?
Blood pressure increases and high blood pressure kills. As I have records of having high blood pressure, I'm pretty concerned about stuffs that could make it worse. Researchers found that there is a linkage between sleep duration vs blood pressure. Individuals who slept fewer hours were significantly more likely to have higher systolic and diatolic blood pressure.

Each hour of reduction in sleep duration was associated with a 37 percent increase in the odds of developing high blood pressure. Young people (25-49 years of age) are twice as likely to get high BP if they sleep less. Individuals who slept less than 5 hours a night had a 3-fold increased risk of heart attacks.


Here are some other "not-so-fun facts"
  • Complete and partial lack of sleep increased the blood concentrations of High sensitivity C-Reactive Protein (hs-cRP), the strongest predictor of heart attacks. Even after getting adequate sleep later, the levels stayed high!!
  • Just one night of sleep loss increases very toxic substances in body such as Interleukin-6 (IL-6), Tumour Necrosis Factor-Alpha (TNF-alpha) and C-reactive protein (cRP). They increase risks of many medical conditions, including cancer, arthritis andheart disease.
  • Sleeping for <=5 hours per night leads to 39% increase in heart disease. Sleeping for <=6 hours per night leads to 18% increase in heart disease.

Ideal Sleep
One should have at least 7 hours of sleep everyday. Getting too little (or too much i.e. more than 9 hours) can deteriorates your health.

As some of you may know, there are 2 stages when we sleep - REM and Non-REM (Rapid Eye Movement). REM helps in mental consolidation while the Non-REM helps in physical repair and rebuilding.

So, if you wake up after 5-6 hours of sleep, you will be mentally irritable throughout the day (lack of REM Sleep). If you have less than 5 hours of sleep, your body will be in a complete physical mess and walk like a zombie (lack of Non-REM Sleep).


Want to know if you are getting enough sleep? Take the Epworth Sleepiness Scale. I failed terribly...

Before I started blogging, I have knew the importance of sleeping. That's why I have wrote about sleeping during the early days of my blog - Sleepin'. So people, if you want to live longer, get enough sleep. Money can't buy back the sleep that you've missed. Sleep well, live healthy. Billy, out.

Source: Email (unknown)

Friday, November 20, 2009

Boss Raya Open House & Mooncake Festival BBQ Party

3 October 2009 @ Subang USJ

My big bosses invited everyone from my department to go to his Hari Raya Open House. Who can resist free food right? So I drove to his house after repairing my car, which cost me few hundred bucks. Forget about it, let's go back to the food.

Yuzi, Yani, one of the admin's daughter, Aisyah and Aleya

The few of us (the Malay girls and I) set to reach my boss' house at 1pm. I was a little late but mt friends were later than me. I waited outside the house for a moment and my boss saw me. So, I had to go into his house alone and talk to him while waiting for the rest to arrive.

Assistant Managers with En. Sukram - General Manager of IT Architecture, Integration and Consultancy

I didn't take any photos of the food because there were quite a number of people around and I was kinda shy to take out my camera to shoot here and there. Hehe.. Anyway, I can describe the food that I had.

There were nasi briyani, ayam masak merah, fried kuey tiaw, satay, some kind of sourish vege, assorted kuihs and her daughter cooked carbonara! I love carbonara but the one she cooked wasn't really a yummy one.

Yuzi & Aisyah with a big vase of flowers

Yani the funny, Yuzi the busy and Willy the only male assistant manager in the whole dept

We didn't stay long at En. Sukram's house because I had to rush home for the mooncake festival party while the rest headed for more Raya open houses.


3 October 2009 @ My house

In the evening, I had some of my friends to come over to my house for a BBQ party to celebrate the mooncake festival.




Well, we had lots of food - chicken wing, pork, lamb, sausages, potatoes, fish for barbeque and spagetthi, coleslaw and fruits too!


My brothers

My family

My friends

JooLi & I

*I particularly like this photo a lot* =)

The girls fighting for food with my bro

After eating and playing with lanterns, my family had to pray.


Mooncakes is a must-have during mooncake festival

Colourful Lanterns - as the mooncake festival is also known as lantern festival

I have been missing the celebration of mooncake festival with my family for 2 consecutive years - 2007 at Korea & 2008 at Taiping. This year around, I was finally able to celebrate with my family and also friends. Thanks everyone for coming! Billy, out.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Happy Burstday, Eddie!

29 September 2009 @ Kota Damansara

Eddie was one of my housemates for almost the 3 whole years of my tertiary education in MMU and it was his birthday! I tried to gather my 2 other housemates but only 1 turned up, for a little birthday dinner with Eddie.

We all met up at Dataran Sunway, Kota Damansara and drove around to decide what to eat. Since Eddie is the man-of-the-day, we let him take the pick for dinner. And he made his choice - Home Made Fish Head Noodles.


The main reason he picked this shop is because the colour theme of the shop is in GREEN! He loves green.

There were only 3 of us...

Solid, the king of babis

Eddie, the Babi Master

and me of course, the caretaker of the babis

As the usual babis, we ordered food for a million people. We ordered their homemade fish head noodles, some kind of rice with meat and soft-boiled eggs. I don't remembered the name of the dishes we ordered, so just enjoy the photos lah.






After eating and all the chatting, I gave Eddie his present. He seems pretty happy as he thought it'll only be a simple dinner with his friends and never thought of getting any present.


Ta-Da! A pair of boxers!

Finally, we ordered 2 desserts to end our day - ice cream and red bean ais kacang. Because the ais kacang is too tall and the scooping skill is at level 0, I dropped the whole scoop of ice cream on the table. Embarass-nyer!



I had a good day with the 2 fellas though the food is not that great. Hope he'll like his present and wear them often. Cheers for babis. Billy, out.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Yummy Historical Walk [Part 3]

5 September 2009 @ Malacca

...continue from Yummy Historical Walk [Part 2]

JooLi and I headed back for a shower, rested and got ready for our final round of food hunt in Malacca. This time, we had a special guest - Foong! We met him near the place we stayed and head on to Alai Ikan Bakar [Grilled Fish].


There were lots of seafood to choose from. I really don't know which to take!

Grilling in progress...

JooLi and Foong

We didn't wait long till our food comes. This is what we had - Prawns on sticks, Grilled Chilli Dunno-What-Fish, Otak-otak and Fried Calamari. Everything was superlicious!


There was a signboard near the shop that caught our attention. According to the "Malaccans", the signboard has been there for quite some time. It says "Lembu Dilarang Masuk. Tanah Persendirian" [translated as: If you are a cow, you're prohibited of entering. Private land.] Didn't know that cows could read nowadays. Haha!


Right after dinner, we drove to Jalan Bunga Raya for Oh Chien [Fried Oyster]. Apparently, this little stall is quite well-known. There were people queueing up just to tapao the Oh Chien.


My mouth was drooling all over the place already while waiting for it to be served. We got our pack of Oh Chien after not long... and it's goooooood! Probably the cook wasn't stingy on the amount of eggs he put in, that's why it tasted so good. Now I missed this shop more after eating a lower quality Oh Chien at SS2 just now.


We needed to walk around to help on our digestion, thus we went to Jonker Walk. It's just like Petaling Stree, but more interesting stuffs were sold here.


When we were there, a bunch of young adults were singing some patriotic songs [it was near Independence Day]. Stood there to watch for a while before heading towards Geographers for a drink.


The boys had a bottle of Heineken each...


... and the girl aka the driver had Raspberry Esprit!


I've not had beer for a long time. Didn't really enjoy beer that much but I just feel like drinking one that night.


Geographers and Ringo's are 2 different cafe/ bar that is situated opposite each other. They both play live music, live singing and live dancing. So I guess there's an agreement with each other where both parties take turns to play the music.


So, when it's Geographers' turn, we had a terrible keyboardist and a few singers. Then it turned out to be a dance party where some of them line-danced and after that was pretty much free-style. Kids, teenagers, angmohs and everyone were enjoying and all dancing along. Pretty fun eh.


We hanged out till pretty late at night. Wanted to play pool but the place was so packed and we were getting really sleepy. Sent Foong back to his car and headed back to the hotel for snoozyland.


6 September 2009 @ Malacca

We checked out slightly early to go to Fook Aik Restaurant for brunch. They serves really cheap Char Siew Fan with some additional dishes.


simply delicious

Before that, we actually went back to the Tart Tart Bakery for more tarts - to buy back for our families. So, JooLi had the tarts all buckled up all the way back to KL. Safety First, aye!


When we were approaching Seremban, we suddenly thought of finding one of JooLi's best friend, Radikah for a drink. Called her up and zoom we went to her house. I was still all blur looking at that familiar basketball court near Radikah's house. Only after I picked her up that I realized her house was so near LeongKee's house! [my ex-roommate]


Anyway, we went to the Jusco at Seremban for a drink and chit-chatted for a while before sending her back home. And we continue our journey back to reality.


Although the gathering had to be postponed, the both of us had lots of fun eating, sight-seeing and meeting the some of the friends [one-at-a-time]. The postponed gathering will be coming in a few days time. I hope we'll have another fun time in Malacca! Billy, out.
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