Tag Archives: Xbox

First Night Effect, a ramble from a while ago

A very small study was recently released, and covered prominently, which says chiefly;

“Even when you look at young and healthy people without chronic sleep problems, 99 percent of the time they show this first-night effect [sleeping in a new place] —this weird half-awake, half-asleep state,” says Yuka Sasaki from Brown University.

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/why-we-sleep-badly-on-our-first-night-in-a-new-place/479091/

Interestingly, I think I’ve experienced this personally. I’ve bounced around a bit, moved, but my primary example was actually a night on which it was not my first sleeping somewhere.

I’ve had a few house/flatmates over the years, as has any young adult in the UK. Sharing is basically required for all but the richest, thanks to our current housing crisis. In this case, it was a flat in West Ealing, London, quite a nice one really. We had a good landlord, who basically advertised two rooms separately, and arranging meetings to create a flatshare.

This flatshare was sold to me as a young lady,  let’s call her Shakespeare, visited periodically by her boyfriend, who’ll we’ll call Casper.. We got on OK, in the brief time we knew each other, and for the first 6 months of our lease, everything was fine. Well, mostly fine; Casper was around almost always, and he broke my xbox, but eh. So, I signed another lease with Shakespeare; 12 months this time.

This was a mistake.

Casper and I argued, about some weird odd thing. I was going to have someone sleep on the floor for a few days, just coming into the country, and needed somewhere to crash whilst they got on their feet. This apparently was beyond the pail. Suffice to say, words were had, shouting happened, and I no-longer felt safe there.

The first night was the worst. I basically setup noise traps next to my (lockless) bedroom door, and slept fitfully, waking at the tinyest noise. I was scared of being attacked by Casper, he was bigger and stronger than me. The following days were unpleasant in the extreme. I spent as much time as possible outside the flat, eating at a Wimpys, spending massive quantities of time in the Office, basically hiding from my flatmates. In the end, I decided to forfeit the lease, and left, moving back in with my parents. I ended up continuing to pay for my part of the lease for another 3 months, an action that combined with the commuting now involved to get to work cost me along the lines of £3,000.

But those few days, before I decided to forfeit, were some of the worst nights I’ve ever had. I can totally believe First Night Sleep is a thing. I just think it may well not be just about your First Night somewhere.

Epilogue,

It turned out, that Casper shouldn’t have been staying in the flat with Shakespeare. Landlord was unhappy about that. Also, they got a dog, whom I had been told was gained with Landlord’s tactic approval via a don’t ask, don’t tell basis.

During the explanation to the (nice) landlord, I might have let slip about the dog. The tactic approval turned out to be a lie, amongst other things, Landlord was Not Happy, especially due to Shakespeare and Casper’s actions after I left. I was actually offered the room again, with a new flatmate. I refused.

That is also why I eventually moved out of London at the first opportunity. I had a limited-length houseshare in London with a friend, but just couldn’t bring myself to share with someone random again. Work needed people in a new site, so I requested a transfer, somewhere where I could afford (just about) my own place. I’ve been happily away from London (apart from hotels and day visits) ever since.

I wonder if writing this is interesting to anyone? Also, I do wonder how narcissistic it is for me to publish it publicly. Maybe for another blogpost, another day.

Games and Stuff

My xbox 360 is currently in the dreaded red-ring-of-death stage, so of late, I’ve been playing computer games on my PC more than anything else.

Turns out, if you don’t play Real-Time-Strategy games enough for a long time, you get really bad at them. I used to be able to wipe the floor with 3 brutal AI’s in Red Alert 2. Went back to it the other day, to get swiftly crushed by one brutal, one medium, and one easy AI 🙁

Still, means I’ve been spending a little more time in Fallout3.. First time I played it through, I concentrated on the primary storyline mission. The game finishes when you complete that mission! GRRR… Finally got the will to go back and try to complete the game, fully, this time. Even set off the nuke, just to see it go boom! Then I restored from my previous save.. I’m not that evil 😉

Due to err.. circumstances beyond my control, I’m living with my father again, commuting back and forward to work. He’s got a bread-maker, and we set it going for the first time last night… to find we’d used yeast 9-years out of date! :S Still, new yeast, means I’ve just had a breakfast of warm bread and jam. Yum 🙂

Got t-shirts for JaydenAndCrusader.com! Postman delivered them yesterday.. they’re pretty nice 🙂 We’ll sell one, probably on ebay, later this year.

Day 12 – Character snapping

So here I was, playing a game in fable two with a colleague from work. (Xbox Live FTW!) We’re at the top of a cliff, which we can jump from. I notice a treasure chest at the top of the cliff, and point it out, timidly. He grabs the treasure, and I jump off the cliff, with a “A Cliff! Wheeee!”

Then, he comments something like, Around the treasure – that’s more like the character that we see in the office. In real life, I am timid and self-concious. When I put “Socially Inept” in my about box, I wasn’t kidding, something some people don’t believe.

But it’s interesting to me, that that particular aspect of my character in real life bled through to the online game world, in which I am much more outgoing. Online, there is a shield between myself and those with whom I’m interacting. If I want to escape, doing so is a simple matter of disconnecting from the internet, hence my more outgoing nature online.