“Why do we bitch about getting up before 7am?,” I asked P while we were queing up for lunch at Cafe Vert on Tuesday. “I don’t know,” she replied. “We used to do it everyday back home.. we were in the schoolyard by 7.30!” P is my colleague who’s office is across the corridor from mine, and whose parents live just across the SILK highway from mine. I bump into fellow Malaysians in academia all the time, it seems.

It’s funny how my body clock operates on a different system while here. Prior to moving abroad, I was in the office by 7.45am; I left a little after 6pm, and was often in bed circa 10-11pm. In the UK anything before 9am is considered an ungodly hour. I waddle out of bed at about 8.30 for a 9.30 start; or 8.00 for a 9.00 start. Anything before used to be unheard of.

Was it a function of late nights? I am in bed by about 10pm on a work night, perhaps 11 or 11.30 on a weekend (or if the Xbox controller’s buttons beg to be stroked a little longer). Up at 8 means literally a 10-hour snoozefest. In Malaysia I used to function just as well on as little as 6 or 8 hours – even less on the nights I am up at 3.30am to watch twenty men chasing a round ball (the other two don’t chase as much).

Is it old age? It’s been a long time since twenty-two, or so I rephrase John Mayer. Is it the climate that urges me to hibernate like some other mammals I know? Or is it just me, catching a whiff of that British cologne: eau-de-whinge?