Sleeping, Sabbath, and Email

Since exactly four months ago, when I started something unprecedended in my life, I usually sleep only for three hours on weekdays - I go to bed around midnight and wake up around three. I feel that I can't wait for the start of a new day. I don't feel tired or sleepy, at least during the daytime, and feel instead fully recharged every morning. But I sleep 9-12 and 3-6 hours on the night and day respectively of every Sabbath in the last four months.

I used to think that this is because of the so-called neshama yetera (in Hebrew) / neshome-yeseyre 'the additional soul (a Jew is said to possess on Sabbath)'. But this week I suddenly realized the true reason for this abnormal sleeping pattern. It has something to do with Sabbath but only indirectly - on weekdays I check email, but on Sabbath I don't.

This something unprecedented in my life makes me rely heavily on email as a means of communication, resulting in a huge increase in the number of private, often confidential, messages I send and receive every weekday - about 10-50! At least one message composed and sent while I'm sleeping at night is waiting for me in my email inbox every weekday morning, and I simply can't wait to read it! It fills me with positive energy every day anew. Since I don't check email on Sabbath, I don't have this unconscious urge to wake up as early as possible for this daily infusion of positive energy.

Of course, such an abnormal sleeping pattern can't continue for ever. But it can't come to an end until this something unprecedented in my life also comes to an end. In this and other respects I'm very happy to see that I can already see its end in the horizon though I may have another, good, reason that has nothing to do with email for another type of abnormal sleeping pattern then even on Sabbath.

Asus ZenBook

My hybrid computer, which can also become a tablet if its screen is detatched, suddenly stopped working last Tuesday, and all my efforts to resurrect it for the next few days ended in miserable failure. I was left with no choice but to buy a new computer. My original plan was to buy a new one, preferably a hybrid computer with a touch screen like the dead old one, in a year or so. After a series of unexpected coincidences I ended up buying a totally different computer instead - an ultrabook with no touch screen called ZenBook by Asus - this Sunday. And I'm so satisfied with it that I've even started recommending it to some of my computer-savvy friends.

Asus was never a candicate for me, nor had I heard of its ZenBook series at all before until a sales clerk at my favorite computer store in downtown Jerusalem recommended it to me. Then I also identified it as the computer my S/O bought recently, which was also an important factor in my decision to buy this computer.

Before I met ZenBook and fell in love with it, I used to think that the future lies in hybrid computers with a detatchable or rotatable screen. But ZenBook has totally changed my mind.

The most important discovery I've made is that a hybrid computer is a compromise of two different worlds after all, and it can compete with neither a dedicated laptop nor a decidated tablet. Having realized I seldom used my old hybrid computer as a tablet and having realized that I seldom did so, I was reminded that actually I would be able to find a far better laptop computer for far less money.

This new ultra-thin and light-weight ultrabook is no comparison to my old hybrid computer as a laptop. Now I see clearly that I paid a higher price, both literally and metaphorically, for the latter. I don't even miss a touch screen. Asus ZenBook is a perfect computer for a minimalist like me, focusing on one thing and doing it better instead of trying to do two competing things and doing each of them less well. Its design is also very minimalistic. ZenBook is a perfect name for it.