Having trouble getting out of bed in the morning? Try these simple tips. Open your curtains before you go to sleep. UV rays will stream into your bedroom in the morning, melting your eyeballs and causing you to jump out of bed. Figure out which hot guy or girl who lives in the building opposite has read the above bullet and time your own wake-up to theirs. Put on your sunglasses (to protect you from the rays) and get out your binoculars (for obvious reasons). Move your alarm clock out of arm’s reach so you have to get out of bed to turn it off. Gradually move it farther and farther away to motivate you more. I keep mine in my office so I have to go there in the mornings to turn it off. Enlist a friend who rises early to provide you with a wake-up call. Look for someone who is punctual, reliable, and has a deep sultry voice. Start a prank war with your doorman in the hopes he’ll dump a bucket of water on you. Go home with a really ugly person so you’re incentivized to get up before he or she does and run away. A large, friendly dog like a golden retriever is a great wake-up call. It would come into your bedroom in the morning and lick your face. A small, toy dog like most dogs in Hong Kong is a great wake-up call. The pleasing aroma of roast chihuahua is enough to get anyone out of bed and ready for breakfast. Try to reverse your schedule so instead of getting up at 6:30am, you get up at 6:30pm. Congratulations, you are a vampire. Try one of those alarm clocks that use a shaking motion to wake you instead of sound. Rest well in the knowledge you’ll be slumbering peacefully during the next earthquake. Schedule important things like major surgeries or weddings before 7am. Don’t go to sleep ever. This will prevent Freddy Krueger attacks. Hire a hitman to murder you. You’ll wake up at least 10 times during the night in a cold sweat. Set all the clocks in your home forward 30 minutes. After a while, your mind will know this, so set them forward another 30 minutes. Then, when you adjust to that, get a friend to set them forward OR backwards 75 minutes. When that gets too easy, have a colleague set them forward OR backwards 770 minutes. What? You missed your meeting? That’s weird. Go to sleep standing up in your suit in your office. Shower with a wet wipe. Hire Leonardo Dicaprio to incept your dreams so they suck as much as the third dream in “Inception” on the ski slope. You’ll wake right up and wonder why he went to all that trouble instead of just sneaking across the border. Create a Rube Goldberg machine with a prosthetic arm, some Cheerios, a rodent treadmill, five pool cues and a trampoline. I don’t know how it works but it will probably end with some parrot yelling, “Wake up! Squawk! Wake up!” Sleep in a bathtub. You’ll wake up in the morning when someone starts showering. Move to an apartment where they start doing construction super early and the jackhammering will wake you up. This means you can move to absolutely anywhere in Hong Kong. Yalun Tu is a columnist for HK Magazine. You can reach him at yalun.tu@gmail.com or @yaluntu on Twitter.
