The common adage “different strokes for different folks” applies well to me and my roommate of two months, Ronald.

Although we have so many things in common (we are both graphic artists, love women, and are Bicolanos, hailing from the same province of Sorsogon), we are quite opposites in a lot of ways, especially when it comes to our sleeping behaviors.

He never finds it a problem to sleep with the lights on and an onset of loud music. These things don’t bother him, not one bit. And he doesn’t move about that much on the bed, habitually waking up in the same “plastered” position he was in when he closed his eyes. I tried once if I could awaken from his golden slumber by watching Return of the King with the volume at full blast. How I miserably failed like Sauron in his evil bid to conquer all of Middle Earth! True to form, he hibernated like a bear, almost never twitching or twisting in his bed. The next morning when he awoke, I told him I was sorry for the noise of the movie I was watching that night if it somehow disturbed him in his sleep. He was surprised to know that I was watching a movie when he thought I was asleep too for he never heard anything. Can you believe this guy? At the level of volume I was watching Peter Jackson’s film, you’d have thought that Aragorn, Legolas, Gandalf, and the Hobbits were right there and then in our flat doing their heroic battles against the Orcs and Nazguls.

All I can say is that this hobbit sleeps very deep in his hole. He sleeps as if he is in a coma, like Frodo in Rivendell after being stabbed by the King-Witch of Angmar at Weathertop. The whole Battle at Helms Deep or at Pellenor Fields could be happening right beside him but I am pretty sure he'd still be sleeping soundly like a baby.

He can even sleep continuously for twelve hours standing up only once to go to the john to relieve himself. Then after four to five hours of being awake, he can easily go back to bed and doze off in an instant. Eight hours of sleep or more is what he needs each day. Less than that weakens him as if he is carrying the one true ring. He is consistently late at work because according to him it is a hellish struggle for him to wake up everyday, needing three alarm settings before he can fully move about… sluggishly at that.

I am definitely the antithesis to his snoozing practices, the other end of the sleeping spectrum, the wide-awake Sam to his resting tired Frodo.

Usually, it takes ten to fifteen minutes for me to properly settle in and be “half-dead” to the world (I am helplessly a light sleeper – a Sam always on the lookout for Gollum). I find it hard to sleep without any good cloak of darkness enveloping my room or if there is noise. A wee amount of sound can simply rouse me, and once I am awakened, I terribly find it hard to return to dreamland. It would take me at least thirty minutes to an hour to revert back to any comfortable state of slumber. And oh, I am utterly restless and restive on the bed, assuming quite a number of sleeping positions throughout the whole night. Sometimes I’d wake up with my head on the part of the bed where my hobbit feet should have been and find my beddings, bed sheet, and pillowcases all in disarray.

Another problem of mine is that my body clock is programmed to wake me up at 7 a.m. daily. Even if I sleep late, I’d helplessly open my eyes at this particular time, stand up, and go to the toilet. On some days, even if my eyes are still clamoring to be shut, it is useless for me to clamber back to bed because my mind and body by then would already be fully charged. Unlike my roommate, I don’t really need an alarm because I usually wake up minutes before it is set to go off. And when I am awake, I am awake. I don’t have to literally drag myself to move about and fix myself to prepare for the day. Five hours of sleep is enough for me. Eight is proper. More than eight would give me terrible headaches.

Maybe, it’s because I, Samwise GamgeERIC, am insomniac and love to be awake, whereas FROnalDO is narcoleptic and is hungry for sleep.

Lastly, one more unlikeness we have is that he snores. I don’t.

Ah, well, to each his own -- different sleeps for different *peeps.

Different habits for different hobbits.

(Coincidentally, he is the one who replaced me in previous company where I worked and most of the people there don’t know that he is my roommate.)

*A Tagalog slang for people.