Light sleeper...

My Finnish colleagues had warned me that the dark here in Helsinki was tough during the winter. I dismissed this initially, as back home I was used to going to work and coming home in the dark for a few weeks, but somehow here it seems worse. Perhaps it's because I am the only one in the apartment.

For a while, I relied on the alarm on my Nokia N95. But after a couple of times of turning it off while only half awake and then falling back into a deep slumber, I decided I needed a better solution. I tried having a second alarm in the bathroom, so that I had to get up, but found that when desperate I could ignore that one as it was not loud enough.

A couple of weeks ago, I bought a Philips Wake-Up Light Alarm Clock, which gradually lights up the room over 30 minutes and then wakes me with birdsong. It has worked really well, I then feel more awake when my phone alarm goes off and am ready for the next part of my morning ritual.

One of the things I've missed from home has been listening to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 in the mornings. Of course, I can listen over the internet, but at the time I am normally getting up, Radio 4 is broadcasting the farming programme, not a lot of use to me. So, I have been using the podcasting client on my Nokia to get the two or three interviews that the BBC podcasts each day, automatically downloaded to my phone overnight through the wireless LAN in my apartment.

So, my morning routine goes something like this ... tweet tweet ... beep beep ... "This is a download from the BBC". And just to make the experience as authentic as possible, I play each interview two or three times while I am getting ready for work, just like they do on the real programme!