The Best Alarm Clock

One of the hardest things to do for our generation is waking up early in the morning. Have you ever wondered how your parents can somehow be up, awake and active at 5 AM in the morning while you sleep yourself through noon and 20 alarm snoozes? This is definitely a question I have asked myself since years. I mean, seriously, did my parents forget to pass on the morning gene to me?

That's me about to snooze. Actually, I don't snooze. I just switch off. :o)

I have never been a morning person although the trend is changing quite a lot now and I have very high respect and appreciation for all morning people. They are usually always the ones who are more organized and no matter what the night owls claim, morning people are and always will be more productive than others. The simple reason is the fact that the normal world works the morning and sleeps the night. If you are a night owl, you may be able to do all your individual chores through the night but your productivity is zero when it comes to collaboration with others especially with those who belong to the normal world.  

In order to relieve the night owl-ers from their useless habits, I would like to recommend an alarm clock that has personally worked for me the best. I can no more complain that I didn’t hear it. I don’t dare to snooze it just out of due respect. And most importantly, it is the most peaceful way of waking up in the morning, a way that reminds me of the days when I was a kid and my parents would use the same alarm clock on a big classic radio to wake me up for school. The only thing changed between then and now is the technology being used for this alarm clock. I am talking of waking up to Live Gurbani Kirtan from Shri Harmandir Sahib.

In the old days, you needed a big complicated radio that you could set at a certain frequency at night along with the alarm time and the radio would wake you up to that channel in the morning. These radios were not easy to find. I am talking about the early 80’s here. I remember my parents getting one from the U.S. and it lasted us a good 10+ years before it gave up or perhaps we lost it during moving of houses. But now, it is easier, all you need is your MacBook and an internet connection and you can set up a Live Gurbani Kirtan from Shri Harminder Sahib as your wake up alarm from any part of the world. Here is how to do it in 5 simple and easy steps:

Step 1:

Download Audion from www.panic.com/audion

It is a Macintosh MP3 player/encoder

Step 2:

Go to http://sgpc.net:8000/ and click on ‘Listen’

This will open up your iTunes and start streaming live gurbani kirtan from Shri Harminder Sahib in an automatically generated playlist called ‘Internet Songs’

Step 3:

Change the name of the playlist from ‘Internet Songs’ to ‘Live Kirtan’ (out of respect, please, and without the single quotes)

Step 4:

Open your AppleScript Editor application. It’s easiest to find if you search for it using Spotlight, otherwise its typical path in a MAC is /Applications/Utilities. Type the following code in AppleScript Editor:

tell application "iTunes"

set this_playlist to playlist "Live Kirtan"

play this_playlist

end tell

Save this file somewhere on your computer. Let’s call it ‘Alarm’. Keep the file format as script.

Step 5:

Open your iCal application. Go to File>Create a new event. Once a new event is added in the calendar, click on the blue box and then click on Edit. Here, you can change the day and time at which you want to set your alarm. You can also name your New Event to whatever you want such as ‘Wake-up Alarm’. If you want to set the alarm to the same time every day, you can choose ‘every day’ from the repeat option. Then, under the alarm option, choose ‘Run Script’. It will ask you if you want to change the settings for just that day or for all occurrences (if you have chosen the every day repeat option). Choose based on whatever your situation is. This will allow you to then pick the AppleScript Editor file you saved earlier called 'Alarm' just under the ‘Run Script’ text as well as the no. of minutes before the event starts that you would like to run your script. I need at least 30 minutes to get out of bed, so I usually put ’30 minutes before’ in that option. Click on ‘Done’ and close iCal.

Your wake up alarm is now set. It will precisely run the script 30 minutes (or whatever you chose) before the start of the event that you created, automatically open your iTunes, go to the ‘Live Kirtan’ playlist and start streaming live gurbani from Shri Harminder Sahib. Easy and foolproof, isn’t it?

One tip for the wake up alarm is to choose the event start time x minutes later than you want to wake up. For example, if you want to wake up at 6 AM and want gurbani to play for half an hour before you think you will really be awake to get out of bed, set your event start time at 6:30 AM and under the alarm, choose ’30 minutes before’. This will start the kirtan at 6:00 AM and continue to play it until 6:30 AM unless of course you manually stop it in between.

So, set up your alarm clock and leave your Macbook on for the night as well as your internet. Even if the Macbook goes to power save mode, it will automatically wake up when the script runs in the morning. Alternately, you can go to System Preferences>Energy Saver>Schedule and set up your Mac to wake up 5 minutes before your alarm is supposed to wake you up i.e. 35 minutes before your event start time.

Do try it once. It’s better than trying to wake up to an ordinary alarm clock (which I know can be tough) and then switching on your TV to a kirtan channel (for which you have to be awake first) and of course works best if you don’t have a TV (say, in a dorm) or PTC channel that broadcasts it.

I hope this will give you some motivation to use Babaji’s words to help wake up in the morning. Since it is live and not a studio recorded kirtan CD, it really gives a fresh feeling, a feeling of presence, a feeling that you are actually waking up inside a gurudwara with path, kirtan, ardas and all morning prayer rituals happening right there in your room.

Benjamin Franklin once said, “There will be plenty of time to sleep when you are dead. Life is for living, so wake up and perform.” I hope my new alarm clock will help you to wake up, perform and live life to its fullest. Waheguru Ji ka Khalsa, Waheguru Ji ki Fateh!