I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

I was having trouble sleeping the other night. I tried everything that usually works, but just couldn't doze off. I ended up poking around on the internet and stumbled upon something that I find truly unexplainable.

Meet Thai Ngoc, also known as Hai Ngoc, a sixty four year old Vietnamese pig farmer. Nothing really special about him, aside from the fact that he hasn't slept at all in thirty five years!

Apparently this guy got sick in 1973 and hasn't been able to sleep since. I know that I can be a real prick if I don't get at least 6 hours of sleep, but I can't imagine how I'd behave after almost 12,000 consecutive nights without rest. It doesn't seem to bother Thai Ngoc. He regularly carries two 50 kg bags of grain over 3 miles to his home. Doctors in Da Nang were totally baffled, but still had to give Thai a clean bill of health. He only thing he suffers from is a slight decline in liver function. In 2006 he stated that he was starting to feel like a plant without water.

When he's not pig farming Hai Ngoc likes to stay up all night guarding his farm. He also functions as a human alarm clock for neighbors. He says he doesn't mind since he's up anyway. He dug two fish ponds in three months, while the rest of the world slumbered.

To sum up, let me put this into perspective. The last time this guy slept, Richard Nixon was president, the World Trade Center had just opened and none of the people posting on this blog had been born yet!

Whoa!