>
> I find this *fascinating* for two reasons. One, if you live in a large enough city with adequate public transportation, then it doesn't seem to matter if you live either in Stockholm, in New York City, or in Vancouver or Montreal: the average expected commuter time (by train, express bus, and subway) for travelling ~40 km around the city seems to be around 1:15 -- i.e. 1 hour 15 minutes. (I wonder if it's the same in Washington, DC, or in Toronto, Ontario or other cities?)
>

It would seem that commuters around the world agree (or could it be a conspiracy?) pretty much about the tolerable commuting time. How does such unusual (compared to what other differences there are) uniformity come about?


> Secondly, that thing about the "waking up 30 seconds before your stop" freaks me out.
[snip]
Like julian, I always woke up about one minute before my stop(s). It was an easy way to get an extra 80 minutes of sleep every day and I missed my stop only once in 3 1/2 years. Okay, so what really bugs me about this is that somehow I must have always 'known' where the bus was at all times, even with my eyes closed. However, studies of humans deprived of visual input shows that we're an extremely visual species -- we rely on our eyes so much, we become easily disoriented without them. Then it follows that perhaps I was never really asleep -- but it sure FELT like my brain was parked in gear inside la-la land?
>
> Wolf "never had any idea where the bus was located when I tried to guess its position while awake, but with my eyes closed" spirit


I think it's related to the fact that if you have been woken up at the same time of day (/morning/night) for a long period of time, you start waking up at this time, even if you alarm clock fails. I once noticed that I regularly woke up 2-5 (aka "a couple of") minutes before I was supposed to. I bet someone has done some serious research on this, but it's one of those things which I can't be bothered to find out.

jul"I'd like to have a poll answering: "Have you ever been able to train yourself to wake up at the right time?""ian