I always wondered if there was something wrong with me as I can never get proper shut-eye at night, and then found that I do not suffer alone.

A random survey showed that most people in the Emirates toss and turn the whole night trying to get to sleep. "It's the daily stress of your job that keeps you awake," said a doctor, explaining the rampant sickness of sleeplessness.

When I found myself staring blankly at the TV screen in the early hours of the morning one day, I decided to find out what's wrong with me and went to the Net for answers. This was a mistake as the Net draws you into a web within a web of websites and you slowly find that you have lost at least an hour or more of your life.

One of the doctors on the internet advised that you should slowly calm down just before you get to bed. Warm milk with honey will help you relax and get you to sleep, she said. Since my cholesterol is just at the borderline, my doctor here had advised that I drink only low-fat milk.

When I looked in the fridge I found we had run out of low-fat milk, so I thought a drive to the petrol station nearby would put me in the mood to lay my head on a pillow. I grabbed my car keys and tried to quietly slip out of the flat.

While I was slipping into my jeans over my pajamas, my wife sleepily turned around and said, "Can you get some eggs and bread if you are going out?" It's amazing how my wife never misses an opportunity to make me do grocery shopping no matter what hour of the day, I mumbled to myself as I drove off.

The convenience store at the petrol station was chock-full with people purchasing sandwiches, doughnuts or getting their Salik cards recharged. "What's wrong with everyone," I thought to myself as I stood in a queue at midnight.

Many of these late-night shoppers were single women. (How did I know that? Well, all you had to do was to see what they had placed on the check-out counter — ready-made salads, chocolate bars and a pack of cigarettes).

Upset tummy

When I finally got home, I warmed up the milk and put in a dollop of Black Forest honey and slowly sipped the concoction. A few minutes later I had to make a run to the bathroom.

I looked it up again on the Net as why I was having the runs and found that I was lactose intolerant. "No wonder," I thought to myself, this happens every time I savour Indian sweets which I love. Indian sweets are mostly made of milk.

By the time I got to bed it was 2.30 in the morning. Just as I was dozing off I suddenly remembered I had forgotten to buy the wholegrain bread for my son's sandwiches. (Incidentally, convenience stores are the wrong place to find healthy food).

A doctor then informed me that my work is quite stressful. I looked it up on the Net (All this looking up things on the internet is driving me crazy) and found there are other jobs which are even more stressful. It seems it is really bad for your health if you are a nurse, doctor, social worker, food industry worker, financial adviser, teacher, sales person or an oil well worker.

I can't ever imagine me trying to advise a broke real-estate investor without experiencing a breakdown myself, or being polite to a rude patron at a restaurant who won't even give me a tip, or be a door-to-door salesperson still trying to sell encyclopedias. I would then definitely be on Prozac.