The Girl

It was a rainy day but she needed to get out. Nothing could stop her, not the thunder or lightning, or flash flood warning texts. It was that kind of day.

On days like those, her yellow boots seemed to have a life of their own, and so off they went, taking her on a path that she had never come across. But she could hardly care. Or maybe she didn't even notice. If every thought process, every neuronal activity makes a sound, you'd hear the cacophony of clicks, buzz, and ticks inside that skull, going a little overboard not unlike the time machine that had gone wrong and trying its very best not to explode. Why is all this happening, she thought. She wanted answers. She needed to talk to a friend.

And just like that, she took charge of her path again, finding her way to the coffee shop. It's a hidden gem, on the second floor of an old mansion with a flight of stairs on the right, while the left side of the house was rented to an old tailor. Skipping her way up the stairs, turning right, zig-zagging past all the tables with very chatty customers talking over the soothing 20s' jazzy background music, and not really bothered to only step on the white squares on the floor, something she usually did when she wasn't in this harrowing mood. A dose of bff-pep-talk will make it go away, she mused, crossing the common area, turning left into the corridor with private rooms on both sides, and through the double doors into the kitchen, where her friend was helping her mom making coffee and toasts. Business has always been great, but it's even better when it's gloomy or pouring outside.

The relief of finding her friend lasted about as long as two milliseconds, which instantly evaporated when she caught a glimpse of her. Another two minutes into the conversation and she found that she couldn't possibly burden her friend with her problems when her best friend was having her own crisis as well. After helping out in the kitchen for about an hour, she excused herself, after giving her friend a hug and promising to call later to talk more.

So much for talking to a friend. Outside the color of the sky matched her own dark clouds looming above her head. Again she took off wandering the streets until she chanced upon to a man who seemed like he was expecting her. Out of curiosity, she asked if he knew her. "Come, girl, I want to show you something," he replied. Usually she wouldn't have agreed to that. But it wasn't a usual day, so she followed his lead. A few broken and battered paths away, there they stood, in front of a misplaced apple-green-turquoise minivan with huge floral patterns on it, one that looked like it got teleported from the 60s. To her surprise, the van was like Doctor Who's blue police box, only it wasn't just that. Inside was an entire world of itself. But there was something odd about it. Soon she realized it was a spaceship that was about to take off. And to accommodate as many passengers as possible, everyone had only a tiny caged space slightly taller than the height of a coffin. They were all stacked in twos, and the entire place was jam-packed with rows and rows of caged bunk-beds.

The man led her to her space, with her name labeled on it, and he left without any explanation. She was speechless. Were they expecting her? Why? Where were they going? She never signed up for anything! Was this a punishment for being pathetic? Were all sad and lost souls to be sent off to a faraway prison? So many questions! She didn't have energy to find or ask the man, though. So resentfully she climbed into her space on all fours, and lean against the bars, observing others.  Soon enough she realized, the others weren't forced to do this! They actually looked excited, preoccupied with their handheld devices, perhaps thinking this was some exploratory expedition to outer space or something. Was it?

She had no clue. All she knew was that she's tired, and she just wanted all this to go away. Disappear. She wanted to disappear. Can the ground crack open and swallow her whole? If she closed her eyes long enough, maybe it would happen.

After a long, long while, what felt like an eternity of denial and refusing to face reality, she opened her eyes. And there she was. On her own bed. Alarm clock next to her bed blinked 03:38. A nightmare. It was all a dream. Felt real though. What bizarre subconsciousness has she been suppressing that had to resurface as such in the dream?

More questions. But at least this time, she didn't have to fear being deported into an unknown space while she pondered upon the message of the dream.

Untitled #3

140 characters isn't enough to let me purge my thoughts. It's funny- I told myself I wasn't going to blog until I'm done with exams and school, but I find myself keep coming back here. Then again each time I'm done writing though, it always gets deleted. Off to trash it goes, for fear that the content may be a little too sensitive or inappropriate to share on the blogosphere. Some things are better left unwritten, at least until I'm completely done with school.

One more exam to go and I'll be done. I hope. The accreditation board is taking its own sweet time to get back to us, and it's driving everyone nuts.

Every time when exams are near and I'm a little stressed, I have weird dreams. Dreamt that birds kept flying into my parents' bedroom, which is the master bedroom that faces the street/front yard, but whose windows were wide open- with no grills (which isn't the case at all in real life). Brother and I would catch them and throw them out of the window but these persistent little things kept flying back! Each of them is like a freakin' boomerang coming back at us. Fine. I'll close the windows then. I thought I'd outsmart them this time, but no- somehow mom left the middle bottom window panel opened, and through that small window, one of them managed to fly in! -___-||  And guess what? I happened to be standing right in front of it, and the bird flew right at me and got stuck at my throat. Whether I got injured or died from bleeding/asphyxiation due to the beak-tracheostomy was unbeknownst to me- I was too grossed out that I woke up.

Part two of that bird craziness. Yet another dream: Whoever's dumb idea to put a tall thin 2-meter wooden stick right in front of our house, I do not know. It's something akin to the beanstalk from Jack and the Beanstalk (and no I haven't been watching/reading/thinking about that story of late), except it's only 2 meters, and at the top of it laid a bird's nest. Someone decided that putting a nest there would serve as a decoy, and the birds would stop flying into the bedroom. It worked alright for a while, but the birds just wouldn't leave! So what did the someone do? Someone decided to fatten up the birds so that they'd grow so fat, so much so that they couldn't balance themselves (in the nest) on the beanstalk, and fell-- all the way from 2 meters off the ground. Splatttt! And died. One by one. Mission to rid the birds: success! End of dream.

Ohmygod I don't know what kind of dream that was, but it sure was stupid, nonsensical, and morbid. And yet, I couldn't stop laughing- in my dream.

Sometimes I think I need to get my brain checked.
Please do not judge me for having these kinds of dreams. I have absolutely no control over them.
Believe me when I say I'd never hurt a snail let alone a bird, in real life. But why on earth would my dreams be so crazy, trust me I'm just as baffled!

That's all for now. Happy Sunday peeps!

Distracted

summer break is so close i can almost taste it. i've drawn up big plans of what to do, which books to read, who to meet, where to go, etc. and i just can't waitttt!!!!! omg i'm so excited excited excited!  but why do exams always have to be on the last day of school? this thing that is between me and my freedom is killing me! i'll be looking at my textbook and lecture slides but the mind is at the beach, curling up in bed enjoying a book, having good coffee good conversations with friends, sipping pina colada and enjoying the seabreeze… the list goes on.

… and then somehow i'm at a clinic with Mal and she points to the highly distended jugular veins of this lady lying on the exam bench, and she struggles to breathe, she's turning blue, she reaches out to us and i see fear in her eyes. we're supposed to do something but we don't know what. shit shit shit that lady's gonna die if we don't do something about it what can we do, what should we give her, what drugs what drugs, beta blocker? ACE-I? wait or is it diuretics first? omg omg omg. the sudden panic attack brought me back to real life, and oh thank goodness that was only a dream. phewwwwww! ok i guess that's a wake-up call to go study. no more falling asleep or dreaming about summer break! focus woman!

The Chicken Residency

Every now and then, I will dream of some bizarre, out-of-the-world stuff. This afternoon nap was one of such occasions.

Plot:
I was in a car with some friends on our little expedition of treasure hunt when the heavens opened up and poured gallons of water like there's no tomorrow. Reluctant to just stop somewhere and wait it out - God knows how long we had to wait - we kept on driving wherever the road would take us. When we finally came to a stop, the sky was clear, and all of us got out of the car for some breather. To our right was an abandoned construction site, and not too far ahead was a tiny path that seemed used, leading to somewhere obscured by the abandoned building. Out of curiosity, I walked along that path, and it led me to an enchanted world of animated objects, which both befuddled and tickled me at the same time.

A few hundred yards down the path, I began to see signs of liveliness, something completely opposite of what I saw outside. Indeed, more than that, I saw rows of dancing, singing apartment buildings painted in solid vibrant colors. They looked more like town houses, or semi-D's, actually, but they were all moving and swaying with the background music all the same. Awestricken, I continued walking down the path, not caring if my fellow travelers were with me. Just as I was wondering if I'd bump into anyone, a house full of chickens came out to greet me as if I were an old friend of theirs. I went along with it, careful not to offend them by saying things like "uh do I know you" or "have we met". Just as I was about to enter the Chicken Residency, there was a poke behind, and I was greeted by an elderly chicken name Doc. Doc came over to me and hugged me, yakking away about things I know as much as I know about the different types of flowers (read: nothing at all, or very little). From the way he walked and talked, Doc seemed to be the head of the household, or someone very important. So when Doc invited me to stay for the night, I accepted. Then came the Butler Chicken, who brought me my meal - oh nice, I get to eat! I opened up my polystyrene box, and guess what was my dinner? Chicken Rice. CHICKEN RICE!!!! Of all things!! The irony of it all.

Here's the better (more bizarre) part. I proceeded to eat my chicken rice, wondering why, of all things, I was served their own kind. Out popped a tiny man in my chicken rice yelling at me, asking me to rescue him!! This miniature man that smelled like soy sauce popped out of nowhere in my box, flailed his arms to catch my attention and said to me, "help! help!" I couldn't help but asked him how on earth did he appear in my box of rice. "Well, look, don't tell anyone, but the cucumber slices are actually my port key. Here, let me show you how it works." ……

End of dream. I woke up wondering what happened to the mini-soy-sauce-smelling-man. But hey, don't you think this is a little similar to the Frog and the Princess! Haha this could very well be the Oriental version of it, and maybe, it could even be a potential Disney hit! :D  Anyway, here's a sketch of how Doc looked like. (I had no paper so I drew it at the back of an envelope). Enjoy. :)

Untangling Spool of Tangled Reds Part 1-2

[to avoid confusion, it's probably better to read part 1-1 here before you continue with this post. :)]

every life, breathed into a newborn is destined to end in death. so all mothers who gave birth to a child, inevitably also stipulated the demise of that child. as morbid as it might sound, that is just how the universe works. if you catch yourself wincing to what you've just read, then you probably have not fully understood the true meaning to life. i could go on about life and death, but that's not why i'm here. i'm here to because i have a story to tell, a story about a boy who understood the universe, arguably more so than anyone of us, albeit in his uncanny way.

it all started when my dad and i were building the tree house, and i wanted it to be painted red. dad wouldn't let me, he thought it was too much hassle, and unnecessary. after persistent pleading, and also the fact that Maya had gotten her doll house for our birthday but all i wanted was for at least one side of the tree house to be painted red, dad decided it was only fair to grant my birthday wish. so i earned myself a little sanctuary, where Maya wouldn't ever come near because she's a girly girl and she'd rather not climb up a tree if she could avoid so. which was fine by me. Mark however, always needed to be close to me, and i couldn't say no to him, so he was always around in the tree house whenever i was up there. it was weird, initially, because Mark would just sit in a corner and stare at what I was doing, like an out-of-place kid invited into a stranger's house. i tried getting him to do stuff with me, only to be met with blank expression and more staring, until one day i asked him if he wanted to draw. what happened next was unbelievable. he didn't use my crayons to draw; instead he opted for the tin of leftover red paint (for the wall) all the way at the other corner of the room and started making these abstract patterns that a five-year-old me couldn't comprehend but knew it was incredible art. imagine jackson pollock's abstract expressionist stuff. it was something like that, except it was in shades of red on white background. done by a 4 yr-old.

subsequent days flew by with a lot of anticipation on his part to make more art and excitement on my part to see what he'd come up with. Mark could work for hours without a break, while i didn't have the patience to be there the entire time he's making his art. so eventually i just left him with his activity and went about my own stuff. he started spending more time in the tree house than i did, which was fine; in fact it was great to see him engaging in something so zealously - until one day when i was up in the tree house to check on him. it was the smell that gave him away. i suppose most if not all autistic savants are oblivious to their surroundings, and the concepts of "right" and "wrong" drilled into us by our parents/caretakers at a very young age. they follow their impulse, and they only have their end goal in mind. what i saw next wasn't what i expected at all. but i guess i knew, then, that it was a glimpse of how things would end, a prologue of the beginning of an end. 

i will leave you with your imagination of what i saw that day, and a snippet of conversation i had with him years later. "why did you do it?" i asked. and he replied, in a most serious tone and a matter-of-fact way, "because." we sat there for what seemed like an eternity, and then he added, "every beginning has an end. i wasn't interfering the circle of life."

footnote: in case you're wondering, it's all fiction, inspired by a dream i had. and yes it was an intense and complicated dream. :/

Untangling Spool of Tangled Reds Part 1-1

he was always a quiet child, so much so that i couldn't even remember him crying ever since he was a child. we all thought he was born mum or deaf, or both. parents were worried of course, but they - the few pediatricians we consulted - couldn't find anything wrong with him - physically, that is. and then one day, when he was about four, he spoke his first words. everyone in the family was so thrilled it was as if we each won the biggest lottery ever. so that was four times of one Brobdingnagian lottery - priceless. only, it did come with a price after all. turned out that that wasn't the only thing we found out on his fourth year of life. like all mothers who know their children from the inside out, mom had an inkling that something wasn't quite right. and so several trips to the ped's office later, little brother Mark was diagnosed with some savvy medical term that i couldn't remember at that age. (after all, i was only a year older than him, and i wasn't quite as bright as i'd have liked - to which i attributed that cause to the imbalanced distribution of nutrients between my twin sister and myself in mom's womb.) anyway - years later, i found out his condition was called 'savant autism' or 'savant syndrome'. you see, little Mark, an autistic savant, was a special boy. not the normal special as in the 'special' that each of us are (or at least we've been told throughout our lives by our parents). no. Mark could do things normal human beings like you and i couldn't do. doctors said it's due to his condition, and so it gave him a gift in return for his extreme slowness - dad explained to me that it's sort of a trade-off with God. but the fact that he was crippled with some disabilities didn't console my bruised ego because he had this talent that i couldn't have, no matter how hard i tried. i could tell you now that, quite frankly, i was an angry child back then. i was mad at Maya for all the beauty and brain that i didn't have; i was jealous of Mark for his talent and all the attention he'd get from everyone all the time. i, on the other hand, was born of the same parental genes, yet was nothing but an ordinary child (or so i thought, at that time). but when i wasn't busy thinking about my mediocrity, i'd spend most of my time with Mark, watching out for him and admiring the gift that he had. they say memories fade in time, and tiny details would be warped into what we'd had wanted to happen instead. yet there are certain things that try as you might to distort or discard, you just couldn't. Mark and his life story was precisely that to me. i could tell you all the things that happened due to his extraordinary gift, but i could never explain to you what it was that he did, except that it was his art that he created from his genuine heart, and that it involves pipettes, a particular fluid to be pipetted, and the source of which that particular fluid was obtained. his life, to him, really only started when he discovered them... but never would he had imagined his life would end because of them. someday perhaps, i shall sit down and tell you how it all began, to the very end of it, although not all in one sitting. i am an old lady now, and old ladies like me need to pee all the time. like right now. so come back again another day, and we'll go back to the past for a little while. the red spool of tangled mysteries need to be untangled someday. before i go, that is.

footnote: the whole story was actually a dream, but if i were to tell you just the dream itself it'd be too confusing. and since the storyline wasn't in a chronological order, i fear you'd wanna punch me out of frustration after you hear the dream. so to make it more interesting, i created characters with names and added some background info to make it seem more real. i'm also retelling under the guise of an old lady. in my dream, it wasn't that elaborate of course. so read it as a fiction and don't take it too seriously. anyhow, whenever possible, i'll be jotting them down in as many parts as it would take to reiterate the dream. :)

Puffs of Candy Floss

Dreams again. They invade my sleep in the most random form. Here we go.

1. A Good Cuppa in Siberia
   snow. lots of snow, as white as white can be. snow-covered fortress. we were running at top speed the only sounds i could hear were the soft thuds of my footsteps and my increasing heartbeat. i think we were escaping from there (the fortress/prison), seeing it fading into the background as we moved forward. (no idea who i was with, but there should be about 3-4 of us.) the land ahead of us stretched for acres and acres, there seemed to be no end. seemed like we were in Siberia. we were lost, scared,  and hungry. bumped into a KGB officer; stopped him to ask for directions. (of all people, why the heck we stopped him, i had no idea. it was a dumbest thing to do if you ask me, because we just escaped from a fortress and someone could be tracking us down right now. for all i know he could've dragged our asses back to our nightmare). but lucky as we were, he didn't seem to recognize us and pointed us to the nearest town, instructed us to turn into a street named Manny (i live at a crossroad of Manning and another street. go figure how i came up with the street name. how unoriginal. bleh). at this point, i still didn't know where we were headed, but found ourselves in a big cozy store that sells toys and books. there was a little cafe in it, so my companions and i thought we'd settle for a cuppa hot choc, and figure out the rest later. *abrupt end, switched scene*
2. Lovers in the 1960s
   setting: a street in Hong Kong. rows of shoplots, just like how it was in the drama series. time: the 60s. i had company. i didn't get it at first, because i thought i was me, but i wasn't. took me a while to realize i was encased in another body--an actress. i was merely a spectator but i'm watching from within her, my perspective was her perspective, her consciousness. (kinda like in the movie 'Being John Malkovich'. except i didn't watch the movie until a week after this dream occurred. strange.) anyway. there's this guy who seemed to be interested in the actress. the lad invited the actress for dinner at his house of which he's living with his dad and twin brother. i think he didn't expect both the dad and the twin brother to be at home; so it became 4 pairs of chopsticks instead of just the intended 2. quiet dinner interspersed with small talk. something didn't seem right but i didn't know what. counting the seconds for something to happen, because i knew it's coming. and then just as abruptly the actress exploded, demanding for answers from the twin brother with strings of questions and accusations of not professing his love for her. twin brother was mum; the lad was in shock. turned out the twin brother wanted to be altruistic and all, intending to 'let' the brother have the girl. oooo drama!! so now everything is out in the open. awkward silence. (omg this is such a HK drama series plot! i think i watched too much of it when i was younger, so much so that it was ingrained in my subconscious.) *changed scene*
3. Puzzle
   [warning: at the risk of being labeled as a pervert, i decided to share this dream as discreetly as possible. so people, please read at your own risk. my advice is: if you're a conservative or just not very open-minded, i suggest you move on.]
   girl meets boy. girl and boy in a bedroom with only a mattress on the floor. boy sits next to girl, leaning against the wall. slowly inching closer, boy embraces girl from behind, chit chatting about mindless stuff. then things got strange. girl turns around to look at boy while he talks, but boy looks like someone else - another person of whom girl does not like. girl got scared. glances away immediately, and begins to contemplate escaping. but before she runs for the door, girl decides to take another look just to make sure, and boy looks like the boy she knows, as before. strange-ness increases when girl suddenly recalls that boy is gay. it's just illogical to girl that they are in that intimate situation when girl feels nothing for boy and boy likes boys. then just when you'd think things couldn't be any stranger, boy unzips his pants to show girl his 'equipment' not in the erotic way but in a professor-ish way giving a lecture on an anatomical part. boy starts by explaining that it's a man-made mechanical equipment, attached to him surgically but works exactly like a real one. girl is dumbfounded, doesn't know what to say but instead asks what happened to the real one (or was there even a real one?). boy says tragic accident , lost the real one, hence the surgical attachment. *fast forward--more demonstrations* girl cringes, and to stop herself from throwing up, she looks elsewhere: notices boy's left feet that was all black and rotten. boy says oh that. frostbite. it looks worse that it really is, i don't even feel anything. girl feels fuzzy, shifts her focus and sees his left leg that seems to be attached to the torso at the thigh part. explains why he doesn't feel anything. girl faints.
   
4. Lucky Draw
   *another scene* time: present. i was in queue with 2 other friends for something, when it was my turn i handed the lady my ticket with the number '4002020'. the lady let out a small gasp, stood up and congratulate me, told me i won some special prize. she said hold on a sec let me go check what you've won. she came back with an inch-thick logbook and pointed at the entry #4002020 that said: immediate admission to Harvard Medical School. -___- it followed with lotsa details but i won't bore you with them. such a stupid dream i know. wishful thinking...
5. Sexuality Dilemma, Not
   this last one, the most recent one. this one is quirky too. i was both a boy and a girl in the dream. or at least it felt that way. when my dad's talking to me, i was me--a girl. same too when i was with my bf (of whom only existed in that dream). but apparently there's this girl who claimed to love me, which for some reason led me to believe i was a guy when i was with her. it was a two-part story spliced in between one another, back-and-forth several times. in the dream i was trying to tell the girl off and make her understand i don't have feelings for her. but she threatened to commit suicide (oh how typical -___-). i related this dream to a friend, and he asked if i am having some dilemma about my own sexuality. of course not!!! have to admit i was a little disturbed by this, but now that i think about it, it could be that i was a girl all along in the dream, and that the other girl might just be a lesbian. nothing to do with my sexuality. phew!

okay that's about it. that's the end of my rather entertaining dreams.

at the end of the day, when candy flosses melt, they are nothing but puddles of sugar coloring. don't take them too seriously. i know i won't. ;) cheerio!

Pots of Gold - Part 2

[overdue post: continuation of Pots of Gold Part 1]
March 29, 2009

4. Kids, Dolphins, Burglary
She stirred in her sleep, woken up by noises that came from downstairs. 'twas vague, but unmistakable. It was a double-storey house, relatively huge for a family of five. It was way past midnight, she looked over and saw him snoring lightly next to her, completely oblivious to the persistent noise that seemed to get louder. she decided to check out what's going on, but just as she reached the bottom flight of stairs, she saw a guy's back facing her and the next thing she knew something hard hit her head and she was knocked out cold. when she regained consciousness, she found herself tied together with the kids and her husband, and the house was somehow floating on the sea. (dreams dont have to be confined to logic :P) anyhow, the burglars seemed to occupy themselves with whatever they were looking for, so it gave them opportunities to escape. apparently it wasn't hard at all. in no time they managed to untie themselves, jumped into the sea, swimming away from danger (although its quite illogical how the sea could be any less dangerous than a floating house with a couple of not-so-smart burglars) as fast as they could. what was pleasant about this dream was the last part: dolphins! out of nowhere they swam towards the family, as if they were godsends to help them get out of there! and so the sweet illogical dream ended with dolphins surrounding the family in the sea. :)

5. Be careful of what you don't wish for!
you know what they say about never say never, because you're more likely to get into a situation when you've got to swallow your own words when you find out you have to do the exact thing that you proclaimed you wouldn't ever do? give you an example: never say you'll never marry a smoker, cuz if and when you end up marrying one, and then you'd have to take back your words. sooooo. my dad has something against me marrying a certain race (or more). and the other day i dreamt of what could easily be his worst nightmare! hahahaha daddy, see, thats why, better not say things like "if you marry xxx race i will disown you" cuz what if i really do and then you'll have to disown me but you know you wont so you'll have to take back your words, which is really unnecessary to begin with! :D

6. Carnivorous Soft Toys and Haunted Housesigh ok i'm too lazy to write. but imagine the mansion in Addam's Family (picture above: source) and venus flytrap and petpitcher softoys. the dream went something like this: it was a family gathering, i finally got to see everyone in the family, from all my granduncles and grandaunts and my dad's cousins (i.e. my uncles and aunts, some of whom are around my age) to their kids and grandkids etc. and the family gathering happened to be in no other than Addam Family's house! 3 storeys high, not too huge, old, uninhabited for years it seemed, eerie. everything there was old and dusty, the only thing that looked relatively new (and out of place) was the aforementioned soft toys . the venus flytrap was bright red in color, the petpitcher a shocking orange, both a size just nice enough to hug comfortably. i didn't know at first, but only after using it to pacify my uncle's newborn baby boy, that i realized these two 'things' were ALIVE!!!! holy smcholy, they weren't just soft toys, they were monsters, they were the plant version of Chucky! they were possessed by some evil spirit or black magic or whatver you wanna call it...! all i knew was that the venus flytrap clamped down the newborn's hand out of a sudden and wouldn't let go no matter how hard we tried to pull it out! whats worse, it was trying to swallow the kid!!! omg. i tried to keep my cool, on one hand trying to hide from my lil' cousin's parents what was actually going on, on the other trying to pull rescue him from being eaten alive! :((( didn't seem to free the poor boy, and i just couldn't stand seeing him being eaten alive, so i forced myself to wake up. creepy dream! *sweat*

7. Primary School Reunion :)
It's our CKS 6T'96 reunion, in CKS of course. 'twas strange, the pleasant kind, but strange nonetheless. i found myself having long conversations with friends i wasn't particularly close with back then. and we were all dressed up in the same uniforms, only we were our age right now. :) it was a simple dream that left me feeling good after waking up. i like!

that's all for now. since then i had a couple more dreams but couldn't remember them. besides, they weren't good ones so it doesn't matter if i forgot them. till the next dream~

Pots of Gold

1. The "Illusions·Fatal" Pot
   if i could draw out the images (or rather, the series of images) in my head, i would. but i can't, so i won't. :P a drawing expert i am not, but here's the outline of the story. in the midst of a rainforest, i was armed with a sniper rifle going around killing everyone i saw. only the rifle didn't operate like a normal one, but was somehow connected to my brain activity (or rather, my vision). in other words, as soon as i looked into someone's eyes and eye contact was made, his head would fall off. it was a clean cut, like lasers chopping off head. and it did a darn good job at that too. couldn't remember any bloody mess (or any emotional attachments/guilt conscience as if it's such a normal activity that there's no right or wrong to it), but at the very end of it, when it was time to move on to the next level and you know you've accomplished the "mission" (whatever the mission might be -_-) -- before i moved on to the next level, i reached the other end of the river with my rifle hanging loosely over my shoulder, i turned back for a final take of the whole scene: it was sunset, the orange hue reflected itself on the sea. a sea of thick red and bobbing heads. the very ones i've decapitated. was i guilt-stricken? i wasn't sure nor could i remember. it was a very strange feeling, one that didn't sit well with me. what i was certain though, was that every action bears consequences.
   
2. "TNFDA Syndrome"
   i was dressed in a blue one-piece suit, sort of like the ones plumbers wear, not because i loved cross-dressing but for undercover purposes. the plan was to disguise as a IT software expert (where the hell i got the idea that software experts wear plumber suits i have no idea :/) and get into a tight security mansion to steal some top secret information. it was team work, my dad being the mastermind and i the accomplice. well. it was supposed to be team work, meaning we do things together and run away together if things got ugly. right?? isn't that how it should be, making sure you and your partner-in-crime gets away safely with you? it wasn't the case here. in the dream, somehow the armed security guards sensed that we were up to no good and gave chase. dad realised it earlier than i did and broke into a run -- without me!!!! took me a few long seconds (even in my dream i was the same old blur me :/) to figure out something had gone wrong and i'd better get my ass outta there. so i ran, wanting to catch up. but my dad's nowhere to be seen. at that time i felt as if that's the end of my life, i'm gonna get caught and be beaten to death. *noooooooooo* beads of sweat rolled down my face, i wanna cry for help but couldnt. right now it might sound hilarious, almost comical even. but trust me, in that dream it was all hell break lose and i felt the adrenaline rush, the kind you feel when you're running for your life. imagine scenes from the "Bourne" Trios movies. like a cat-and-mouse chase it was - a beeline of guards after me and me after... after no one, probably just my dad's imaginary shadows. -_-|| what kinda dream is that. i call it "the need for dad's approval" syndrome. in a strange way, i think it reflected my crave for dad's approval - me agreeing to be his accomplice and chasing after him: translates into me always trying to meet his expectations, or at least the ones i thought he might have of me. (p.s. there's childhood trauma/stories regarding this. maybe someday i'll write bout it)
   
3. Escapism? Again?
   Somehow i dream of cat-n-mouse chase/ running-for-my-life dreams a lot. whyyyy. do i want to get away from something in reality? sighhh. this dream is funny. and magical too. :) it was a group of primary school friends, escaping from a group of bad guys. at an abandoned construction site/parking structure, with steel bars and wooden planks everywhere. we ran up the stairs until the 13th floor, panting real hard. yet the men were still chasing and the footsteps were louder as every millisecond passed by. f**kkkk. so one of us decided that we should run to the other end to the escalators and head down. afterall, there's no where to go if we reached the top floor and we sure as hell didn't wanna make the suicidal jump. so, there were 3 narrow escalators (how the dozen of us were gonna fit in there i have no clue). we all knew that if the bad guys were in the one we picked, that'd be the end of us. nonetheless someone had to make a decision and make it fast. so i chose the 2nd one. here's the magical part: it opened up into a refrigerator. goodness! bad enough that we had to cram 12 adults into an escalator, but now we had to do that into a fridge??? whaaat!! no matter, time was of essence, so i moved the vegetables and fruits aside and stack all the racks at the bottom and make them go in. i was the last to go in (somehow we did manage to fit in it, crammed as it was) and closed the fridge door. as soon as the door's closed, it turned into a big warehouse!!! wow. :)))) told you it was magical, didn't i? we were sitting in a big trashcan/bin, the kind you see at the backalleys and in movies people often throw dead bodies in it (which i thought was the dumbest thing ever... do they really think no one would find them dead bodies and they wouldnt get caught? stooopid. -.-) . but anyhow. the big trashcan were situated in a corner of the warehouse, and slowly it began to drop. in increasing acceleration.. which became free fall. omg! when is this dream gonna end?! and then i woke up. phew! didn't have to know what happened to us. but do u realize it was a combination of harry potter plot (the secret door into a secret space) meets alice in wonderland (the free fall part) meets some HK dramas plot where the gangsters (hak seh wooi people) always chase their victims at abandoned construction sites and fight there. hahah! what an adventure! :)))
   

ok i shall continue my dreams in another post. some other time. i have 3 more dreams that i can recall quite clearly, another one not so much. i'm telling you, if these dreams can turn into pots of gold, i'd be rich by now. really.

When Darkness Falls

on wednesday (my Pushing Daisies night!!! i missed my pie-maker serving pies for this outing) i went out for dinner with my friend, and after that a christian movie titled 'Fireproof'. the acting wasn't that great, if you go by Hollywood standards; but its ordinariness in itself is great because i can totally see the scenes unraveling in front of my eyes on an ordinary day in my life - and it wouldn't have been any different from the movie. if so, who am i to judge that it's not as good, right?! after all, movies are merely stories retold by people who portrayed them stories the way they (the directors) pictured it.

but anyway, that's not what i wanted to say. after movie, my friend's friends, my friend, and i went for boba at Tea Station (Ten Ren's sister branch). someone made a comment about this author who wrote that - and i quote - "small groups are meant to die" (small groups are a group of people getting together typically once a week, to discuss issues related to their faith), to which the other person took it so seriously and reacted as if something foul has befallen him that he exclaimed, "how can small groups be meant to die??? if so, then what's the point of having it then???" and he repeated that 5 or 6 times, no joke. at that point, i was getting rather irritated by his unrelenting meant-to-be-rhetorical question. and don't get me started on the scowl on his face! for a split second, i had an urge to spring across the table and strangle him as my way of telling him to shut up. i felt like snapping back at him, "well we are all meant to die one day, one way or another, so then why don't you ask - what's the point of living then?!!! what are you even doing here??!!" instead, i held my tongue and entertained myself by imagining his reaction: him to have choked on his own tongue and pretend to need to use the restroom, or be sipping his hot tea so loudly he missed what i said and went "huh, what, i'm sorry?". he should be thankful i was having a terrible headache and that my feet was hurting from playing frisbee in the afternoon, because if it weren't for the distraction from the pain, i'd have spat out those words, i would. but i guess it's a good thing i didn't. or else i'd have one less friend, and perhaps potentially be blacklisted. sometimes having a sharp tongue isn't quite a blessing (though a lot of times i find myself wishing i had one hell of an astute mind that can defend myself in times of trouble).

******

the saddest tears sting the most. like how it'd sting when you rub your eyes with fingers that have tampered with the spiciest green chilies. the only consolation one has is that these tears don't come often. for me, it's when the things i fear most felt a little too real - in fact, too real for my liking. and the things i fear most would be none other than having the people i love most depart. (not leaving a country or anywhere, but depart from this world that we know of). that would include my friends and family and everyone whom i care, but the ones that i worry most as of now are my grandparents (grandmothers to be exact), because, well, naturally it'd be easiest for senility to creep up on them in their beds like a thief into a house and switch them onto their deathbeds when they're fast asleep.

but back to the green chilies a.k.a. the tear-jerkers. it could be anything that invoke those fears, those strong emotions that get to the core of you. it could be a dream so vivid that you'd wake up finding pinch marks all over you because you've wanted so bad to wake up from the nightmare, which you did - eventually, yet it felt so real it hurt to the bones. or it could be a book that you've read, so good it brought the story to life; and with a little bit of imagination it wasn't hard to envisage that happening to yourself. i once read somewhere that "with imagination comes fear". it couldn't be any truer. my imagination, when gone amok, makes me cringe and shudder, especially at the thought of me losing some of the people closest to my heart forever, and ever, and ever, to 'it' (to Death). Fear itself is more fearful than the thing that causes Fear in the first place, yet i'm sitting here crippled by it. don't understand why i feel this way, or allowing it to eat me up inside. no, scratch that. i do know why. i know perfectly well why i'm mortified for that day to come, and why i cried so much: i'm not ready to let go. i refuse to accept that all this will happen one day, and i put off that thought for as long as i can.

deep down inside, i know, that i can only put it off for so long. and i know, i should learn to fight that fear of loss, learn to let go, and accept it before it happens. else i'm gonna have a tougher time coping with it. but for now, tonight, at this moment, i choose to tuck that horrid thought away under my pillow. tonight i shall only remember the good times and the laughter i shared with them and the love they showered me through their cooking and nagging.

post-note: gosh why do i always get so emotional at this hour?! tsk tsk.

Hair-turn-Furby Adventure

it was a stormy night, in a dark room where only silhouettes of a man with white lab coat and the other wearing checkered robe smoking a pipe were seen, the lab coat guy was explaining to the other that he had an incurable brain tumor and he had at most 2 months' time to live. the news wasn't received quite well and it ended with a bullet in the doc's head. it felt like one of the scenes in the italian mob stories we see on tv, aint it.

then someone in the family gave birth to a bunch of hair. not like hair balls that were disgusting or unkempt but the long black silky hair that every girl desired. and it's not attached to anything, i had no idea how it stayed so neat and untangled. all i knew was that it had magical powers because it talked to us! imagine a bunch of neat shoulder length - but which by no means was attached to any head - hair, talking to us, telling us that soon there'll be people coming after us because of 'it'. because they wanna capture 'it'. apparently because 'it' was supposed to be some mystical creature that's worth a lot or can perform some magic.

The Hair told us that it's going to help us get away from the 'bad guys', so it gave us instructions to escape. first we were outside some national park of some sort, we gotta board a bus to somewhere. managed to get them off our back for a while, but when we were at the beach - the sight was familiar, felt like we were at the Esplanade in Penang - watching over the sunset, and just as we were enjoying our moments of peaceful bliss, we had to be on a run again. stupid minions of some mob boss arrghh. :< (had a feeling these people were sent by the mob boss who had the brain tumor.) so we ran and ran and came to a subway station like those in NYC. (so strange eh). gunshots were heard, somehow there were endless flights of stairs to run, and it was just annoying, it slowed us down so much and having to carry a bunch of hair with sweaty hands is not easy!! (thank god we weren't running up the stairs though) finally we got rid of them and went into this imperial-palace-themed hotel that looked exactly like one of those you saw in the chinese series. you know, with the hand-carved wooden doors and windows.

thought we were safe, but then the Hair wasn't talking to us anymore. what the heck happened we were all panicky and trying to shake 'it' and tried to make it speak to us again. nothing worked, until one of us decided that it might need some sorta nutrition/moisture if it were some kinda living thing. so we soaked 'it' in a basin of water and kept it overnight. the next day when we checked the basin the hair was gone, only to be replaced by a furby!!!! a brown one, to be exact. :) and the first thing the furby said to us was: "TOOK YOU GUYS LONG ENOUGH TO FIGURE OUT I NEED NUTRITION!!" omg at this point nothing was making much sense i was getting more and more confused. but before i got to sort things out, the mob boss' minions busted through the hotel door and that's it. we were all captured. ahhh fuck.

we were taken to this extremely vast garage that had nothing but a chair for each of us, and if i weren't mistaken there were 5 of us, plus Furby. mob boss appeared in his red checkered robe, as imagined, and his pipe in one hand. he was wearing sunglasses, but i swear i could feel the vengeance from his stares. he told us that we had to solve a challenge and if failed to do so we'd all have to die. if succeeded in solving the puzzle then we could live. but the challenge itself was so tough that it was almost impossible to solve, and i thought to myself: i've just received my death sentence. :/ i refused to continue the dream and figure out how to solve the puzzle so i forced myself to wake up.

there you go. my night-long adventure with the hair/furby and my near death encounter. thank god it was only a dream. why are all my dreams so strange!??!!

It's in our head, in our head.

The best stories told are the ones that are well-remembered even after being read quite a while ago. I have a story to tell, and even though it might not be the best story told, it’s still worth keeping a record of it.

It was a mid-summer day, and the sun was exceptionally glaring. Beads of sweat were glowing on the children’s forehead, yet it didn’t deter them from learning. The little hut they called school had no benches or desks for the children, let alone a blackboard to write on. I started talking about gravity, passing to them what little knowledge I know about the subject. (It’s strange how I went all the way to Central Africa, to teach a subject that I’m weakest at.) I remembered seeing a pile of books stacked up high, kinda like how we played Jenga, except we couldn't pull out the books from below and stack them up on top - it would've been the same height anyway. -.- Didn't really know what's the point of all that, but it was then when the other tribal people blew their horns and ambushed us from nowhere. Chaos were everywhere, people screamed and ran for their lives, except for me because I was too stunned to move my feet. Alas, a good number of us were captured and brought back to the attackers' base. Details were blurry from that point on but I knew the gist of what happened. Turned out that that particular African tribe wasn't trying to conquer our tribe by having us as hostage, but rather to feed the whole tribe. And since there were girls, the men thought they should just make 'full use' of the female species before they slaughtered us, if you know what I mean.

In that dream, I sat through the whole raping scene of all the women, and of course - I couldn't escape my fate too. But what's even more disgusting was that after they'd had their pleasure, they sawed off my leg and ate it in front of me. AND they had the balls to offer me my own leg!!! OMFG. I refused to eat it, duh. I mean, would you, if it were you?? So that was where my dream ended. I couldn't believe I actually dreamt that whole scene!!! Lost my appetite that morning. Don't know which is more petrifying - my dream itself or the fact that I was the one who created the dream. I must be sick in the mind. :/

What hit me afterward wasn't so much about the rape but the people who did that to the women. More specifically, the race/color of the men. To most people it's nothing worth noticing, because it's just a tiny detail and there's nothing much to dwell upon. But really, why is it that of all race and color, it was the dark-skinned people who committed such atrocious acts in my dream? No it has nothing to do with them per se, but rather the social stigma, the stereotyping that was preset in our head at a very early age. Since the beginning of time, it's known that the fairer the skin color is, the higher status the person will presume. It's so widely practiced it almost seemed like a law of nature. But really, is it? Says who? Did God create humans in various tones of color so that we could be ranked and socially stratified? So that a group of them could feel more superior than others and rule over them? No one seemed to question this anymore, and I don't know if anyone ever did back in the days. Oh yes, we fought for rights and have affirmative actions etc, but the truth remains - one way or another, subconsciously everyone still thinks that fairer skin is the better, more superior kind of people (even though you'll find a lot of people who'd deny it). I wonder, were we taught this in school or at home? Perhaps it's both, since parents were once taught/brainwashed in schools after all. And because nowadays we go to school to learn not how to challenge what we were told but to learn how to follow and obey rules, I doubt the social stigma will ever change.

I'm not writing this to ask people to change or to try convincing others to overturn the institution. Although, I do wish we could one day get out from this boundaries set by the institution, but I'd have to read more and do some research on it. I'm just writing this as a reflection of myself, a person who's always taken pride in being nonjudgmental toward others (or at least trying my best to do so). Yet my dream told me: as much as I want to recoil from the social stigma, I still can't help myself from falling into the pit of stereotypes. Whether I'm aware of it, I'm still no better than the rest of whom do not realize they're doing it. Sigh. But such is life. Isn't it?