So Real... I Didn't Know I Was Dreaming... :P

I'll be back to "work" tomorrow. It's been a long break. Met lots of strange people, have a guy lined up for a meeting in a few weeks time who want something from the legendary kingdom of Mu... a contemporary of Atlantis. Luckily for me, there's people I know out there who are able to get said item. Whether its from Mu or not, I don't know... just as long as it fits the description.

Was feeling pretty exhausted today... so woke up pretty late and slept again... and didn't get my preparations for tomorrow done. :P

I had some pretty... realistic dreams... It was so real in fact that I was unable to tell if I was in a dream or actually living out the life.

In the dream, I was back some 6 to 7 years ago where I worked in a corporate office in the publishing field. I was a journalist of sorts then. The office was lighted in a rather cold flourescent hue, with grey-blue cubicles. My terminal was a little away from the other cubicles. It was like it was back when I was in charge of my own editorial team ... Somewhere at the back of my mind, there were one or two writers / helpers / assistants I was supposed to coordinate something with.

My mind was in a muddle. Somewhere deep down inside I knew I was living this life that I am living now... and then... there was this OTHER life... a life I would probably be living if nothing changed, if the last 6 to 7 years did not ever take place. The office was pretty familiar because I have dreamt about it a year or so back. I think it was supposed to be one of the field offices for one of the big press companies, either AP or Reuters... and I think I got a scolding that last time from a "supervisor" for not showing up for work when they expected me. THAT was also another very realistic dream that left me pretty confused.

Despite the familiarity of the office, the truth is that I have never seen it before in my life. I mean, I have been to the offices of some of the major publishing companies and IT firms here in Singapore, and I have never seen anything with similar decor.

Much later, I found myself attending a PR event hosted by Microsoft... yeah... that is pretty weird. It was at this hotel that resembled strongly something That I may have seen when I was in Europe. The lobby seemed like something from an "old boys' club" with butler service and everything. The oddest thing was the appearance of my sister in my dream, and in this instance, she was working at Microsoft!

My sister is currently NOT in any IT or IT related field. :P I was in the lobby fumbling around for my namecards wondering where my colleagues were. It was a familiar feeling... the PR event was apparently a movie screening some movie starring "The Punisher" but the movie was screened on a pull-down screen as reminded me a little of something I would see coming from an old projector.

The technology movie was also a little dated, in terms of the clarity and quality. No HD anything here... it was like I was watching a movie from the 70s that was in colour but cleaned up and of nice quality. And because I was pretty exhausted as well in this scenerio, I fell asleep... in my dream! Somewhere at the back of my mind, I had a vague notion of my current life, but it seemed as if my current life was a dream and whatever I was dreaming about was the real thing.

In the middle of my "dream-snooze" The Shark called me on my mobile about a play he was writing. I went out into the antique hotel lobby to talk to him, but was interrupted by two marketing ladies from Microsoft...

It was just around that time that I finally realised I was dreaming and got up. I guess I should have realised it sooner because at certain points in my dream, I did go to the office in my robes. :P

That dream was much too strange. It was like when I was dreaming about myself in the medieval era as a priest but so much more real.

I don't like the feeling but I don't know what its about. If anyone else has experienced this, do post a comment or try emailing me.

Trip To The Twilight Zone

Had another strange dream yesterday. It was sometime between 12 and 3 in the early morning. This one was like some bad episode of the Twilight Zone.

I don't really remember the starting part because it was a blur of images, the only part that I do remember was near the end where I was either on or watching some cross-country bus going from Singapore to Malaysia. It seemed like one of the chartered tour buses that leave Singapore everyday for KL or Genting. However, the bus was dark and a little shabby; with lots of school students going on some school field trip.

I got the feeling that the bus was either going to Penang or KL, but the place where we did stop at eventually looked like a small disused carpark ... the kind you might find at Kent Ridge or one of the overgrown, disused parks or nature reserves on this island. Anyways, I had the feeling that me and some of my friends came here to retrieve a missing friend or associate. The problem with this dream was that, all my "friends" were people I have never seen before in my life. They were all guys, but they don't look like anyone I know at all.

We hopped off the bus... I don't know how... halfway between Singapore and Penang/KL or wherever it was this stupid bus was supposed to go and there was this small road ahead of us veering off the main highway. It cut into some small town or estate and there were some old semi-detached houses or single storey bungalows lining the road, something like what you might see in '60s Singapore or some really rural place in Pongol.

I knew that the person we were looking for was in danger of being hunted by some supernatural dog. I am not sure what kind of creature it was, except that it was very very fierce. We went in shaking rattles and banging pots to attract the attention of the dog so that our friend could escape. Sure enough, the dog spotted us and started chasing after the group. However, at this time, our trapped friend had used the opportunity to escape and we ran to the highway.

At this point in time, the bus that ferried passengers along this Singapore Penang/KL highway was travelling along, and it was only by hopping on this bus… again I did not know HOW we did that, were we able to escape from the dog… which vanished as soon as it realized it was not able to catch up to us.

Since the bus was travelling to that disused carpark destination, we decided to ride it out and just take the return bus to Singapore. But when we got there, I noticed that some transportation or freighting company had set up shop at that place. The owner asked me to look into a problem he had. The problem was that he had big container trucks going to some place along the coastal area, but none of the people he had sent long with the trucks had returned.

Usually only the driver and perhaps one other person rides on these trucks, but strangely enough, it seemed a whole ship’s crew was ferried on this truck. In fact, the guy who managed to make it back to say that all the men had mysteriously disappeared was this old English-looking ship captain with a blue uniform, a hat, white beard and pipe!

Strangely enough, I didn’t even question the captain or the manager of the freight company and decided to ride along with a bunch of men on this container truck going to the sea. The truck had to take a route that deviated from the main highway we were travelling on and used a very very long tunnel to reach the coastal area. I noticed that lots of traffic was rushing in from the tunnel towards the highway, but I never saw any of the cars leave the tunnel because the highway I was on was deserted.

On our side, we were the only ones on a container truck going towards the sea. Very oddly, we floated like a ghost ship on an invisible current just slightly above the rushing traffic and we didn’t exit from where the traffic originated, but drove out a side tunnel. I noticed that the driver didn’t seem to think there was anything strange about what he was doing.

We arrived at what I would term a confined isthmus of land, trapped by the tunnel on one side and by the sea on the other. I saw the coastline, but we could not get down onto the water because there was a sheer cliff which was fenced off by a wire fence. At this place, I saw a small pharmacy… the captain said this was where all his men had disappeared. I had inkling that it had something to do with the strange pharmacy. It was as if the person who ran the pharmacy dispensed some strange drug that made everyone change, on the inside, and they sort of vanished upwards into the cliffs beyond flanking the tunnel that brought us here.

The captain I think knew what I was thinking and asked for a small sample of panadol… but when he opened the packet, it contained a small, brown tablet that looked more like a rough herbal tablets they sell at some Chinese medical halls here instead of the usual white panadol tablets.

It was at this point, the dream ended. I think I might have had a similar dream before as this dream seems familiar, but I have no idea what it means. I’m just putting this down so that if I should ever dream of anything or see anything similar, I will be able to refer to this post.

I have in fact seen stuff I have dreamed about long ago. I would dream of a place a few years ago and then, suddenly one day, while on some trip out of this island, I would end up in said place. I wonder what this all means.

Funny Egyptian Dream... I Wish I Could Remember What It Was About.

Was resting because of this cough I got that doesn't seem to want to go away. I really didn't intend to fall asleep because I got this big project hanging over my head and I really have to get stuff done. However, I am feeling rather distracted so I haven't been concentrating on getting it completed.

Anyway, the problem is that I cannot remember what the majority of this particular dream is about except that it was very colourful and I was rushing around. I do however remember the last part. In this last part, I am on a long dusty road that leads over rather brown landscape into a valley-like place. While on the road, it seems as if some of my power suddenly leaves me and flies down the road to this temple-like complex and enters via the main door.

I recognise this complex because it really looks like Hatshepsut's mortuary temple complex at Deir el-Bahri. However, in my dream there seemed to be more statues standing on top of the different platforms of the temple... not like what it looks like now.

In the dream, I am shocked this has happened and yet I know it was inevitable. Normally I would be panicking, but I feel a sense of annoyance and perhaps tiredness that this has happened and I am dragging my feet to the temple as I make my way there to retrieve it back. I think in the earlier part of the dream, I saw some of the insides of this temple, but the memory is vague and I don't quite grasp the details of what I saw.

I've no idea what this dream is all about, if anyone out there reading has some kind of interpretation, I'd like to find out what it is.

Busy... Busy... Busy

I really dislike this time of the year. I am really really busy because I have to wrap up some of the projects from the teams. And they have this pattern of coming in all at once :( However, amazingly this year, I am having lots of dreams at this point in time. I don't know why this is happening. Perhaps well, when I am super stressed... strange things just pop up in my dreams. Or it could be the alignment of the stars and planets as some believe. Well, whatever it is, I'd like to be able to remember some of the more interesting dreams, but well, I can't because they fade almost as soon as I am awake.

There is a particular dream I have that is recurring. I think I had it before many many years ago, but I am having it again. It's all about trying to take the right bus. In this dream, I am trying to get to the school at which I currently have some part-time lecturing classes. It seems I am in Singapore of the 1950s when there was still a lot of uncleared forested jungle or in some place in South America. I am standing along a country road looking at passing buses, to see if I can catch a ride to the school. There are no buildings around and I see vegetation and far hills, and blue skies. And always, when I do flag down and get on a bus, I ask the bus driver if the bus gets to the school. The bus driver will then say that he is not sure about the place I am trying to get to. Perhaps he is unfamiliar with the location.

In trepidation, I sit on the bus, hoping the bus will get there. Then, as I am about to lose all hope, the bus turns a bend on a very heavily forested road and there the school is. The bus driver then either says I am super luckily or says he's been messin' around with me all this time :(

In every recurring dream of this pattern, the school in the dream always looks like it is made of ancient stone and covered with creeping jungle foliage. Or it looks like some colonial or old 1930s structure whose walls have faded to a hard grey speckled with black and white fungal growths and covered with jungle creepers. It seems like a very old place, but the students are always around the late teen to young adult years. When I get to the class I am supposed to go to, I always think I'm late, but the students tell me that everything is okay and they even invite me to a kind of rough, rooftop eating place. This eating place always serves some kind of grilled/fried sausages or meat. The food is reminiscent of a very oily and salty British-style breakfast of fried bacon, sausages or egg.

The eatery is always a rough, unsophisticated place that is on the top of one of the 3 storied buildings. It is connected to other eateries on other rooftops with rickety footholds. The place itself is outdoor and the rooftop looks as if it is made of some kind of very old concrete, so old it is spotted with green algae, and black places.

The students built up a small cooking fire on which they roasted some meat. One of them had a dog, a white toy poodle or terrier type, which rolled so near the fire, I was worried it was going to turn into barbecued dog! But the students laughed as it rolled in the hot fat that dripped from the fire. They said it would be okay, but I highly doubted them.

From there the scene would change as I made my way off the rooftop, a little put off by the scene of a little dog rolling near the embers. I knew they had somehow got the dog to do that, but I didn't know how it could willingly, even playfully roll itself through what amount to hot fat. :( When I went down to the ground floor, I think I arrived at the administration area. It was crowded, old and decaying. There was a reception window with a small ledge-like counter. It seemed as though many people were trying to speak to someone in the school's administration, and they loitered around that small window, trying to stick their hands across the counter.

At this point, I'll usually wander around this crowded area and would sometimes meet someone I have not seen in years. In this version of the dream, I saw a guy I haven't seen in ages. He is an acquaintance who is quite a pretender and who fabricates lies about himself as easily as he breathes. I have learned never to believe in a single thing he says. We met this time in the dream, and there was none of tension that built up in the last days when I saw him. He brought me to one side and showed me a comic. He said he drew it after a story I had written long ago.

After that, the scene morphs into some kind of fantastic fantasy novel. I recognize it as a story I wrote in the distant past, it seems familiar and I know all the main players in this tale, but the truth is, I have never written this particular story at all in this lifetime. :P

Was this a flashback to an earlier lifetime? Or is it something in my subconscious that are meshed with random images? I can't tell. Sometimes, I would like it if I could dream of my past life as it was, without the bias of interpretation from my experience in this lifetime. But I wonder, would I actually be able to understand what I see? It could consist of scenes so alien that there might be no modern interpretation of whatever transpired in some faraway time.

Dreams of World War II

I've been having some pretty strange dreams recently, and I'm putting it down on the blog for future reference.

Yesterday, I had a strange early morning dream. I woke up with the lights on in my room at about 9 am after falling asleep halfway though doing a project at about 3 am. You know, you tell yourself, I'm gonna just rest my eyes a little and then... Zzzzzzzzz you are in snooze-ville.

Anyway, I was so tired at 9 am on Sunday morning, I decided to sleep in and went back to sleep again. Almost immediately I started dreaming. I dreamt I was taking the MRT (that's the subway here) in Singapore, but that scenery was all wrong. Most MRTs in this country are quite nicely done. They are nicely tiled, some have pieces of floor or wall art and are mostly tiled in polished granite or some kind of stone. However, the subway in my dream was grey, and had a very unpainted or roughly painted concrete look. Something like what I saw of the Metro in London when I was there about 10 over years ago.

Suddenly, there was a flash and I felt a sensation of falling. Although there was no physical movement in the dream, I saw my dream self "fall" into a different time zone. There was a loud explosion and I looked around, shocked to see English people dressed as though they were in the 1930s or 1940s with ladies in hats and men in grey coats and funny fedoras. I found myself in my normal clothes, with an additional wraparound shawl/blanket/cape that looked a rough blue (it was confusing so I'm not too sure about the details). I panicked finding myself in such strange place. However, there was no doubt in my mind where I was.

I was in the Second World War in the middle of London. I felt the need to get somewhere. I have this notion that the place was some kind of safe place or hospital or even some kind of strange mystical place which was causing this very chaotic distortion of time and space to happen. The name amazingly was Indian and had two words starting with "P" and "R". I know it was a very long name, but I think the meaning of the place was something like "a place of peace", "a haven of peace/harmony" or "garden of peace"... this elusive place seemed to be some kind of retreat or cloistered sanctuary run by some kind of guru. And yet, the temporal distortion came from that supposed sacred place. Yes, I did get the notion there was an element of the religious sanctity to it.

I ran around trying to find a train that would go to that place. In between, the scenes kept alternating between ... amazingly... modern London and World War II London. Halfway though, I received a phone call from Nashran. I heard his voice clearly, but there was some static and he didn't seem to be able to hear me. He asked me where I was. I said that I'll try to get to where he lived.

As I was trying to get my phone to work so I can contact him and tell him what was going on, I saw strings of algorithms and programming script coming out on the screen of my mobile. It was as if my mobile was trying to tell me that its programming was going haywire with all the temporal shifts.

While I was stumbling through subways and time, I remember standing around in a grey place, perhaps a hospital, perhaps a makeshift care unit in the subway, and there were nurses in old style outfits standing around. They had bluish uniforms and white aprons with the old-style caps on their head with the distinct red cross logo. Outside what appeared to be a window a bomb exploded and I saw the flash of the bomb.

Eventually, I stumbled to the entrance of a metro and at this point in time, my mobile was going crazy in my hand and I was unable to navigate the mobile's menus. Frustrated because I was certain some magic was afoot, I drew up a magic circle in front of all these commuters streaming out of the station and did a spell to get rid of whatever interference was causing the device to go haywire. It did help in that I managed to surf to the right portion of the menu I was looking for.

The dream ended just about there.

Now, I know that I have been alive sometime in the Second World War in London. Were these flashbacks of that chaotic era? I don't know. It wasn't too clear to me what I was doing running around in the subway and seeing nurses. I don't think I was a nurse or doctor back then, so what was I doing there, walking through the rubble that was London?

Not every dream I have which has probable past life memories are really as clear as the one I had of myself as a priest in France. Sometimes they are just fragments. And they leave me wondering what I was doing in the middle of all that chaos. No, I don't have battlefield dreams. The closest thing to that was as a petty officer in the time of the Napoleonic Wars... probably on the British side.

Yeah, I have been born in merry ol' England or in a nearby country many many times in the past. That sorta makes me wonder why I am in Singapore now. I mean, really... I am the kind of person that like a familiar setting, so I am not too sure if it was really my choice to opt for life in Southeast Asia in this lifetime.


PS: I chose this archive pic of World War II so you can get an idea of what I saw in my dream. hmmmmm......now to think about it.. that wraparound could be something like the nurse's cape... but still, I'm pretty sure I was a guy back then.

Bad Start To The New Year...

Went back to work today after the long Christmas break. Things really sucked on the first day of the working year. No one was in the working mood and well, it was really hard to get my instructions understood. Was in the office talking to some of the other team leads, one of them told me a pretty depressing story of how one of the team leads lost two members of his team to suicide in one project cycle (usually a few weeks). He never saw it coming...

"I mean, how could he know..." she was saying. "We can't read minds..."

A very sobering thought. But he could not have known. It's strange, but its always the people who need help the most who say nothing about their situation. There was this lady in my teams once who certainly was a loner and said nothing to the others. However, it was clear that she had a definite problem. At first, I thought it was a case of some kind of anti-social behaviour or shyness.

As it turned out, through a rather convoluted series of events, I found out that she had a potentially life-threatening physical conditioning. I mean, I understand that there are those who desire privacy above all, and those who want to be regarded the same as everyone else, but surely something like this should be voiced out. I mean, if she had fainted while we were on the job, I wouldn't know what to do, except call for an ambulance.

The preceeding weekend was crappy too. Had a bout of tummy trouble on Sunday that felt like hell and which is caused in part by some kind of very hard mini rice-flour creations I had on Saturday at an experimental cooking party and the fact that on Sunday, I didn't have breakfast and a heavy lunch.:P It was like stomache flu and food poisoning rolled into one. I had a fever and chills most of the night. Couldn't do anything much except lie around and grouch.

Lately too I've had some very strange dreams. I tend to forget most dreams because they are usually not very vivid and pretty mundane. Stuff like running around in Singapore and seeing everyday people down at the commercial district. Recently however in the early morning hours, I've been having dreams about unquiet spirits, strange alien-looking body parts and some organ that looked like it had been preserved too long in formaldehyde or had been sitting in a rotting corpse too long. It was certainly some reproductive organ but it er..... did not look human. I got the feeling it was a female body for some reason.

Today I had another weird bunch of dreams. I dreamt I was in a place that looked Arabic in design and some lady with a large family was at the hotel counter trying to order breakfast for all of them.... presumably to have in the room. Since there was no one around, I helped to take the order... she was a Singaporean Indian lady and wanted 3 different breakfasts.

1. Winter Melon (just the melon, nothing else... yucks)
2. Ampala with curry (I don't know what Ampala was, but apparently she meant some kinda dough bread. I checked it on google. Ampala is either a place in Honduras... :P or some mango-like fruit they use in a drink that is popular now in Penang, Malaysia.)
3. Porridge (I think it was the Chinese kind. Not congee, but more Teochew style where you can see the grains of rice)

Well... i gave the order to the hotel staff, but they thought I had interfered and screwed up the order so they called the lady's mobile for confirmation. :(

I wonder what all of these dreams mean. I don't think I have ever been anywhere like in the dreams, and certainly that whole Ampala thing was new to me.

Strange Dreams... Too Much Gaming Or...

I am prompted to update this because I noticed that recently, I've had a lot of very strange dreams regarding religion in particular.

Now, I draw a distinct line between religion and spirituality. To me at least, when I refer to religion its mostly in reference to the form and practice of religion. A person can be religious, but not necessarily spiritual. He or she can go through the motion and process of the religion and attend all the related events, but not necessarily have a deep understanding of the belief or a close relationship with the being/beings associated with the religion.

For me at least, a person is spiritual or waking a spiritual path when he or she makes effort to gain a deeper personal understanding of a certain belief system or makes attempts to build relationships with beings in an associated religion or with the spirit world in general. Spirituality is an internal process of understanding, evolution... and sometimes transformation, according to the belief system the person subscribes to.

So I've had dreams about religion in past few weeks. In particular, I had a dream where I was a kind of investigator... I think... sort of in the whole Sam Spade - Maltese Falcon mood and tone. The dream story started with someone discovering the actual historial site of Camelot. That's right, King Arthur with the knights and the whole hog. They even found the remants of the round table, it was some stone thing that was blacked, withered with age and even broken down the middle. I guess I was there because I felt there was something pretty strange going on with the people who were excavating the site.

And my hunch was right. The excavators turned the site into some kind of theme park. I supposed at first that they were going to do the whole King Arthur thing, but as it turned out, the theme park was one where they featured different systems of belief. The people in the park even built different versions of what each religion regarded as "heaven". Curious and very suspicious, I went to the "heaven" of believers in the Norse religion. It was a house that looked a bit like a rich viking style habitation, but at the same time, it was fake and had the fake theme-park styled trappings.

Oddly enough, there were people going inside who really believed they were in the viking heaven ... some shabby Valhalla... I noticed in corners of this viking style longhouse that there were construction people busily tapping away at the timbers. Because the longhouse was of a limited size, I asked the person in charge of this exhibit what would happen if "heaven" became too full. He said that if that happened, they would throw out everyone who was excessively drunk.

For those of you who don't know viking lore. Viking heaven or Valhalla is somewhere where brave viking warriors go to when they are killed in battle or die in a violent manner. There they drink and feast all night and fight battles in the day forever and ever or until Ragnarok (Twilight of the Gods, or the end of the world...). At least, that's how its supposed to be.

When I heard that people were getting "cheated out of heaven" so to speak, I felt pretty annoyed by the whole smarmy setup and decided to expose the whole theme park at a certain big event. I would show them with my magic what the real world of spirits and incorporeal beings is really like... I thought.

Now, bear in mind, this was my reaction in the dream. I won't necessarily do this same thing in real life.

Just before I was about to step out and "do my thing"... the mask that I was wearing cracked... split down from the top to the bottom. Why am I wearing a mask? It's pretty simple really. Lots of people whom I live and associate with are pretty normal people. They have no idea that I am doing this whole magic and spirtuality thing. So yeah, I do wear a real mask when I do stuff in public that has to do with magic or alternative spirituality.

The dream ended with me trying to repair my mask... unable to go on and expose the frauds... it disintegrated into fragments in my hands...

I told this dream to F, a very good friend who is on a spiritual path as well, but slightly different from mine... she only remarked it was "very interesting" and asked me what my interpretation was as to the whole mask-splitting thing. I shrugged in response. F has on many an occasion before asked me if I am going to continue living as I do ... wearing a mask and pretending half the time that I am not into the whole magic-alternative spirituality thing...

I never give her an answer. I just say... "We'll see..."

I had dream No. 2 last night... or rather early this morning... I don't really remember much of it save that it was very strange. I was in a "resort" of sorts this time. (I'm using the word "resort" because I cannot really remember what the situation in question was about. But it feels like a resort. Although in retrospect, it could have been the compound of some kind of American style cult)

The resort wasn't really built. It was still in the very early stages of construction and mud was everywhere. I think either myself or someone else placed a dead deity on the land. However, I ended up being the one who was shovelling earth around to make sure the being was well burried. I think at one point I was even crushing holy books into little bits and throwing it into the grave. Deep down inside there was something that knew if I kept up the effort, this being would arise and we would destroy everyone. And yet, my lips said to everyone that what I was doing was "necessary". I think deep down I knew I was "growing a god".... so to speak... but at the same time, it had strange religious overtones which .... now thinking about it... I am distinctly feeling a great deal of discomfort.

Eventually, when all the earth was shovelled in the right place and the land was shifted so that it was now very different looking than it was before, the deity arose. It was large, awful and reminded me a little bit of a very large Jabba the Hutt... just with spindy, short legs. I realised in a moment of clarity that I too looked like this this being. I waddled around on my spindy legs, except I was shorter.

In my panic, I got on my vehicle... really a small office-like chair that moved faster than a person can run but not as fast as a car and paddled it with my legs. I think I did backtrack to get some stuff I left behind, but that was not a wise choice as it meant that the being was now so much closer to catching up with me.

I "paddled" up the road and found that the entire world around the "resort" was nothing but a wasteland of crumbling suburban buildings and dried weed spreading in a thick tangle on the road and almost impossible to move through. I then ran to a place where some people were getting into cars and tried to get on one, but they did not stop to let me on. The car I tried to stop was a white station wagon with a Mexican family and kids who were sitting with a large old-style computer monitor in the ample back portion of the car. They stared at me as the car moved off.

At this point, I noticed that the cars had found a way through the tangle of dried weed and there was a highway that stretched into what appeared to be the Arizona desert... going on in infinity towards distant mountains that were wreathed with dark stormclouds.

And that was where the dream ended.

I'm not too sure if the dreams are telling me something about what is going on internally or if I have been reading too much sci-fi and fantasy or playing wayyyyy too many games, but I thought it would be good to make a record of the dreams I've had somewhere.