Dreams

Another week, another terrible week of output. It’s like my mind is also preparing to move and has decided to clam up.

Jul 26 2023

• I dreamt that I was at Ah Ma‘s house, my paternal grandmother’s place, but in Japan. There were 9 of us in total, 4 males and 5 females, and this group of people included me, Dad, Ah Ma, Harvey, and Tsukasa from the Tonikawa anime. We made plans to drive from there to a bus terminal and then catch a bus from there to a beach, and we were all either neutral about or in agreement with the idea so it was decided on in quick succession and everyone stood up to leave. Everyone except Tsukasa, that is, who was sleeping while seated at one of the low floor tables that everyone else had been lounging about at as well. Apparently the rest knew that she would be reluctant to go so they didn’t bother waking her up.
• I had wandered outside to do some gathering, collecting green leaves from a tree and then realizing that a footnote in a crafting guide I had been reading about some white fabric that could also be collected from the trees, was in fact referring to the white fruit from the same tree. Most of the fruit was too far up but I reached up and managed to grab a couple of the lower-hanging ones.
• Once I was done, I wandered back in to find that Tsukasa had just woken up, all bleary-eyed. I told her that everyone else was getting ready to go to the beach, and as expected she didn’t want to go and didn’t mind staying behind. I guessed correctly that it was because she didn’t want to be seen in a bikini though, and I told her to come along and not to worry — I would not be wearing one in solidarity too. Or rather, I would be wearing a large, plain T-shirt overtop of it and would not be taking it off.
• She agreed, changed her outfit, and then collected her things to come along as well. One of the other people, not any of the five above, was a background character here and yelled out that all the girls needed to be in bikinis. I refused and retorted that Ah Ma was technically female too but because she was really old, she was obviously exempt from that, but that could hardly mean “all” of us had to anyway. In the end, neither Tsukasa nor I went back to change to something skimpier.
• We took three cars of three people each to the bus terminal. I went in a car with Dad and Tsukasa, and we reached there well ahead of everyone else and went to queue for the bus, which was the rightmost line in a square, partially-covered bus terminal foyer with about ten different concurrent queues for different buses. Most of the other people around us were Japanese and were speaking Japanese.
• We began to chat while waiting and watching out for the others to arrive. We noted that this beach trip was actually an alternate arrangement, our original itinerary had some more friends coming to visit us at Ah Ma‘s house, but someone got an incision on his finger and a group of people couldn’t come because of that somehow.
• I pointed out a mall across the road to Tsukasa and Dad and asked if that was Londonderry Mall, and got an affirmative answer. I said that I really loved a noodle store in that mall and that we could have gone there instead of our beach trip and maybe still should. Dad said that Tsukasa and I should try to not talk too loudly and noisily as we continued to chat away incessantly.
• Editor: The taste/smell of some noodles in particular did come to mind, though the particular taste I was reminded of was actually a noodle store in the old Sembawang Shopping Centre that no longer exists.
• Finally, we saw the other 6 people walking toward us from the carpark. As they approached, I looked behind us at the people flowing in and out of the foyer and saw Alvin Foo, or an older version of him even though his face looked exactly the same. I gave him a hug and called him by name, and he asked in puzzlement if I was someone he should know. I whispered to him my original name and that I had transitioned several years ago, and while I had reached out to some old friends since then, I didn’t have his email address to reach out to him. His eyes flickered in recognition and he returned the embrace happily. I wondered if Harvey would still remember him from our days in Rosyth together.

Jul 30 2023

• I dreamt that I was overlooking an excavation effort being done by a team consisting of a bunch of friends from online and from my childhood schools. I think among other people I remember seeing Yongrui there, and possibly Leon as well.
• There was a doorway set into the side of a small building in a residential area with HDB flats and some small shops around, but the actual rooms inside the building were solid rock and had to be mined out voxel-style block by block, which took a lot of effort and time. I and several others who were not volunteering for the digging part of the job waited outside the building to guard over it while those who were helping me dig squeezed past an empty treasure chest that was blocking most of the doorway, and went inside to dig.
• At the end of the evening, I pulled the treasure chest out and entered the building to see how much progress had been done. To my surprise the team had already basically finished excavating the place, and were very proud of their handiwork. There was a passage leading to a large room with a tall ceiling and a few adjoining rooms off of it, and in the room was a place to put some parts for a rocket launch as well as some other things that I don’t recall.
• This signalled the next part of the event, which we could leave until tomorrow as it was now the end of the working day. This second part involved forming groups of 4 and raiding some sort of dungeon to retrieve parts to fill the missing exhibits in the room and eventually start the rocket launch.
• I signalled to some friends that I would be willing to lead an exploratory mission from home that evening though, and would take along Steffy and Satinel, who were nearby and agreed to it, since I knew they were also commonly online in the evenings. The expedition would take 4 people, so I would just have to find one other person, and I was more concerned about leaving potential interested people out than not being able to find anyone at all.
• There were a few weird snippets connected to the dream that I remember, for example Steffy said around here that people often found this zone or game uncomfortable due to the background music being a certain pitch or volume or something like that.
• Also, Dad called me and told me to look at the government website for the game, there was some sort of announcement for “today”, which was the 21st of the month, that said that everyone had to validate their identity by calling in to a hotline and identifying a slightly pixellated picture that they were given on the website. The picture was different for everyone, and I saw that my picture was a small plastic bear seated on a toilet seat, so I told Dad that I should have no problems with this quiz. The government was also considered the “enemy” in this game that I was playing and leading an exhibition in, so I didn’t really care about them too much outside of staying out of trouble.
• I also realized that because the game itself was being streamed to our computer by torrents, once I “logged out” of the game I could still explore the areas around me via walking up to them before the data packets decayed, since the data packets were stored locally on my computer, without actually visiting the locations in-game, which could arouse suspicion. I managed to walk up to a small bookstore and take a look at the books within, for example, while in this semi-offline state, without ever going anywhere near the store in the actual game. The packets underwent several stages of decay, each stage taking a few seconds longer than the previous one, and they decayed in order from the furthest areas away from where I logged out to the nearest areas, so it was basically a ring around me that slowly shrunk and restricted my movement until there was nothing left.
• In addition, there was something about dividing a rectangle up to figure out its length and breadth from its area, and then from there figuring out what its four vertices were. One of the numbers involved in the rectangle was the number 31, and I wondered how that divided nicely into anything since it was a rare prime number itself.
• Lastly, there was a scene where I returned to a temporary room that I was staying in and saw a bunch of ants on the floor. I followed their trail and saw that it led to a dead moth on the ground, and some ants were carrying off its wings and other body parts. I took a broom and swept the dead moth outside my room.