Dreams

I complained on the morning of the 18th that I hadn’t had any cool/long dreams in a long time, and bam, on the night of the 18th/morning of the 19th, I had a rare 4-dream recall session with some cool plotlines in there. It’s only the 5th time in my 6-year dream journal that I’ve had a Dream 4 entry on any single given night. Now, I’d like to complain that I haven’t managed to go study abroad yet… nor win the lottery…

Also, I dreamt about Deep Rock Galactic twice this week, on Aug 18th and 19th. How interesting. And lastly, the actual 6-year anniversary of my dream diary is next Thursday, since the first entry in the diary dates from Aug 25 2016.

Aug 15 2022

• It was late at night on the last day of school, and the last day before Kel went to start graduate school. Kel wanted us siblings to go out camping but Mom had said no. I talked to Kel and then to Mom and brokered a deal where we could instead bring our mattresses out into the living room (which looked like my Edmonton 205 room) and “camp” there instead — both Mom and Kel were agreebale to this but Jon said no because it was too much effort for no scenery change. So in the end it didn’t happen and I was frustrated about this.
• Dad went to bed early this night after it became evident that he didn’t have to drive us anywhere. He had gone out to buy some late-night groceries on his motorbike first. When he got back and was about to go to bed, he declared something about only using analog clocks as alarm clocks and not digital ones. We also reminded him that the Edmonton Oilers were playing a playoff game on the radio.
• We also turned on the TV to tune in to the game. The arena was very odd and the opposing side had no goalie, but there were some wooden blinds with stylized Japanese art on it pulled down from the upper rim of the net and dangling in front of the goal. It felt like the goal was an entry to a kitchen. Zhijun was squared off with an opponent just in front of the opponent’s goal and he suddenly took a shot at the net even though he was normally a defender. The puck/ball flew toward the net, hit the blinds, and fell to the ground in front of the goal. No one else seemed to react so he lunged forward and scooped the ball/puck over the goalline with a spoon to score a point. We cheered for this at home.
• There was also a 4-player game segment where we were on a board with square grids and all of us had hit points and magic item stats — I had 2 magic items, one of the other players had 3, and the other two had 4. We were roaming around defeating enemies in turn and I was doing just fine with my two, until someone triggered an event that led to a wave of snakes flooding the board and moving left to right. This overwhelmed and defeated me, but not before I took down several of the snakes near me, so when I respawned back at my starting square, I hurried back to that area to loot the items that the dead snakes had dropped on the ground — there were boots, bracers, and one other piece of equipment that I took and equipped since I had plenty of free item slots.

Aug 17 2022

• I dreamt that I had taken the spare circular chair from next to my computer out of the apartment with me because I wanted to get rid of, and also because it was municipal voting day in Edmonton and apparently I had an option to submit the chair to the polling station to cast my vote.
• I first strolled out of the house and headed south with it, over a large hill and some empty streets, visiting and then leaving some sort of building with other people in it. I then picked up a flyer telling me where all the polling stations actually were, and I saw that there were 6 polling stations plus 3 bonus ones, and the nearest polling station was a little bit further south and west from where I was.
• However, at this point I started to worry. I knew that people usually had an assigned voting station in prior elections, and there was no news of that in this election — in fact, I didn’t get any sort of voter card, so I wasn’t sure if I would even be able to vote. Would just submitting the chair be enough?
• I also thought at first that if I couldn’t vote, I could just leave the chair there as well, but then I realized someone else could take and submit the chair instead and I didn’t want them to do that. At this point, I began to have second thoughts about even getting rid of the chair — Kel would use the chair to sit on when she came over to my apartment, after all, and where would she sit once I got rid of it?
• I decided that I would keep the chair instead, though it would mean that I would probably have to leave it outside somewhere when I went to try to vote and then pick up groceries and carry it home with me again afterwards. At least it would be well-travelled like some of my plushies.

Aug 18 2022

• I dreamt that I was just finishing 2nd year University with my friends from Dunman High, but they were just finishing their 4th year and would be graduating this year and leaving the Discord server that we were all apparently in. I was really sad about this, even though we barely ever used it to talk, because it meant that my one link to them was severed and that we couldn’t go for a meet up if we were ever in the same location and it was announced on the server. I thought of Debbie and our meetup when I last visited Singapore.
• This was made more perplexing, but also sadder, by the fact that even though they were graduating, my version of the 3rd year University that I was going into would still feature them from 2 years in the past, as it was a sort of broken time travel, but because they were actually graduated and no longer there, I wouldn’t really be able to interact with them, only watch them, as those past events had already happened.
• Later, I was outside the University train station/bus terminal and summoned a dungeon in front of a mall that consisted of an opening that was a large shark head with open jaws, and a shark tail several meters away. I went into the shark head and found some things to collect, including a couple spheres near the back of the dungeon that I had to carry out one at a time. The dungeon had an exit near the back as well, and that was an opening that dumped me out of the dungeon next to the shark tail. For some reason, I couldn’t use that opening to reenter the dungeon though, so I had to go around to the shark head to enter again to pick up the other spheres, each one as large as my head.
• The second or third time through the dungeon, I noticed a side door leading to a classroom and entered it. That room was apparently somewhat out of bounds, it was where the designers of the dungeon worked. There was also a table there with 7 or 8 school report card books on it, I saw Ira‘s name on one of the books and I knew mine was in there as well, since I was 2nd year going on 3rd. I wanted to sneak a peek at my own book but decided not to do so and left the room.
• As I was coming out of the room, I headed back toward the back of the dungeon, which was really just one long corridor, and went to pick up the last sphere. As I did so, I saw a group of girls entering the front of the dungeon — Rachel, Antonia, and a couple others from Dunman High. I sensed that I wasn’t really allowed to meet them, and so not only did I not tell them that I already looted the dungeon, I decided I had to hurry out of the dungeon and did so. I was worried that they’d find the side room and my report card though. Anyway, I left through an alternate exit that put me out by a side passage near the front of a mall building behind the bus terminal this time. I had no idea that that side passage existed and looked back curiously at it as I left the vicinity.
• Crossing the road back from there, there was a wild dog or something roaming the area and attacking people to steal things from them. The dog had gotten hold of a pile of books that apparently included a couple of report card books as well, and a man came by and attacked one of the books to destroy it. He told a cop afterwards that that was his own report card and it was more important that he destroy it rather than let it fall to the dog. Another man passing by said that she, referring to that first man, was his son and that he could vouch for her. The policeman accepted the first man’s explanation but began to question the second man as to why he used female pronouns when referring to the first man.
• I walked on a little ways after crossing the road and saw a bunch of tall buildings to my right, including a large beer advertisement on a billboard, I think it was for Budweiser. According to the ad, the wild dog had been placated and was now safely lying drunk next to their shop because the dog was German and thus really somehow liked their beer.
• Later, I visited a casino, and hung out a little with Sandy from work, as well as Lee and Patrick from junior high, and one or two other people. I soon found out that they were all on a police watch list because they were all suspected in casino embezzlement, and so cameras were watching them, but that Sandy had just happened to be hanging out in the casino at the same time as the other people, who were the actual perpetrators. I hung out with Sandy, who told me that he just enjoyed playing the slot machines, and showed me some 90 cent and $1.10 coins or tokens that he had, and how the machines accepted those as well as $1 coins.
• Editor: The large spherical balls that I was carrying out of the dungeon were definitely inspired by the Enor Pearls in the Deep Rock Galactic game.

Aug 19 2022

Dream 1

• I dreamt that I was setting up for a Deep Rock Galactic dream with Satinel and Jahandar. One of them was hosting but didn’t set the lobby to be friends-only, so a random fourth person had quietly joined us. His username began with D or L and was 7 characters long. The host was loathe to kick him so they decided to let him stay until he proved otherwise. The three of them then realized that they had all somehow selected the same dwarf class, and proceeded to decide amongst themselves who would take what class instead so that we had diversity.
• I ignored most of that as I was busy ordering food from a bar selling Singapore food in the lobby. The way the stall worked was that they gave me a menu that looked like a questionnaire, it had five different sections and with several different options for each section that would each add a portion to my overall meal. I was basically building my own meal, with one option being a choice of protein, another being a choice of vegetables, etc. I did sense that I was basically going to be holding up the group since I still had to eat, so I tried to buy as quickly as possible.
• We also had to each individually pick a game modifier, or mod, for a special wave event that our mission was going to start with, where we were going to be attacked by swarms of large bugs and had to defend ourselves and wipe out the incoming monsters. Each chosen mod basically changed the event, and the way that they would apply and synergize would sometimes lead to hilarious or terrible combinations, but we weren’t allowed to talk about the mods that we had picked, and they would only last until the end of that special event anyway and not affect the rest of the mission. My chosen mod was that bugs would be forced to come in through two or three needle choke points in the terrain, so they would be easier to kill, but in return, my engineer turret could not be deployed and would not work for the duration of the special event.

Dream 2

• I was in my Edmonton 205 apartment getting ready for bed and had the sudden urge to check my front door. I found that although the bolt chain was engaged, the door itself had been left slightly ajar, and there was a security guard at the door who had his key in the door and was rapping softly on the door while trying to close and lock it for me, but he was having some trouble doing so somehow. I didn’t hear the rap though and it was complete happenstance that I had the urge to go check the door.
• Once he saw that I was here to deal with the door, he waved at me and continued his patrol down the hall. I was about to close it when I realized that he had left his key, attached to a small chain, in the lock. He had gone through a door and left to the stairwell by then so I couldn’t flag him down, but I sensed that going outside myself at this time of the night was somehow dangerous as well, so I took the key and brought it into my apartment and then closed the door properly.
• Besides, I had my own problems to deal with. I went back to the computer, where I had been playing a game on my PC. This game was the third level of some strategy RPG that I somehow recognized as a game that I had played before and also recognized that it was a level that I couldn’t beat as it required too much micromanagement to do well inside a dream.
• The game was set on a top-down map in a fantasy world, and I had two explorer-warrior units that were currently exploring the area around my base. Each explorer unit also came with four worker units, which I could use to mine out resources around me. However, some of my resource veins that were sitting unmined for too long suddenly exploded and became rock bugs that attacked me, so I had to quickly recruit two more explorer-warriors from my home base to defend my workers and base. This was successful, but now I had 16 workers instead of 8 and altogether too many troops, and less resources available to boot, and I understood that this set me behind my three AI opponents and was troublesome. I could use my sheer manpower to catch up but this would involve having to constantly check in and give orders to all 16 workers in addition to making sure my explorer-warriors stayed alive.
• Anyway, when I returned from the front door to the game, I was ready to give up anyway, but I realized that the mouse had stopped working and was vibrating from side to side with a “hn hn hn” noise, with a short pause in between each vibration. The cursor also wasn’t working. Worried, I immediately rebooted my computer and disconnected the USB mouse from the keyboard USB slot that it was plugged into, but this just made the mouse vibration and noise increase in intensity somehow, even though it was now disconnected. The screen also looked weird when it first came back on at the very start of the reboot process, it immediately went to some sort of announcement with colourful borders stating that it was going to install something, and then automatically entered BIOS.
• Editor: I woke up with a start at this point, and once I wrote down the first two dreams, that last dream made me have to go verify that the front door was still locked just in case, even though I remembered specifically checking it just before I went to bed.

Dream 3

• This dream involved my Dunman High GEP class, mixed with other random people in a large classroom, solving whodunit detective riddles that were hosted by our teacher. The culprit in each riddle was someone in the class, changed with each round, and we had to figure out who the culprit was based on clues given. It was all done amicably and for fun, and several rounds were played. Also, once the answer was discovered, the teacher would call the student who had been chosen up to the front, and cast a form of clairvoyance on them that displayed their thoughts out on the front projector screen, and everyone would then watch to see how the crime actually took place.
• I don’t remember much about the first two rounds except that they existed and were solved. I do remember that one of the two involved crossing a road with cracks in the ground, and my character plummeted through a hole as the cracks were crumbling under my character’s weight. I proceeded to freefall beneath the map for about 20 seconds before hitting the ground below and dying, and then respawned again back wherever we started and had to come back. This happened twice on different parts of the road just before the far curb. We had to cross the road to bring something to a target location on the other side as part of the round though, so the third time through I gingerly tested the ground ahead of me with each step until I found a path across with solid footing.
• The third round started after a quick break, and we were all back in our really large classroom that was very similar to our actual Dunman High classroom, but with a ton more seats arranged in neat rows and columns. I recognized people sitting around me — Eugene, Zixiang, Paulene, and others. Paulene was a necromancer and had two pets, a bone monkey and bone bird, and a magnetic umbrella that she made some offhanded comment about. Eugene had a magical table that announced the true name of anyone that touched it, as well as made fun of them. A couple other people had weird trinkets like that too. I had a fire bracelet that might have been a gift from Paulene.
• At the start of the round, the teacher introduced the plot — someone had bonked a security guard, stolen a precious coin, and left the coin on top of a tall metal cupboard in the classroom, which was basically also the actual cupboard from our actual Dunman High classrooms, except the room was mirrored so that the cupboard and doors were on the left side of the room instead of the right side when I was facing the chalkboard. Anyway, we were told to figure out who the culprit was and how the coin got up there, and how the culprit had planned to get the coin back down again if it wasn’t found.
• This somehow led the class to a hypothesis that one of the students in class was fake, due to being able to approach the security guard without raising the alarm in the first place. Eugene requested that several people who were last seen with the security guard touch his table in order to verify their identity and they did so, as did a couple people who were wandering out to visit the washrooms. No fake person was found though.
• The period ended and we moved on toward our next class, which was PE, although the puzzle was still very much open and a source of discussion through the period. On our way to the gym, we passed by a glass display showcase that featured mannequins of us GEP students, along with how poorly the principal thought we were going to do in the upcoming final exams, as he didn’t like us. There were rows of students arranged in front of plaques that read 0/10, 1/10, 2/10, and so on. I was in the 4/10 column, Allen was in the 3/10 one, Eileen was in the 5/10 one, and I forget everyone else, though it was possible that the plaques were also out of 100 rather than 10.
• Phys Ed consisted of first a group warmup run, and then a volleyball game, and we were split into groups alphabetically based on our last names for the game. I was grouped up with Allen and two other people in the S-T group. I was happy and commented to him that even though we were good friends, we had never really played on the same team before. However, this was not to be this time as well, as we were paired up with people in the Q-R group, and we had 4 players as opposed to their 2, so the other team borrowed me to join their side.
• We picked a classroom for our game court, and after clearing the desks to the side of the room, we used the center line of the room to denote and divide the playing field. Each of us knelt down against the back wall of our side of the classroom while serving and receiving since the room was so small compared to a real volleyball court, but all of us were fairly terrible at the actual game, and I said that I hadn’t played it for over a year at this point, so most of the points we earned against each other were via faults as we couldn’t even really serve very well. The player sitting in the middle on my Q-R team was tall and actually pretty good at serving, but I noted that they would never work in a normal game because by the time his serves made it across the halfway line, the ball was so low that it would definitely have hit the actual net. It did work in our setup though.
• I thought back to the puzzle and looked around the room. Paulene was sitting in with us but not actually playing — because she was a necromancer, she had pleaded out of actually doing the warmup runs earlier as she said she was sickly and couldn’t run, and now she was seated in a corner watching us while putting her bone monkey back together and regenerating its health, as it had managed to fall apart into pieces somehow.
• Inspiration suddenly struck me. I realized that Paulene‘s bone monkey could have been the one that bonked the guard, the bone bird could have been the one that placed the coin on top of the cupboard, and the offhanded comment about the magnetic umbrella at the very start of the riddle was actually a clue as to how she would get the coin back down later. I accused her of this, and this was apparently correct as she started running off at top speed. I chased her, yelling back that this was more proof of guilt as she had said that she couldn’t run at all earlier.
• Later, once we were back in class, it was shown that my hypothesis was indeed the correct answer, and we watched the scene unfold via the clairvoyance spell. Apparently the way the story went, the guard had helped Paulene put on her coat just before she was going to leave school the day before, except he then tried to fondle her a bit, at which point the bone monkey came to Paulene‘s rescue and beaned the guard’s head from behind.

Dream 4

• Finally, there was a small dream just before I woke up about a family whose Dad and two elder brothers worked in the secret police/army for the ruling autocrat. They had a third brother who was just turning 13, and the day before his birthday there was a scene where that youngest brother brandished a tiny shortsword in the air and declared that he was finally going to be able to wield his sword. His father embraced him and told him that he was happy he would finally have a shortsword-wielding teen.
• However, the next day, on the day of his birthday, the father and two elder sons turned up at the family house with a couple other soldiers with orders to arrest the youngest son. The father went in first to talk to him, and tried to give him 3 minutes head start to escape, but he refused and instead used the 3 minutes to help the family retrieve laundry from the dryer. The implication of what happened afterwards as my dream ended was that the father and two elder brothers were instead going to surrender themselves to save him as it was more important to ensure his safety so that he could be some future hero to save everyone.
• The shortsword was very unique and stood out a lot as well. The hilt was a large + sign and the blade itself was extremely wide, extremely flat, and extremely short. The blade was about as wide as the width of the hilt, flat as paper, and shorter than the length of the hilt. The blade was blood-red as well, and came with a comically small scabbard to be sheathed in.

Aug 20 2022

• I was living in Edmonton and had keys to our Edmonton 4012 family home as well, but I wasn’t actually living there — the rest of my family were away on vacation and I was living in some other part of the city. Nonetheless, on the way home from school or something, I went over to the Edmonton 4012 house to check to make sure the house was alright.
• I tested the front door when I reached there, and then opened the automatic garage door to test the internal door there leading into the house proper. Both were fine. When I turned to leave however, a group of 7 or so guys approached me, and one of them had a knife which he brandished at me. He asked if I lived there and demanded that I let him in so they could rob the place. I said that no I didn’t really live there anymore, but was checking the doors anyway, and I purposely didn’t accept or refuse his demand so that I could buy some time.
• In the end, I escaped by closing the automatic garage door, and then rolling out before it had completely shut. This was despite me carrying a school backpack. I trapped a couple of the guys inside the garage, including the guy who had the knife, although the rest of the guys were outside. They were unarmed though and worked on trying to get the garage door open instead of trying to stop me from leaving, so I fled.
• I ran one street away and tried to make a call to the police on my phone, but kept fumbling and couldn’t do it. A police car then drove down the street I was at, and I waved and hollered at the car until it reluctantly came to a stop and the male cop driving it invited me into the car to cool off. I told him my story, and he shrugged. It was a known issue, he said, and there wasn’t a ton that they could do since the boys had probably run off by then. He invited me to call the police number again to file a report anyway, and if the despatcher made a general request for a police car to go check out the place, then he would take that request.
• I agreed and did so, managing to reach the despatcher this time and telling them my house address and what had happened. The despatcher was also reluctant to send any cop there for the same reason, especially since it had been about 30 minutes now since my tussle with the group, but she promised that she would increase cop car presence down that street. I agreed with that and hung up.
• I picked up three tiny square magnets that had dropped out onto the car floor from my bag when I took out the phone to make the call, and then thanked the police officer before taking leave of the police car altogether.

Aug 21 2022

• Snippet: I remember some sort of ship with a 3×3 series of square rooms that basically acted as the room engines. There were different staff on board the ships that could attend to the boilers to fix them, each staff member had a different skill, and there was some sort of melodrama going on, possibly romantic in nature.
• Snippet: I was also playing a Heroes 3 game at some point as a Castle player, and one of my exploratory heroes was a Necropolis hero with starting troops plus one week’s worth of Marksman troops. She ran into two other enemy heroes and got destroyed because the one she fought had 6 little ice golems that kept on coming back to life after being destroyed. My main hero was right behind though, just delayed after finding a second unoccupied Castle town to the south of my starting one, and once she arrived she annihilated the two enemy heroes and picked up a wand of ice creation which must have been what kept the ice golems alive. She had a 5-strong cyclops unit stack in her army that took up a large 2×2 or 3×3 spot on the battlefield.
• Snippet: I remember a school scene where there was a thief that would occasionally stop by our classroom and steal something left on someone’s desk, and we were trying to figure out ways to catch the perpetrator. I ended up setting a trap with some valuables lying on a desk at the back of the room, and two cameras set on nearby tables and pointed at it. But this didn’t work so well at first because my classmates were super intrigued by the cameras and gathered around them, both blocking their view as well as drawing attention to them. I moved one of the cameras up onto a shelf at the side of the room, and also put an Exit button on the table with the valuables that looked like it would shut off the cameras, but didn’t actually do so, in order to fool the perpetrator.
• Snippet: Lastly, there was a factory scene that involved automatic production lines, and some sort of VR device that I used to jump to and visit one or two of the production lines at one point in order to see how they worked and even help the production along. I don’t remember much detail about the plotline here, just the factory itself.