Dream: a giant Chinese supermarket and the wrong Champ de mars

The dream starts on a busy road that looks distinctly Asian - perhaps Vietnamese? In real life I remember being on a road like this in Ho Chi Minh city - lots of lanes, lots of traffic densely packed in the formation of an endless stream. In order to cross the road, one must take the plunge and just dive in, trusting that the millions of motorcycles and rickshaws will simply go around you and leave you unscathed. 

In the dream I'm with S and G in his pram. We suddenly see a giant Chinese supermarket on the other side of the road. It's huge, taking up most of a block, 3 storeys high, big glass windows and lots of enticing ads in the windows. 

What's that supermarket? I say to S excitedly. We have to go there and pick up snacks!  

But there's no way to cross the road. I try to convince S that we can just dive into the traffic and it'll be fine, but he refuses to cross the road citing concerns for the safety of G in the pram. It's true that it's different with a pram, and I start to doubt my conviction as well. We look around and there is no traffic light or crossing in sight.

Maybe we passed by one just now. S says. 

We walk backwards, the way we came and after a long time we finally see a traffic light where we cross the road uneventfully. We walk quickly back towards the supermarket, but just as we approach it, all the lights suddenly go off and the whole building, previously brightly illuminated, fades to dark. 

Oh no, we just missed it. I said to S, crestfallen that I don't get to have my snacks. We stand on the sidewalk feeling miserable. 

Then S points out a restaurant just after the supermarket. He says it must be good cos people must go shopping at the supermarket and then have something there. 

The restaurant is called "The house of Guo Xin 郭欣” and inside it is cramped with simple wooden tables and small square stools. The counters are sticky and the walls are devoid of decorations. This must be good, I said to S, it looks like we are in China. 

We order wontons and they are brought out quickly by a brusque lady who dumps the big bowls in front of us unceremoniously. At that moment a guy comes into the 

Ça va, S? T'es prêt pour la mission?? He says to us (How's it going? Are you ready for the mission?) 

Oui oui, mais il faut d'abord manger notre wontons (Yes, but we have to eat our wontons first) 

The guy takes a seat at our table and tries to tell the waitress in French that he also wants a bowl of wontons, but she doesn't seem to speak any French. Maybe it's also the way he is pronouncing wontons like how in French the last syllable is always accentuated like won-TON. Finally I tell the lady in Chinese and she brings out another bowl of wontons. 

The wontons are excellent, just like how we eat them in Shanghai. Afterwards S leaves with the guy for "the mission" and he says he'll catch up with us later. 

G & I stay in the restaurant for a while but the lady tells us to leave because our table is needed, and we walk along the super busy main street. Soon I see a small lane on the left and it looks so nice and quiet that I decide to go along it for a bit of rest from the craziness of the main street. 

The lane is deserted and soon leads us to a big open space. When I look up it's the Eiffel Tower and it looks like we are on Champ de Mars, but the grass is all dead and has been replaced by rubble.

Suddenly I see S in the distance with 3 or 4 other guys. Between them they have a number of suitcases and one guy has a trolley like those used for transporting fridges, full of boxes. 

The guy from the wonton restaurant sees me and he's super happy, yelling and waving at us. He says that the mission has gone exceptionally well because S was able to distract the guy at customs. 

Customs?? I think to myself. 

He opens a box and it's full of what appear to be children's books. He takes out a book to show me. When he opens the book, the story inside pops out like a hologramme, but much more real, like it's a real life enactment of the story. Like a 3D real life Youtube video.

He gives us a large blue giftbox which he says is for G. I give the box to G and it's almost as big as him. He holds it curiously in the pram, trying to open the top of it. 

We still have to get some more of the stuff. S says to me. 

No worries, I can just walk home from here. I say to him, since Champ de Mars is not too far from our apartment. 

The guys leave and I start walking away from the Eiffel Tower in the direction of home. But all of a sudden I look up and I realise that the Champ de Mars is not straight anymore. The Eiffel Tower is somehow around the corner, whereas in real life Champ de Mars is a rectangle of park directly in front of it, so there's no way that the Eiffel Tower could be only in partial view. 

But where am I? I think to myself. This is the wrong Champ de Mars. 

And that's how I wake up.   

Three recent dreams

The silent concert

In this dream, I am with three other people in an apartment I do not recognise. One person is my music friend L who lives on the Gold Coast, who has always been very encouraging. One person is my other music friend W that I played piano duets with often in Sydney, who is quite an eccentric character. The third person I do not recognise at all, a lady in her late 40s or early 50s perhaps. 

There is a piano in the centre of the room that we are in. We take turns going up to the piano and playing short pieces. I play a waltz by Chopin, someone else has a turn, then I play some light jazzy number that I don't recognise. The others play little snippets of Mozart or Beethoven. The atmosphere is relaxed and we are enjoying the music together. 

Then L suggests that I play a violin-piano duet with W. (In real life I haven't played the violin much in recent months, because I mostly play viola or piano now). W is really enthusiastic about the idea, and we get out a book of Beethoven violin sonatas, something that I am really familiar with due to my real life Beethoven project with a different friend, though I haven't studied any of the sonatas in detail. 

I open my instrument,  a violin that I do not recognise. Whose violin is this? I wonder to myself. 

We open the book and it falls to number 5, Spring, the most famous of the Beethoven violin sonatas. I tune to the piano briefly and W looks at me expectantly, waiting for the cue to start. 

When I start to play, I hear that the sound is all distorted. It is as if I am taken back to the beginning of my violin learning, more than ten years ago, when I could hardly pull a bow across the strings and make it sound even remotely reasonable. The sound is really scratchy and I feel very exposed. 

Suddenly I realise that there is no sound of the piano. I look over at where W is playing the piano. I can see his fingers moving, his body moving, but I cannot hear anything. I look over at the other two ladies and they are entranced by the music, bobbing their heads up and down in appreciation. 

What are they hearing? I ask myself. 

The sound that is emitted from my strings is worse and worse, barely distinguishable and totally out of tune. It's as if a cat was playing the violin. I start to panic, and I hope for a reprieve from a piano solo, but the piano is totally silent. I cannot hear anything at all. 

When we finish, the ladies clap and cheer enthusiastically. L says that we should perform somewhere. 

Perform? I ask incredulously. How can we perform like this? 

She scrolls through her phone to find an event that we could perform at. She stabs her finger at certain music festivals - What about this one? 

Then I wake up. 

The path to France

In this dream I am walking on the street when I bump into a friend that I met when I was travelling in el Salvador in 2016. She is with my friend from university that I have lost touch with for a long time. They both have extremely long hair, which is not like their usual hairstyles. I have no idea how they know each other in the dream but they seem to be very friendly with each other. 

When I bump into them, they are both re-doing their hair. Their tresses are so long and silky that I stop to admire their hair. (In real life, my hair has been undergoing a disastrous transformation during covid). They greet me enthusiastically and ask me if I am ready for the big trip. 

The big trip? I ask them in confusion. 

We are all going on the big trip together! They announce almost in chorus and giggle. 

I go back to my apartment in the dream, somewhere that I don't recognise. S is there, packing things. I guess we are all going together. 

We each have our backpacks and we go down to meet the two girls. When we get there, there is a big trail sign with the map of where we are going. They point to the campground where we are staying. 

No way, I'm not going there. S says. 

At that moment I realise that he has never said something so definitive to me in our real life. He usually beats about the bush and says a lot of other things before either having the truth extracted (because I am so impatient) or getting there through a series of complex oblique references. 

OK then, we won't go there. I reply. The other girls have disappeared at this point. 

We look at the map of the park together, and towards the eastern side of the park there is a trail that is marked with a dotted line, indicating a footpath only. 

It is then I realise that all the signs on the map are bilingual, in both English and French. But that last trail I see on the eastern side only has French. Then I realise that it is the path that takes us all the way to France.

This one? I ask S. But he does not reply and I wake up. 

The death of the child 

In this dream, I am in the ICU, one that I do not recognise. It's not one that I have worked in or visited. GF is there, one of my old colleagues in Sydney. 

He apologises to me profusely for handing over "a mess" to me. He explains the situation - it's a boy who has had a catastrophic brain injury and he is now brain dead. The parents do not want the life support to be discontinued, but they have accepted that today is the day it will be done. Of course he feels bad that he cannot carry it through, but I have taken over the clinical service today so it is my turn to look after all the patients in the ICU as per usual. I say a cursory "no worries, I'll take care of it" kind of thing and leave my colleague. 

I go into the room. The boy's parents are there, and one other woman who I soon understand to be the sister of the mother. The boy is lying inert in the bed, a boy of approximately 6 or 7. He is ventilated and has the usual ICU equipment on him. 

I start to say my usual spiel of "I'm sorry for the situation you are in... " and try to get an understanding of what they understand will happen next. The parents are silent but the aunt of the boy starts to cry. 

Unusually for an ICU, there is a desk with a large mirror in front of it, a mirror which perfectly reflects the situation. I see the boy in the bed and me in blue scrubs next to the bed, with the aunt standing next to me. The parents are at the foot of the bed and cannot be seen in the mirror. 

I become aware of a chair in front of the desk. Draped over the back of the chair is a beautiful dress, a cream coloured silk dress with a delicate floral pattern with pinks and greens. I wonder what the dress is doing inside the room and what it means. 

(Image borrowed from Google, not from the dream!)  

After a moment of taking in the desk, chair, dress and mirror. I start to examine the boy. 

I introduce myself and then ask "Can you show me your thumb?" My standard opening neurological examination question.

 

I'm not expecting him to move at all since my colleague had said he was brain dead, but I am convinced that he did move his thumb upward slightly.

 

Shocked, I ask him "Can you show me two fingers?" My usual follow up question.

 

He shows me two fingers, more definitively this time. 

I feel the weight of the silence in the room. I feel the eyes of his parents and aunt boring into me as I struggle to think of what to do next. 

"What's 1 + 1?" I ask the boy. 

He holds up two fingers again with his left hand. 

I hear a sob erupt from the mother, she buries her face in the shoulder of the father. 

 

I look back at the boy and I struggle to think of what is happening - how can a brain dead child suddenly be responding in this way? 

Suddenly, two nurses come into the room, pushing a stainless steel procedure trolley, the type we usually use to insert vascular lines in ICU. On it are a selection of surgical instruments, laid out neatly on a sterile drape. 

"Hurry up, doctor." The nurse closest to me says. "They are waiting over there."

"Waiting for what?" I ask. 

She doesn't reply and she starts to undo the tapes around the boy's mouth to take the breathing tube out. 

"Hang on a minute here." I move to stop her, putting my hand over hers. "This boy is not brain dead."

"It doesn't matter." She says and wrenches her hands free from mine. "They need his kidneys over there."

"But he's not dead." I say, my voice echoing around the room.

At that moment the aunt lets out a piercing scream and I wake up. 

3 dark dreams

These 3 dreams took place over two sequential nights, dreams 1 &2 on the first and the last one on the second. 

Dream 1

In this dream, I am in the ICU with one of my colleagues. The patient in the bed is an elderly frail man, and we are getting ready to intubate him. 

I feel a faint wave of annoyance as we check his cannulas and find that none of them work. My colleague places a fresh cannula and we get ready to start the induction. 

The nurse hands me a 10mL syringe of propofol and my annoyance flashed - What am I supposed to do with this tiny amount of propofol?  I think, but I suppress my anger and ask her if she would pass me the larger 50mL syringe that she had drawn up for later. After some resistance she hands it to me. 

The old man looks at me, his eyes a little opaque. He does not speak, and it is hard to interpret exactly his expression, but I feel the scent of fear hanging over us. 

It will be OK, we'll look after you. I pat his hand and wonder if I sound like I'm really condescending - how many times have I said something similar to patients in my life? 

He snatches his hand away in defiance. I reach awkwardly for the bung where I attach the huge syringe of propofol - how much should I give him, 10mL? 10mL? I visually estimate his weight. I go with 15mL, err on the side of safety. 

I push the 15mL of milky liquid and squeeze the pump set a few times. I watch the white swirl into the giving set and disappear into his arm. The old man winces as the propofol stings his veins. 

Any time now. I say to no-one in particular. My colleague stands to the side, disinterested. 

Suddenly the man sits up in the bed, and pulls at the ECG leads on his chest. The nurse tries to calm him and he lashes out at her. With the syringe still attached to his arm, I push another 5mL. That should be enough. He tries to climb out of the bed, and the nurse is tossed aside, no longer able to help restraining him. I push another 10mL in, and then in quick succession another 10mL. I've given him 40mL of propofol, enough to take down any adult, even a large adult. I don't want to give him anymore or his heart might stop when it all hits the system. 

Is the cannula in the wrong place? I shout to my colleague, who starts to walk away at the most crucial moment. The man rips off all the monitoring and stumbles over the side of the bed. He hangs onto the railing and pulls himself up to a low crouch, unable to stand completely straight. He snarls menacingly at me. 

There is only 10mL of propofol left in the syringe, and I lunge to push it all in. The old man laughs and nothing happens. He takes a few steps and he stumbles to one side. I think to myself that the propofol will work, it must work, I just have to wait it out till it works. 

But what if it doesn't work? I think to myself. Always be prepared is my mantra. I never anticipated an elderly frail man would need more than twice the induction dose of propofol. Now all the 50mL of propofol is gone, and the empty syringe clatters to the ground. 

I step backwards as the man stumbles towards me, still emitting animal like growls of laughter. Ice runs through my veins as the terror washes over me. I look over at the trolley where the first 10mL syringe of propofol lied - this is my only chance. I move slowly towards the trolley, keeping my eyes at the same time on the patient as on the propofol.  

The nurse and my colleague are nowhere to be seen. This is my only chance, I repeat to myself, I must stay calm.

With one rapid movement, I reach out with my right hand and grab the syringe. At the precise same moment, the man grabs my left wrist and his cold fingers clamp around my wrist like a vice. He squeezes so hard that a hot flash of pain goes down into my fingers, which go numb immediately. I know the circulation has been completely cut off and my hand is not getting any blood. I try in vain to connect the syringe in my right hand to the cannula, but it proves impossible with the man moving around. His evil maniacal laughs ring in my ears and the numbness in my hand becomes unbearable. I know I only have a few moments before it is all over. 

Then the world goes completely black. 

Dream 2

I'm in the carpark looking for my car, but it is nowhere to be found. Annoyed, I call my colleague and tell him that I'm going to be late to work. I'll just be 15 minutes late, I tell him. He is warm and friendly on the phone, and tells me to take my time.

It is dark and lightly drizzling. I walk back to my house, and the route takes me through a park. It is totally dark in the park with no lights at all. I feel slightly scared at being alone in such a dark place, but soon my fear is overcome by a very real annoyance at the mud. The rain intensifies and the ground turns to mush. My shoes are covered in mud and I slide with every step. The bottom of my scrub pants is dragged through the mud too, and even though I cannot see it in the dark, I know they are a total mess. 

I'm going to need to get changed before I go to work. I think to myself with some annoyance.

Finally I emerge from the park onto a suburban street, where a single street light marks the exit of the park. The light is so feeble that it barely illuminates the ground. I walk towards my house, which is just on the next corner on the left. 

Then I feel a rush between my legs and my period has started. What a pain. I think to myself. How does it always know to start at the most inconvenient time possible? 

With each step blood pours out of me, an impossible sticky mess running down my legs. I wonder how it's possible that my period is so incredibly heavy at this time. Not even halfway to the house, I think the blood has made connection with the mud. My pants must be a total mess, and I'm annoyed at the prospect of the cleanup. 

Finally I get to the house, an old Victorian style house with a verandah all around it. My dad is fixing his bike out the front with his friend, under the porch light which is unusually bright. 

Don't wake up grandma. He warns me. 

I head inside and realise that I do not know the layout of the house. I have no idea which room is mine and there's no way for me to clean up or get new scrubs. I have no choice but to keep going. 

I stop in the kitchen and look for my lunch bag. I go out of the house again with my lunch bag and look for my car. It is nowhere to be found. Under the moonlight, I open the lunch bag and there is a single lunch box inside (unusual for me because I usually pack a lot of snacks!) And within the lunch box is half an avocado and two flakes of tuna. 

That is all I have. And the world goes black. 

Dream 3

(This is the most vivid dream I've had in recent months, I remember every detail of it as if it really happened)

My friend asks me if I would take her daughter to the pool. She says she hates getting changed in front of people and she is self conscious about her body.

I go to the pool with her daughter and we get changed in the change room. We go in one of the middle lanes and swim slow gentle laps, stopping to chat sometimes. 

After a few laps, around 10 ultra competitive swimmers arrive at the pool. They are in their super sleek lycra and sport professional looking caps and goggles. They announce that everyone has to go to the "slow" end of the pool because they are training for a competition. I climb out with the little girl and start going there, but she refuses to get in - she says they are too scary. 

We stand on the side of the pool and watch as the competitive swimmers jump into the pool. They zoom up and down the pool at a comically fast speed, so fast that they are actually creating waves within the pool. Some of the others who have obediently moved to the slow end are being dumped by the waves. I think for a moment that the little girl is actually pretty wise. 

Suddenly, all the water is gone from the pool. There was no sound of the water escaping, or any visual cue, no warning at all - the water is simply gone. The ten swimmers fall to the concrete bottom of the pool with sickening sounds of bones shattering. They lay sprawled at the bottom. All the other non-competitive swimmers are no longer in the pool, there are just the ten mangled bodies at one end. 

I knew immediately that this was a sign. 

This is the last day of my life.

I go quickly to the changing room with the little girl. She asks me to get into the showers with her because she's scared. We shower together under the warm water, and I am struck by the feeling that this will be the last time I feel water running over my body. I say goodbye to her and her mother, and I rush home. 

When I get through the front door of my home (not my actual home in real life), S is there on the couch. He is reclined on a large blue leather couch with the footrest up, leisurely reading a newspaper. I think for a moment that we must be a few years older than we are now - my body is a little bit saggier, and he has a few more wrinkles. 

How was the pool? He asks me innocently, with no awareness of what is about to happen. 

I tell him about my realisation, that this is it, and that I am going to die today. 

We go upstairs and climb into bed. It is warm inside the room and I feel comforted by its familiar scent. S starts to cry and I see that the tears are just the tip of the iceberg. The depth of his sadness is real, so raw and exposed. I hold him close and we tell each other over and over again that we love each other. The light starts to fade, and I'm not sure if it is the natural course of the day. Or perhaps the light fades like this when life is slowly being extinguished. He tells me that we have had a beautiful life together, and that he would not have done anything differently at all. We cry together and feel as if we are one. 

Then the light goes out suddenly, and the world is black. 

Dreams: two dreams of death

(These two dreams follow on from the previous uncompleted dream of assassination)

Dream 1: A secret

This dream starts with a flashback within the dream.

I am a university student and we are at some sort of demonstration on campus. We are at the lower end of the campus, where we used to go for our Biochemistry classes. A bunch of us are holding placards and chanting loudly as we parade down the main walkway of UNSW. 

Suddenly I become aware of a mob of people off to the side, near some  benches. They are tying a boy onto a stake, some sort of home made cross. The boy is young, perhaps a first year or second year. He protests loudly and struggles as the others secure his arms, then his legs. I am drawn to them like flies to rubbish, unable to tear my eyes away. Soon I find that I am also pulling at some of the ropes to tie down his feet. He keeps kicking them away and it takes several people to overcome him.  

We wind the rope all around him and secure his chest to the main part of the stake. We tie him so tightly to the stake that he cannot breathe. We stand back and watch as he slowly begins to fade, his protests becoming weaker and weaker. Finally his eyes roll back in his head and he becomes still. His chest is no longer moving and he has stopped breathing. As the blood stops circulating, his face becomes an ashen grey. 

The flashback ends and I am in the present time again. I'm on a bus, sitting near the middle door. The bus stops and a morbidly obese man enters from the front door. He seems to be struggling to breathe, sweating heavily as he takes a seat at the four seats facing each other near the front of the bus. From where I sit, he is just 3 rows away, facing me. 

He does not look well. His face is purple and his lips are slightly blue. I think that he probably has some sort of lung condition and is totally puffed out from the short ascent to the bus. 

The bus lurches to a start and a couple of guys come up from behind. 

Hey man! What are you doing here? They shout at the breathless purple man. 

I see a flash of fear enter his eyes. He tries to get up, but he stumbles and falls back into his seat. 

The other two guys are on him in a flash. One of them has a thick rope in his hand, and the two of them start to tie the purple man to the bus seat. 

I want to call out to the bus driver to stop. I feel a sudden flash of anger - can't he see what's going on? It's only a few metres from where he is sitting!

The two men are arguing with each other now, one person blaming the other for not bringing a long enough rope. They struggle to get the rope around the girth of the purple man's abdomen. He shouts for help but there is no one else on the bus. 

I want to get up and help the purple man, but I am totally glued to the seat and unable to move. I open my mouth but no sound comes out. I want to help him, but there is a vivid thought on my mind that I'm not helping him because I am actually a killer, since I participated in the other death on campus. 

The men continue to struggle while the bus rolls through the suburbs without making any stops. 

I have to do something. I think to myself. It's up to me to do something, I have to! 

But still I am stuck to my seat, a mute witness to the struggle. 

Finally the men give up trying to tie him around his large body, and instead they put the rope around his neck like a noose. They grab one end each and start walking towards the opposite ends of the bus. 

The purple man's hands grip around the noose but he is unable to loosen it even a touch. He loses his voice and his eyes bulge out. His face goes from a purple to a bluish grey colour. 

Then he dies, and I wake up. Full of shame that I was not able to stop the killing. 

Dream 2: A laneway in Toronto

In this dream, I am just outside Emily's apartment in Toronto. I have a key, and I let myself in. 

Inside it is completely still. There is no sound and no movement. There are no smells of recent cooking or that of cats. The curtains are drawn in the living room and the place is dark. I try to turn the lights on but they are not working. I open one of the curtains slightly and the big electronic advertising boards outside cast some light into the apartment. It looks like her real apartment, but it does not feel real - does she still live here? I wonder. 

I close the curtain and return the apartment to darkness. I carefully lock the door and head out onto the street. I walk along Queen St and then head south on Yonge St. The time of year must be about now - slightly chilly and a little windy, typical Toronto fall. 

On Yonge St I pass by several cafes and restaurants full of people who are laughing and chatting. 

Who are these people and why are they so happy? I think bitterly. 

I keep walking south and start to lose where I am - somewhere between Adelaide and Richmond? I see a small side lane and feel a strong urge to go down the lane. 

In the lane it is almost completely dark. There is a tiny bit of light from the streetlights on Yonge but within a few steps, I am immersed in darkness. 

Hey! Fancy seeing you here! Emily emerges from the darkness. I think she had been in a doorway, waiting for me to enter the lane. 

I see her face, which looks exactly the same, but she is different somehow. I feel a pang of fear - who is it? 

You wanna go get some cider? I know this great place near here. She says. 

I remain silent and contemplate my options - should I go with her? should I run away? 

She comes closer and she feels cold. The normal reaction to two human bodies in proximity should be that of warmth, but she is like a stone. It starts to snow and tiny little snowflakes fall onto my eyelids, causing me to blink as if the world was not real. 

Let's go! She grabs my arm tightly and her fingers are like a cold steel vice. 

The fear explodes in my chest. My heart is pounding and my mind is racing. I kick into survival mode - I have to get out of here somehow. She starts to go towards the other end of the lane, further into the darkness, while I try to pull back into the light. 

Help! I scream in the direction of the light. 

She tightens her grip so much that I yelp with pain. I think she is going to crush the muscles of my forearm. As we struggle, I see a glint of metal from inside her coat. 

At that moment, a middle aged man enters the lane and comes up to us. In the darkness it is hard to make out his facial features, but I can see he is short and bald, wearing a heavy winter coat. 

Is everything OK here? He asks. 

She smiles at him sweetly while I flail helplessly, my arm still trapped in the vicelike grip. 

Hey look lady, it's not OK to restrain someone like that. He says to her. 

With one hand still on my arm, she opens her coat with the other arm. In a swift motion, she removes the glint of metal and it is a Global brand chef's knife (in real life I use one at my place). 

With complete and utter silence, she slashes the knife neatly across the front of the man's coat and the coat falls away. 

A huge gash appears across his abdomen and he falls to his knees. There is blood pouring out from the gash as he starts to shout and cry at the same time. Blood is coming out of his mouth too, and he's choking on his blood as he cries out. In a moment of trauma surgery reality, I wonder where the injury must be. 

Then I realise that the grip on my arm is gone, and she is gone. Where has she gone? 

I rush over to the man and cradle him in my arms. 

It's going to be OK, it's going to be OK. I repeat to him, as the snow continues to fall onto us. Then I wake up.  

Dream: the assassination

 (I tend to only dream when I am sleeping very deeply and well, which I haven't been for the last few months... so this is the first extremely vivid dream for quite a long time)

In this dream I am a spy. I think I may be James Bond (is there a girl version of James Bond?), a spectacular spy that will get the target with a lot of flair. My sidekick is my friend from real life W who is a very gentle, reserved and non-violent person. 

We are both fairly out of character in this dream. There's a gun strapped to my ankle under my jeans, and I'm wearing lace up boots like I'm in some terrible Western movie. I am driving a small car, which is fairly typical for us as W does not drive in real life. 

He is navigating through Google maps, flicking back and forth between the map view and the 'earth' view where you can see the buildings. He says that the map must be wrong because the address we are going to is not the same as the one in our brief. I look over at his phone, and all I see is a jumble of buildings. 

Just follow the instructions! I snap at him. 

He ignores me and scrolls through more buildings. We drive on in silence and I realise from the billboards we are driving past that we are in Japan. Finally we pull up to a hotel building across the road from the sea. Here the road rounds back on itself, and the hotel is the only building on the bend, as if it was actually jutting into the sea. 

I pull up at a parking spot just across the road from the hotel. I think to myself that we are lucky to have such a great getaway spot for when we have finished the job. 

We can't park here! W says suddenly. It's only 2 hour parking! 

I look at the sign and feel a twinge of irritation. 

It's not going to take us 2 hours to take out this guy, it'll be fine. I try to convince W.

What if we finish the job, come out and the cops have towed our car? He asks sullenly, arms crossed across his chest. 

We argue this point for a while, and in the end I agree to look for another spot. We drive around the bend and the hotel disappears from view. On the next block, we park under a deep shadow that is cast by the buildings. We walk in silence to the hotel, the tension thick between us. It is so unusual of us to fight that I feel displaced from the situation - why are we fighting? I wonder. 

We enter the hotel through the fancy doors, which a silent Japanese man open for us with a curt nod. 

Passing by the busy front desk, we stand under some chandeliers while waiting for the lift. The lift is one of those ancient contraptions that look like it's being pulled by gremlins in the basement. We enter the lift and the doors close. The wooden panels smell musty and we feel slightly suffocated. 

We emerge onto the 8th floor, where the dining room is situated. 

Why is the dining room on the 8th floor? I wonder to myself. 

We are greeted by a lady who waves us into the dining room. Inside there are a few tables of people, but it is easy to spot our target, a middle aged man in a suit reading a newspaper. 

We take a seat at a table far away from him and discuss how we will kill the man. There are families with children around, and it feels odd to kill someone in this kind of setting. 

The waiter comes by with a pitcher of water and glasses.  

You guys better get something to eat or drink, or it will look too suspicious. He says very quietly as he sets down the glasses. 

We get up and go to the buffet, but all the serving dishes are empty. We decide to get some coffee to at least pretend to drink coffee. The coffee machine is an extremely complicated affair with multiple dials and buttons behind a single pane of smooth glass. There is only one lever that can be manoeuvred from the front and it is titled Creaminess. Moving the dial from left to right increases the creaminess, allegedly, but how is this achieved? My eyes follow the complex circuitry and it leads to a dairy cow some metres away, chewing on grass. 

So increasing the Creaminess dial concentrates the milk from the cow? I wonder to myself. 

We start to have another argument about how creamy to make the coffee, and suddenly I feel very tired. I don't want to have W tripping up this assassination anymore. I tell him to leave but he just stands there with his hand on the Creaminess lever. He refuses to leave and we both fall to a silence. The waiter comes up to us and says something we don't understand. 

And that's how the dream ends. We never even end up assassinating the man! 

Dreams: Iguana fireworks, Chicken alfredo and the wrong flight

These three dreams punctuated the week during which I had my birthday...


Dream no. 1 - Fireworks




In this dream, I am driving to the airport to pick up Emily. The car is parked inside a multi level garage, and when I get to the entrance of the garage, I wonder transiently if I will be able to recognise which one my car is. Once inside, I found it with surprising ease, a dark blue non-descript sedan of some sort.




I get into the driver's seat which is in the left - I must be in Europe, or North America? I wonder to myself. The car makes little noise as we exit the garage. The time is early evening, and there is still a glimmer of the daylight on the horizon. I drive to the airport and pick up Emily. The process goes smoothly and soon we are back on the highway heading back towards town.




We drive towards the garage but I take a wrong turn and it is a dead end. Making a 3-point turn, I try a side street which turns out to be a one-way street ending near a park. I make another turn and finally I can see the parking garage some distance away.


At that moment, several fireworks go off. We hear the whoosh and explosion in the air quite close to us. Emily is very excited by the fireworks and asks if we can get out and see. We park the car on the side of the road, in quite a dark place with little illumination. We get out of the car and gaze at the sky - 3 fireworks are simultaneously launched from all around us and they climb steadily, streaks of orange piercing the night sky. At the same time, they all explode right above us, forming a handful of shapes that look definitely like iguanas. More fireworks are launched, and every single one forms a pattern resembling iguanas.


I am totally stunned and we are looking at each other like - how could this be what we are seeing? Then I think I would like to take a photo to show S, and as I take out my phone he is calling on WhatsApp.


Happy Bastille day! He says, beaming with positive energy. Then I wake up.


When I wake up there is a singular thought on my mind, which I immediately wrote down.
Bottle the essence of joy, and revisit it often.


(There was a tiny post script to this dream, where I buy a croissant stuffed with berries called Daisy and attend a concert where they are playing Grieg's Schmetterling on the cello)




Dream no. 2 - Island


In this dream, I am on a huge cruise liner. I'm not sure if I am a passenger or a staff member. The cruise ship is so large that it looks like it could be the Ruby Princess, but I'm not sure if it really is.


We are sailing along the ocean and soon come near land. The edge of the land curves inward gently, and we go towards the bay. The cruise liner is parked some distance away from the actual land, because there is nowhere for it to dock. I see a beautiful crescent of flawless golden sand, fringed by gently palm trees.


This is a tropical paradise. I say to myself in the dream.


We get into rubber dinghies that seem like life boats and head towards the beach. Soon many hundred, if not thousands, of people have disembarked from the giant cruise liner. Lounge chairs and beach umbrellas appear from nowhere, and someone is playing music on a portable boombox. The serenity of the tranquil island paradise is utterly lost.


Someone drags me into the corner and says they are short a dancer for the Traditional Welcome Ceremony. Before I have a chance to protest, they have put a string of flowers in my hair and a grass skirt around my waist. I am pushed out with a ring of similarly decked out girls and we start singing some traditional song.


It's a hoax! I am desperately screaming in my head to the crowd, who click endless pictures of us and cheer us on. Finally the awful dance is finished, and the crowd is receding quickly. Without the rubber dinghies, I have no idea how they are disappearing.


I look around me and the detritus of sudden tourism is everywhere - discarded candy wrappers, half crushed beer cans, trampled flowers.. I feel disgusted and suddenly extremely hungry. I ask a lady in a suit if I can eat something before going back to the cruise liner and she said that she would check on my order. I tried to explain that I didn't order anything but she wouldn't hear of it - You ordered the creamy chicken pasta right? She says with an air of authority.


I am resigned to my creamy chicken pasta fate and even start dreaming about it - maybe it won't be so bad? She comes back and tells me that all the creamy chicken pasta has run out now (maybe the generic food choice of all cruise attending people?). She says I have to settle for Chicken Alfredo instead - What is that? I wonder, and I wake up


PS. Chicken Alfredo is a creamy chicken pasta dish!




Dream no. 3 - Flight


In this dream, I am on my way to the airport to pick up Emily. (Crazy... another airport dream!) When I get there, I think it's actually the arrivals hall of Charles du Gaulle, where I waited for her last year while she was clearing immigration.


I stand in the same spot - at a little bakery shop just outside the arrivals area. The area is quite crowded and there are lots of people milling about.


After a while I see S and he is as surprised to see me as I am to see him.
What are you doing here? He asks me incredulously.
I said that I was waiting for Emily and I asked him if they had come together somehow.


No way! We broke up ages ago. He said angrily and turned away from me in a huff.
I start apologising for not knowing that they had broken up - I didn't even know they were together! He is angry and says nothing to me.


Finally he says that he had come with someone else and he was still waiting for them. I noticed that he had no baggage at all, and he was standing there with his hands in his pockets.


I keep looking out for Emily while S completely ignores me. I start to feel a bit uncomfortable about his silence and think maybe I've said or done something wrong? (An awful feeling). Then suddenly he says, There's the person I'm looking for. And I look over to where he's pointing - a man is pushing a trolley with 6 or 7 large suitcases, stacked up so tall that I can barely see the man.


As he comes closer I realise it is a guy that I used to date 10 years ago! I was absolutely speechless to see S with this man and then I wake up.

Covid dreams: a tree in Bosnia; lost in Shanghai

A tree in Bosnia
 
In this dream I am in Bosnia. In real life I've never thougt of going there, and actually know very little of the country except that there was a war there when I was in high school in the 90s.

My high school friend Susie and I are in a small town in Bosnia, high up in the mountains. There's something about mountain towns - the sunshine seems to be extra bright and the air is fresh with a whiff of the soil. The streets are narrow and cobblestoned, like in many small European towns. The vendors at the market had just a few goods displayed carefully on wooden carts. We could have been anywhere, but I knew we were in Bosnia.

We were looking for the right kind of sweet pastries. There was a row of vendors selling different types - some looked like French style laminated pastries and others were more like the condensed Middle Eastern style baklava. We were looking for the perfect pastry. We stopped to talk to one of the pastry sellers but we could not understand each other due to the language barrier. We decided to buy some of his pastries, and I reached into my bag to get some money.

I realise with a start that I'm not carrying a handbag or backpack like I normally would be in these sorts of travel situations. Instead I am carrying a thin and flimsy black garbage bag, like those large bin liners. Inside were bundles and bundles of cash, some of it neatly packaged and other bills just scattered about. There was no way for me to tell how much there was or even what currency it was - I didn't want to draw attention to myself in the busy marketplace.

I hastily gave the pastry man a few notes and we moved onto the next stand where the man sold shoes. These were not normal shoes and the display was haphazard, in complete contrast to the food displays. On closer inspection they were all shoes that were worn to within an inch of its life - some of the soles were peeling and many had holes. Susie said we should buy some shoes and try to fix them. The shoe seller asked us in broken English where we were from, and we tried to have a conversation with much difficulty.

While Susie was rifling through the shoes, he took out an old map, like those hand drawn ones in Lord of the Rings, and showed us a few things. We were in the north of Bosnia, just north of the capital (which was not Sarajevo in the dream). He pointed to a few places of interest, and pictures flashed up of those places. When he pointed to a road southwest of the capital that led to the neighbouring country, I realised that this road went from Bosnia to Macedonia. Along the way, he pointed out a place of interest and the picture that flashed up was that of a giant tree.

In the picture, the tree was so huge its dimensions could not be determined. One could not see the complete width of the roots and the top of the tree was nowhere near the top of the picture. The belly of the tree seemed to have been bust open and inside it was a cave. The light streamed into the cave, seemingly swallowed up in its depths. I knew immediately that I had to go there. I looked back at the map and it said the town nearby was "Gun Locks".

I was suddenly aware of the large bag of money... what am I supposed to do with this huge amount of money, in rural Bosnia of all places? How do I get to the tree? Then I woke up.


Lost in Shanghai

In this dream, I was going to Shanghai Bo Ai Hospital (where I did my medical school elective in 2005). In real life I used to take the bus from my aunt's place to subway line 1 and 7 stops later I would be at the nearest stop, and then it was a 10 minute walk. All up the commute would take me about an hour.

In the dream, I was staying with a different family. I'm not sure exactly who they were, maybe some family friends. It was an older couple with a daughter around 30, very thin with long straight hair and glasses. She looked very introverted and barely spoke. The mother told me that I should take her with me so she could also see the way to the hospital. We started walking to the subway, but once we left the apartment building I realised I had no idea where we were.

I asked the girl if she knew where the subway station was and she said she had no idea. I asked her if she knew which line subway it was and she said she had no idea as well. I asked her her home address and she said she didn't know! I looked at my phone but of course Google maps doesn't work in China. We were on a busy street with plenty of cars and bikes passing, but strangely no pedestrians. I thought we could walk along the street and eventually we would see something that would give a suggestion to where we were.

We kept walking till we came to a collection of shops around a square. It looked quite modern with several luxury item shops and coffee shops. I decided to look for someone to ask for directions, and that was when I realised my right sandal was broken. What was I thinking, wearing sandals to the hospital? I asked myself in the dream. Never mind, I'll pick something up somewhere.

Then I realised that all the shops were sealed up because of Covid and there was no way to enter any of them, even though I could see people inside. After walking around for a while, I spotted a Citibank branch with a security guard outside. I half walked, half ran towards him with my broken sandal and clueless girl in tow. The security guard was very kindly and gave us detailed instructions on how to get to the subway station. I thought both the presence of Citibank and the friendliness of the guard meant we could not be in Shanghai anymore?

We walked around the corner and made another few turns as the security guard had suggested, finally arriving at "TK Square". I looked for the characteristic signs of Shanghai metro but there were only shops (also sealed up) all around. Finally we found an escalator going underground, and a bunch of symbols on the sign that I didn't understand. I thought once we get underground it must be easier to find the subway, so I dragged the girl onto the escalator, though she looked reluctant.

At the bottom of the very long escalator was a wet market. Full of vegetables and fruit, but lacking that vibrancy of a normal market. It was fairly dim underground, the air terribly stale as if things had been rotting there for some time. There were no people around, and all the little piles of produce looked sad and forgotten. I dragged the girl through the aisles of vegetables until we saw a group of 6 or 7 people gathered around what looked like the fish stand.

"Go away!" A man shouted at us when we were still about 20m away
"Excuse me, we are trying to find the subway station." I shouted back.
"Can't you see we are filming the next episode of Masterchef here?" He shouted back angrily.

We got closer and all the contestants were holding various parts of fish that I had never seen before. It must have been fantastical fish from another universe. What were they?

Everyone ignored us while we stood watching them clean and slice the fish parts. The girl tugged at my sleeve and asked if we could go. I was transfixed by the cooking show and I just needed to know what the mystery ingredients were.

"All right, everyone ready?" The head producer man called out.

The cameras started rolling. "Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the next challenge." He said brightly, totally in a different character to the terribly angry man he had been towards us.

"Today's mystery ingredient is..." A drum roll sounded and contestants held up whatever part they were slicing.

".... Fish penis!" He announced triumphantly.

"But fish are not reproductive mammals, they don't have penises!" I blurted out before I realised I would also be on TV. Or do they? I thought, then I woke up.

Dream: Gunshot in a pseudo night club

In this dream, I'm in the nightclub district of a city that I do not recognise. But I think somehow it must be in Germany? I am there with Em and her ex, and the three of us are looking for a particular nightclub.


The first thing we must do is pick up some cash, and the cash is dispensed from a shop with no ATM in sight. The cash comes in the form of a stack of bills, nestled neatly inside a cardboard box. We pick them up, feeling the gentle rustle of ancient currency - is it possibly cash from another age?


We find the shop that we are looking for, and it actually looks like a card shop. Outside are large turning displays that show a wide array of cards each in their plastic sleeves - but the cash is from an age before plastic perhaps? I want to stop and look at the cards but the other two are in a hurry, so I glance longingly at their bright colours and move on.


Inside there are more cards displayed on magazine racks, and also an assortment of clothes. We are still looking for the entrance to the nightclub, and I deduce that the entrance must be hidden somewhere inside the shop. I look around for more clues, but it seems like an ordinary shop selling knickknacks. There are lots of people around, but they all appear to be shopping.


Suddenly the lights go out, and it is almost completely dark even though it was a fading evening light outside. There is some dim blue fluorescence that illuminates people's faces, somewhat like the lighting of a nightclub. I feel confused by this sudden change in lighting.


Then just as suddenly as the darkness descended, the sound started. First it sounded like popcorn popping, discrete short staccato bursts. Then the sound comes even closer, and it is so loud my eardrums are hurting. I turn around and see Em holding a gun, and it looks like a fake gun.


I watch in slow motion as she raises the gun and points it at her ex. A real bullet (or at least it looks like a real one) comes out of the gun ever so slowly and hits him in the shoulder. He is frozen and time slows down so much that it seems like he could have dodged the bullet, but he doesn't and falls to the ground.


Next she turns towards me and there is a menacing glint in her eyes. I do not recognise this person, I think to myself. I hear the pop as the bullet is released from the gun, coming straight towards me. Again it is going in super slow motion, an elongated cylindrical copper bullet that looks almost comically like a lolly. I watch it come towards me with some kind of fascination. I lean back instinctively, hoping to miss the course of the bullet.


At that moment I glance up at the time and it is 1:30am.


Then I wake up. Did I get hit by the bullet? I don't know.

Dreams in Europe, October 2019

The magic icecream store

In this dream Em and I are minding three kids who are clearly not our own. One is a teenager and the other two mid primary age. None of them seem to be related either.

We are having some trouble controlling the kids as they run around trying to escape from view. Finally we pull them together and tell them we are going to the ice cream store.

Yay! Ice cream! They erupt in cheers.

The ice cream store had an amazing number of flavours which traverse the stairs going up from the bottom floor. There are so many flavours it's kind boggling, each one has a miniature model of what the flavour is (a mango, a coconut etc) sitting on top and the display looks really adorable.

The kids choose their flavours and change their minds again and again. Em and I cannot keep up with their preferences and when we get to the head of the queue, she accidentally orders a Colgate flavour.

There's actually a Toothpaste flavoured ice cream? I wonder to myself. The other flavours we pick up are apple (served in a realistic apple cone) and matcha sludges. But the toothpaste? I wake up before it arrives.


Jocelyn Glove and the baguette


In this dream I am at a staff meeting with the other intensivists in my department. It looks so ordinary that it feels real. We are discussing mundane things like rosters and meetings.

Suddenly, the peace is disturbed. One of the intensivists comes into the room and tells us that we are about to be arrested, all of us. We gasp collectively and ask what we did wrong, but she cannot tell us.

We all react differently, just as we would in real life. Some are crying silently, others pavpac anxiously across the room.

The intensivist who announced the trouble turns to me and says that there are two things that may help me escape. The first thing is already lost, but the second one is a patient compliment from a patient I had cared for.

Do you remember her? She asks me.

I rack my brains but don't remember her name.

It was a big case, she was very badly burnt. She tells me, but it does not trigger any memory.

Her name is Jocelyn Glove. She says.

Jocelyn Glove, Jocelyn Glove. I repeat to myself but it doesn't ring any bells.

Then the director comes in and says that we must work as a team to overcome this hurdle. This is the typical kind of thing a director says and we all look at each other cluelessly.

He brings a tray of small segments of bread, all torn up.

You must put this back together. He says.
It used to be a baguette.

I stare at the bits of bread, wondering how we can reconstruct the baguette. Then I wake up.


The lost German grandma

In this dream I am standing inside a train station that looks like Town Hall. I look at the display and the next train to newy is in 40min time. I look around for something I can buy to eat.

At that moment I see an older lady maybe in her 70s, looking very lost.

When I approach her to ask if she needs help she is delighted that I spoke to her.

She shows me a picture of a walking stick, very elaborate and high tech looking.

I don't really understand her but she keeps saying ich brauche diese... (I need this)

I decide that she needs to go to Kathmandu to buy it since it looks like an outdoor walking pole. I offer to go with her, saying ich kann mit dir gehen, ich habe viel Zeit (I can go with you, I have lots of time). But she insists I draw her the directions on the back of the tourist brochure she is holding.

After I've drawn the instructions she says thanks and starts walking back towards the station entrance. I walk with her a few steps and hear her gasp loudly at her suitcase which has been opened nearby, its contents spilling out messily everywhere.

She wails and lurches towards it, but she misses the last step in the flight of stairs and falls down flat on her face.

She remains very very still after that and I am concerned. She does not seem to be breathing.

With some effort I turn her body over and there is a single puncture mark between her eyes.

How did she get shot? I wonder, and wake up.


Down jackets and eagles

In this dream I am in a reality TV show and feel very mindful that I am being filmed. I walk past a room where my maternal aunt and grandmother are sitting in relative darkness.

Wanting to get away from them, I duck into the nearest room. It is a challenge station and the challenge is to show people how to wash their down jackets without losing the puffiness.

I don't know anything about washing down jackets so I really struggle. Then I get a text from Em and I think, great I can ask her since Canadians must know about it!

The message is a picture of a cathedral dome. When I look at it closely, it is not possible for anyone to take a photo like this. It is so close to the dome that the picture must have been taken in flight.

Then I realise that she must have turned into one of the long distance eagles that racked up a huge phone bill due to unexpected adventures to Kazakhstan. I laugh in the dream, and wake up in real life.

A recent jumble of dreams

The one where Taiwan transforms into Singapore

In this dream Em and I are on a transit stopover in Taiwan. I didn’t specifically feel like it was Taipei in the dream though, as nothing looked familiar.

We had a 6 hour stopover and she said she wanted to go into town to look for sex. Strange request given how we usually take musical holidays, but we got onto the MRT to go into town. The MRT also did not look like the real Taiwanese MRT, it was darker and older somehow.

Arriving at a station we do not recognise, we get out of the MRT straight into the basement of a big shopping mall. We are on “Level 1” and it consists of many small shops. Very soon we lose sight of each other and I am on my own.

I try to find my way back to the MRT station, as perhaps this is somewhere she would also go to meet me. No matter how many times I circuit around, nothing looks familiar and no-one knows where the MRT station is.

Then I realise there is a roadblock, and some part of the building must be cordoned off. I look at the directory of the mall adjacent to an elevator, and discover that both L1 and L6 have access to the MRT.

That does not make any sense… how can an underground train have a station on level 6? I think to myself in the dream, but take the elevator up to 6 anyway.

I follow the signs to the MRT and there is a big fruit market right next to the entrance to the station.

This is definitely not the stop where we got off. I think to myself.

I line up for a ticket to the airport, and the lady does not speak Chinese to me. I’m not sure what language it is, but it doesn’t sound like anything I have heard before. I pass her a $100 note (which is red, incidentally the same as in mainland China) and she shakes her head no. I guess she doesn’t have change and pass her a $20 note (which is green, but in mainland China it is brown). She gives me a plastic token, like those ones used in casinos.

I enter the MRT station and get onto the subway. Though we are on the 6^th floor, it feels like we are underground. Once on the subway, I see an advertisement for Changi airport. And that’s when I realised that we are actually in Singapore.

I think to myself, if I just go to the Uniqlo at Changi, surely Em will find me there. Then I wake up.

The one where I choose a top

(This dream took place because I was staying at a palatial penthouse… I think it is relating to choices in life)

I am in a department store. Quite an upmarket one, with the right level of mood lighting and brightly marbled floors. Everything looks shiny and polished. In short, totally where I would not go in real life.

I have a personal shopper, a petite lady whose job is to help me dress. I am hidden behind a curtain in the changeroom, whilst she talks to a shop assistant just outside the curtain. I am wearing my own clothes and I contemplate myself in the mirror – a grey T-shirt and jeans, exactly what I would usually wear, day in and day out.

She opens the curtain gently and shows me the options on a golden coloured rack. There are three tops.

The first is a simple top in hot pink with a boat neck, which has quite a loose fit that looks like it would drape nicely. I think this represents the extroverted outgoing side of my personality.

The second is an elegant formal style top in off-white (almost a cream). Quite well fitted, it has broad straps forming some sort of complex neckline. It looks like something to go with a full puffy skirt and heels. I think this represents the graceful and beautiful side of myself. 

The third is a frilly black top which looks mysterious and sexy. The neckline is also rather complex with lace, and the arms are all lace. It looks like something from a Victoria’s secret catalogue. I think this represents the unexplored territories of my existence. 

The shop assistant asks me which one I would like. I am not sure what my choice is before I wake up. 

The toilet to another world dream

(This dream I had right after the fun Gold Coast music weekend… perhaps some sort of liberation?)

I am stuck in a long and complex immigration queue. It is long enough that I cannot really see the faces of those who are at the counters. There are dozens of counters but hundreds of people, so the line is moving very slowly.

People keep cutting from one queue to another, but no one seems to be complaining about those not following the rules.

I get rather annoyed that the progress is so slow because every time someone is processed from my queue, some others join from other queues.

Suddenly one window is open, the immigration officer in there departed. A throng of people push through the narrow passageway, and I rush to join them. Suddenly, we are all on the other side where it is very spacious and uncrowded.

I look around to see if there are any clues as to where I am. The wall tiles are quite a dark shade of orange with a glossy sheen to them. I cannot find the exit or the baggage carousel. Maybe I am just in transit? I think to myself in the dream.

I see a huge poster advertising “Buy One Get One Free Burger!” probably the largest ad I’ve ever seen for a burger. Then I have an inkling that it is actually Ramadan and so I must be in a Muslim country.

I feel the need to find a toilet, and when I get there it is absolutely huge, perhaps the size of my apartment. There is a cloth cover over the toilet seat, and when I sit down I realise that there is no way for me not to soil the cover.

After I sit down, I realise that the bathroom is surrounded by flyscreens which are half exposed and I can see people walking around outside. I am a bit horrified that people can see in as well, so I quickly finish and stand up.

Not knowing what to do with the toilet seat cover, I take it off and bundle it up, looking for a bin to throw it into. 

That is when I realise that the bathroom actually has another section around the corner. Does it lead to another world? I wake up.

Dream: A forest trail to the tarmac

This is an extremely hyper vivid dream featuring my friend B.

The dream starts in a dense forest. It’s hard to tell where we are exactly, and perhaps in the dream I am very aware of the difference between types of forests in the world. We are not in Australian forest, for there are no gum trees and no characteristic eucalyptus scent. We are not in tropical Asian rainforest, there’s none of that sticky sickly sweet smell. The air is cool and not warm or humid… so we must be in Europe??

We are climbing slowly, picking our way up a gentle incline. The path is ragged, the soil packed into shape by footsteps only and at many points we almost lose our way. We ascend into a darker section of the forest and there is no one around at all. It is completely still and we cannot hear any birds or animals, not even the rustling of wind.

Suddenly we come to a concrete set of steps. Standing where we are, the trail we had been following seems to go off to the left, around a few rocks and then disappear from view into the undergrowth. The steps we see are completely straight and very well formed, ascending into the distance beyond where our eyes can stretch. We inspect the steps closely as they look so out of touch with the reality of where we are, deep in the dark forest. The concrete is poured such that each perfectly formed step is connected to the next with the vertical aspect between two steps also filled in. It is as if someone has laid down a long concrete ribbon and pressed it into the earth to form a staircase.

We stand at this crossroads, wondering if we should take the formed path (is it a shortcut of some sort?) or continue on the raggedy little trail. We don’t discuss it very much and B starts off on the trail on the left.

The scene cuts abruptly to a small airport. I intuitively know that B is in jail and I am there to get her out of jail. I pause to take in my surroundings, standing at the entrance to the airport. The large room has just one single unlabelled gate, with a cluster of seats surrounding the sliding door which goes straight out to the tarmac. On the tarmac is a group of people, perhaps 30 or so, standing within a roped off section. They are calling out and waving their arms, but we cannot hear them from inside the terminal. There are a handful of security guards around, and a few visitors.

The only sound we hear is that of fighter jets. Impossibly small planes (I guess all fighter jets are kind of small) zoom very close to the airport but none of them are near the runway or the people. The noise is quite loud and they disappear from view so quickly that I wonder if they are flying faster than the sound of speed.

The security guards escort the visitors towards the gate and one man unceremoniously presses a button to open the glass sliding doors. The group outside on the tarmac are not able to rush forward, though they move excitedly, bristling at the edges. Stepping out onto the tarmac, the noise of the jets becomes unbearable and I quickly scan the group to find B. She is wearing an oversized white T shirt and a dark blue beanie, looking impossibly small as if she somehow had become a child.

I rush towards her and she is crying.  

Let’s get out of here now, I say. Somehow the rope gives way easily and she is outside the group. We start to run towards the gate going into the terminal and just as we are almost there, she says Wait, I must say goodbye to my inside family.

The fighter jets are still zooming around as we run back to the roped off group and approach a few men. At that moment one of the guards approaches us and I freeze with fear. Cold runs through my veins and I am afraid we will both be put into the roped off group. She hugs one of the men while another man looks on with a blank expression. The guard ignores both of us and turns around to a third man.

Come on guys, you gotta get some while you can. He says and my feet feel glued to the ground while I am tugging frantically on B’s sleeve to get going.

Then I turn around and see what the “get some while you can” was referring to. He is holding an impossibly huge box of Ferrero Rochers, the box being so comically large that it obscures his entire body. There are a few chocolates missing and a few more upturned. We all stand there gaping at this impossible sight, and then I wake up.

Dream: crab gratin vs soba

This is quite a hyper vivid and very interesting dream, though the symbolism is not apparent.

(We stayed in an old Japanese house in suburban Osaka recently, where there was a piano belonging to the airbnb host's sister. The room in this dream is directly taken from the sitting room of that house)

In this dream the sitting room has turned into a small noodle bar, with a set of Japanese style two fold curtains at one end. It looks like the kitchen is on the other side of the curtains, but one cannot be sure.

There is a U-shaped bar table inside and I am the only customer sitting directly facing the curtains. There is a middle aged Japanese hostess with rather non-descript features. She serves me a dish with a heavy blue coloured ceramic lid. When she lifts the lid of the dish off, I am brought to another place - the crab restaurant where we had our recent crab degustation in Kobe. The aroma is exactly as it is in my memory, and I immediately know this is my favourite dish from that degustation - the crab gratin.

In this dish, the ever slightly savoury crab is set against the creaminess of the sauce and the softness of the pasta. It has a slightly bronzed crust, as if the cheese there had decidedly taken on a more delicious character. I savour the aroma of this dish, and I can barely wait to eat it again.

The hostess bows to me and I take a single bite. As my tastebuds process the bite, the intense flavours rush into my soul and I feel a wave of immense pleasure. I come to realise that M is sitting at a bar stool on my left, with nothing in front of him, watching me eat. I put my chopsticks and stare at him as if he were an apparition, but he says nothing.

Suddenly a young man enters the noodle bar, though we did not hear the rustle of any door or curtain. He is perhaps 20, a university student? He asks the hostess for the menu and peruses it with much enthusiasm. He starts asking about the dishes, but with each and every dish M deflects the attention with rejections like the spinach is not in season right now, and we have run out of this type of fish. The boy does not give up and keeps asking after various items. After a while, M says look, the restaurant is pretty much closed, come back another day.

The student looks crestfallen and leaves. M also disappears behind the blue curtains into the kitchen and it is just me and the hostess left in the restaurant. She stares at me sullenly, as if she was wishing I would go as well.

I take another bite of the gratin, and it is just as delicious as the very first bite. I am totally absorbed into the crab gratin and wish it would never end.

The curtains open and at that moment I strain to see inside, but I cannot see anything. M comes out with a large bowl of noodles, and I feel myself think in the dream - he doesn't eat noodles! It is distinctly soba, there is no other noodle it could be. The bowl is pretty much bare, with just a few green leaves floating in the clear broth.

He sits down on my left, in the position where he was. He starts to eat the noodles wordlessly and I continue to eat my gratin but it no longer tastes the same. I am looking at my dish when suddenly, he deposits a single strand of soba onto my plate. It is coiled up perfectly as if someone has drawn it. The soba is so hot that there is an impossible amount of steam pouring off the single noodle, as if it was being boiled from below.

You should eat this. he says to me.

I contemplate the soba, the contrast between my dish and his dish so apparent. Mine is so decadent, rich and succulent. His is so clean and pared back, devoid of any excess. I poke the single noodle with my chopstick and it lets off a little jet of steam.

You know, I say to him very slowly and intently, we are not so good at changing direction once we have gone somewhere.

Then I wake up.