Blogging at 3am.
I've just woken up from the most bizarre dream. Dreams for me usually end up with me waking up with no recollection of them, but this one remains clearly in my mind's eye. As such, I've decided to record this down for posterity. Do excuse the somethings and I’m-not-sures; dreams are generally hazy like that.
It’s about 8am, and I have to go to this stonewalled shop-house to pick up something. However, when I get there, the something is out of stock, so I sit down, open up my black backpack and reach inside. I find two Tupperware containers containing a ham sandwich each. Just then, the shop actually turns out to be my ex-ex-workplace, and my old colleagues start streaming in. Not wanting to seem impolite, I engage them in small-talk:
“So how’s business?”
“Great, now that you’re here!”
I smile and eat a ham sandwich.
Proceeding to the pantry, I’m informed by a random Chinese woman that we’re out of coffee and tea. Faced with this horrible fact, I get onto a train to the nearest supermarket.
It is a lavishly built multi-tiered train adorned with oakwood and gold-trimmings, with a narrow staircase running perpendicular to the train’s direction, lined with people of all sorts. As we cross a majestic wooden bridge taking us over a gaping, kilometre-wide chasm, I gaze down to see centuries of civilization being washed away by torrential storms and tidal waves. Walls protect us from the angry ashen-faced cumulonimbus clouds, as brick after brick is torn away.
I turn to ask my guide who had been standing behind me all along the meaning of this. He motions with a subtle flick of his wrist to the silken-dressed man who I had just squeezed by on the perpendicular staircase, and says, “He is the new emperor, and the new empire has just begun.”
For some reason, I hesitate to question this revelation further, and get off at the next stop.
At my destination, I abandon all intentions of getting coffee or tea) and decide to check into a posh hotel room instead. Just then, I begin to get a horrible throbbing in my right ear, and everyone’s voice to me comes out crackly, like a radio station off-tuned by half a frequency. As I hammer my ear with my palm, trying to clear the sensation out, I notice out of the corner of my eye the head of hotel security, gaze fixated on me, walkie-talkie in hand. Agents in suits begin to multiply in numbers around me, and one approaches me to ask me… something… but it comes out in crackles and pops. I have to leave. I make a hasty retreat, and board a boat to Ho Chi Minh City.
(Flashfoward: When I wake up, I learn that I had fallen asleep with my glasses on, which was pressing against the side of my ear in extremely uncomfortable fashion.)
The boat is small, like a speedboat, but resembles a tour bus on the inside. It is filled with backpackers from Europe, all chatting and generally being social. My stomach begins to rumble, and I reach into my black backpack to consume my second sandwich. Before I get to take a bite, the boat/bus hits the crest of a wave/pothole, and my coins (all thousand of them) fall out of my pockets and onto my seat. As I scamper to scoop them up and hastily toss them into the bottom of my backpack, I suddenly remember my original goal: We need to get the something from the shop.
Just then, the random Chinese woman from the shophouse sits down next to me, and starts speaking to me in crackly Chinese.
“Are you Chinese?”
“Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Don’t you need to get coffee and tea?”
“We need to get out of here.”
She tells me that she and her daughter have to take a detour to their ancient Chinese village, but to do so, she needs my backpack. More specifically, she needs the something inside it. From the village, I will be taken one step closer to coffee and/or tea. With hunger pangs in my belly, I reluctantly hand it over, now jangly with small change, my sandwich remaining untouched inside.
As we dock at the ancient Chinese village, she looks at me in a gesture of thanks, but suddenly ties a piano wire to the bow of the boat (now definitely a boat), with the other end of the wire connected securely to the geographical centre of town. We run off the boat screaming, as she begins to steer around and around the ancient Chinese village island, forcing the unsuspecting locals to duck and leap over the encircling wire, so as to prevent limbs from being unceremoniously lopped off.
We take cover inside a stone hut, gazing out through the cross-hatched windows at the chaos ensuing outside. My companion and his girlfriend suddenly decide to make a dash for safety, running in the direction of the nearest Mcdonald’s. Lowering my head just in time to avoid another circuit of the wire, I chase after them.
The aroma of fries fills the air, as my eyes dart around the scene looking for my newfound (and lost) companion. Pushing past the burger chef and Ronald, I open the heavy doors into a hallway, one about the size of half an aircraft hangar. The walls are heaving with giant ceramic heads, and I’m inclined to climb atop one of them.
Sitting on a green ceramic head some 20 metres off the ground, I look down to realize that all the locals had been replaced by generic American teenagers. One suddenly appears on the ceramic head to my left, and tells me that this is part of a massive conspiracy to do something, and that I should never have given my backpack to the random Chinese woman. The only way that I may escape now, is to engage and beat him in a round of Wii Sports fencing.
As they pass me the Wiimote, the familiar startup sound of the Wii resonates around the cavernous hallway. The images are projected onto a massive greying tarpaulin on the wall opposite us, and the generic American teenagers have descended into a ravenous mob, watching the scene unfold and baying for my blood. I think back to the beginning of my journey, and all the steps I had taken to get to this point. I think of the coffee and tea, of the something I had never collected in the shop, of the ill-advised trip to Saigon, and of my uneaten ham sandwich. I regain my balance on the ceramic head, try and remember the last time I had played this, and take a deep breath.
Fortunately for me, my opponent had never played the game in his life, while I had just played it a week ago. I beat him soundly in three rounds. Exhausted, I jump off my ceramic mount to face the disbelieving angry mob now stunned into silence, and demand my release.
And then I wake up.
posted by crapshoot @ 3:52:00 AM
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