Batik Shirt

I am in a meeting with a couple. They are Thai, skinny and youngish looking. Why, I am surprised when they tell me they are both 27 and 33 respectively. I had thought they were just in their late teens or early 20s.

We are in a cafe in a shopping mall, the kind with a large atrium. A few floors up and sitting at a cubicle table along the corridor. It is day, and very bright. The shopping centre feels familiar, like the one I had visited in a dream before. It has three high-rise circular sections, each with its own atrium and information counter.

The meeting starts. The couple are concerned. At this point I learn who I am. I am their English tutor and they are about to go overseas for studies. They wonder if they are making the right decision. I tell them it is never too late to study and it is always good to have a degree - for reason of career and personal advancement.

I ask if they are engaged; they both nod. I said "Really?" and they both nod again. I am not sure why I have to affirm this bit of info. There seems to be some kind of family values involved. 

I then recall being at their family home and being with their family members. It was a happy, casual occasion.

After this first meeting I return to Singapore. I remember going via the Causeway so I must have landed in JB and taken the land road home. I did, after all, lived in nearby Marsiling before.

I also remember leaving the cafe and browsing over some clothing shop. The shirts there had patterns similar to Indonesian batik. I checked my wallet and realised I had a few notes left and just enough foreign currency to get home.

We are now at our second meeting. It's at the same location. Everything is cheery, and it appears that much have been decided upon. The couple are happy and give me a brown batik shirt as a gift. It is not cotton but one made of polyester and cotton mixed. Maybe rayon. But it fits me nicely. My shoulders and chest look buff.

Later, I meet MH and Set on the taxi home and they compliemented on my shirt. I told them I was on work assignment in Thailand.

At the shopping centre after my meeting with the couple I leave. But there seems to be a commotion downstairs at the atrium. People are fleeing and I am being swept along. We run to the back of the building and find ourselves in some back maintenance/loading area with big pipes running along the walls. They are painted in a dirty mustard yellow color. The whole place looks a bit grungy.

I escape to the outside and walk along a kampung road. It is a dirt road with a grassy stream running beside it. Ahead are padi feilds and coconut trees. The scene reminds me of a kampung from my godma's condo on the outskirts of Malacca.

I get into a taxi and meet MH and Set. Not long after they compliment me on my batik patterned shirt. I again look into my wallet and find few notes there.

The end.

Spiderman and a Demon

This dream is rather unusual flying one. It starts off at the screening of two Spider-man movies in a gym (the old tall secondary school type) and the teacher - a pretty one looking businesslike in shirt and tight skirt, colors actually looking like a casino croupier - grilling us on the differences between the two.

The movies were about a good and bad Spider-man. It was also about the abilities of the superhero. I somehow feel indignant and think I could do a better job at 'flying' (Spider-man was more about swinging). I suddenly begin to float like I often do in such 'flying dreams' of mine - this time floating in a gentle but uncontrollable way like a drone ascending uncertainly.

Weirdly, the teacher doesn't seem to notice and I do more calisthenics in the air before exiting the hall and floating outside.

We are in a small godown area by the sea, all very Greece-like in sparsity, colors (sea blue) and sea.

Or in some deserted seaside industrial part of Malaysian town such as Pontian.

The dream then changes focus and we are suddenly haunted and hunted down by a possessed being which is both male and fierce.

I am running through this unruly field next to an industrial part of town and ushering a young girl along. n my arms a baby. We appear afraid of what might be following us. That it might catch up and take over our spirit and body.

We reach two old but tall blocks of HDB flats. Those built in 70s with shops below. A rather old and familiar scene. Provision shops with tarps extending to shade sundry goods spilling out from the corridor.

I go for the lift. An old man on a grandfather bike approaches and appear ready to fight the demon.

I tell him we need to go to the hall.

The baby, girl and I reach the hall, but the old man cannot be found. His bike lay sprawled in a stairwell. Has he been battling the demon?

The girl and I wonder if we can tell if the demon has possessed someone. Just then the old man appears, his demeanor now changed and looking like he could eat us up.

We retreat as we consider our options as to what to do. The room grows dark and menacing.

The end.

A Bike Light

An old dream revisited. Recurring dreams haven't happened to me in a while, so I was rather surprised by this one in the dawn hours of the morning.

The dream starts of with me fixing a small bike light that's a clip-on (belt) the size of a cigarette lighter pouch (i.e. the Dupont GI lighter kind), than a full-sized head lamp. It is quite flat and rectangular and newsy with its blue LED light. I am trying to fit two wires into their respective wire posts (a technical term such things); I am trying to fix it with one hand, the other hand not quite sure why not free.

There are three wire posts and I've gotten one wire in; I'm struggling with the other two and trying to twist them thin to fit, not so easy with just one hand. The blue LED light works but I have to get the other two wires in to have the white light come on.

All this while, I am walking to a gathering area that seems to be a small cultural plaza with a raised modern art area (at where some students are sitting and in discussion). I think a movie of sorts is being screened as well. My god-sister Carmen is there (she's not in the original dream though) and she asks about my well-being. We then chit-chat a bit.

I continue to fiddle with the bike light on my belt.

I sit with my god-sister for a while. The next scene see me getting up and walking the corridor at the edge of the plaza that is leading to a supermarket. It is night and the s-mart is closed. I reach the end and enter what appears to be a small theater. My friend CK is there seated at the back. He gives me his typical smiley hello. He is wearing a yellow headscarf over his bald pate, not something I've seen him with before. It looks like a kind of temple scarf with red Taoist rune letterings.

I sit down and wonder about what's going on on the movie screen.

Again I fidget with the bike light to try to get the wires in.

Watching the movie, I am transported back to my NS days. I see myself in a new green field uniform, of a camouflage pattern I have never seen or worn before. In the old days, we wore the old patchy "camo-pattern" ones, not these new pixelated ones that's common to most modern armies now.

In the next scene, I am climbing down from a tank. Must have been a tank on show as everything looked clean and posey. I am reminded of the night I had spent at the local officer cadet academy grounds in Jurong enjoying the midnight quiet and starry sky, and wondering what I would have become if I had signed-on (i.e. joined professionally) to the army. The academy grounds did once have a display tank there.

In the next scene, I am returned to the plaza and back to wearing the same windbreaker as before. Again I fidget with the bike light to get the wires in. Again, without much success.

The end.