dreeeeeam, dream dream dream

Oh dear I've been having too many dreams lately. :(

Two nights ago, my dream (or dreams? Since they appeared not to really be linked) was a very convoluted and slightly disturbing one. There is one part that I'm quite sure wasn't the beginning but for some reason doesn't seem to really fit anywhere in the chronology... It's something about Joel (recent acquaintance in USP) dropping his handphone or something important because he wouldn't tell me something and I kept bugging him about it, and the thing that was dropped was almost run over by a car, and in the end I found out what it was and said "Why did you refuse to tell me, it was such a trivial thing anyway?" and I don't remember his reply. Hmmm.

The other longer and more convoluted part goes like this: For some reason I am shopping in some neighbourhood with my mother and brother, and this neighbourhood looks somewhat like the Bukit Batok neighbourhood we used to live in, except the shops have all been renovated. My mother slips for some reason and falls with her face pressed into something which makes her face dirty. My brother says something like "Why are you so careless?" and I admonish him for being heartless and give my mother a tissue to wipe her face with. We walk towards this shop that we had thought quite intriguing and wanted to enter, but we realised that further inside this shop they sold stuff for temple offerings like incense and stuff like that. So we didn't enter it but we entered another shop which I have the vaguest impression of as selling things for hobbies like kites, possibly. Just then I hear someone call "Dionnie! Reinie!" which are the names of my twin nieces, and I turn around and they've just walked past the shop so I call out to them. Surprisingly, my mother appears not to be surprised at their presence at all (despite the fact that in reality they live in Ponggol and are not likely to be in our neighbourhood at all) and we chat with them for awhile.

Suddenly the scene shifts to a swimming pool (this might be because the twins love to swim :P) and it's like one of those holiday resorts, with a pavilion and all. An "ang-moh" boy is trying to retrieve a tennis ball from the gutter of some pavilion roof, and after he succeeds he falls into the pool with a big splash and rubs his thigh which apparently hurts, although he doesn't appear to be in danger. I was watching that incident from the pool itself but suddenly i'm standing on the second level of a pavilion that seems to be built reaching out over the pool, and there are some guys in the pool that I appear to be talking to. They point out a length of cloth hanging from the railing on the side of the second level which is opposite to mine, and none of us have any idea what it's doing there. Suddenly a girl who appears to be a pageant contestant of some sort (in a bikini, complete with sash and all) is standing just above the cloth, and one or two of the boys starts whistling and swimming towards the cloth while the girl beckons them to climb up it. All of a sudden I notice there are more lengths of cloth tied at regular intervals to the railings overlooking the pool, and girls who look like the other pageant contestants start to appear at the lengths of cloths and there looks like 1 girl for each guy in the pool. Then I realise there is a cloth hanging just below my feet and I tell the guy "Don't even think about it!" :P After that, I realise there are a couple more pageant contestants coming with sashes that match the grey cloth hanging below me so I grab my towels (one white and one dark green) and scuttle past to make room for them. I join my friends in what seems to be a lobby and we're sitting down on sofas... for some reason I have the impression they are my university schoolmates, possibly from USP. But Tabitha (from my Sociology honours class) is there too, so I'm not too sure. The other university schoolmates (two girls) are gossiping and expressing disgust about how the pageant girls (I get the impression they were referred to as foreigners) are taking away our local guys, and then suddenly one local guy appears in front of us and asks Tabitha for a dance. I comment "Nice!" because it appears that at least one local guy isn't too dazzled by the foreigners and likes local girls, and we egg her on, so she goes with the guy, but before he leaves he turns at the last minute and touches the hand of one of the other university schoolmates (who appears to be dark-skinned), whispering "I'll see you later..." And then both my university schoolmates burst out laughing because that guy has turned out to be a playboy after all.

After that I walk to the (very short flight of) stairs behind the sofa and meet a few girls who seem to be from MGS... But I meet Mariko there who was from my primary school (FMPS) so I'm not sure about that. Anyway Mariko is wearing this dress with green print that doesn't seem very nice, and for some reason I spitefully make a sarcastic comment about it, and she responds sarcastically too. Then she mentions that she is going to see her father and that hits me in the heart, because I remember something about her not being on very good terms with her father. So I apologise for being mean and say I truly hope she will have a happy meeting with her father, and she makes a reply and walks up the stairs. I'm about to follow after her (perhaps to apologise again) when I meet my friend Sue Mei from MGS. I put my arm around her and turn to continue up the stairs, but I see someone hanging like a burden from Mariko's back in a very weird position facing us, with her hair covering her face. I peer under her hair and see that it's Huiling (my MGS friend who committed suicide in 2001), and at that point I scream like I've never screamed before in my life, and Sue Mei screams as well and I wake up in a cold sweat.

I know dreams often don't mean anything but I am still a little disturbed by that. And my parents don't seem to have picked up on my distress when I talked to them about it; generally they don't seem to want to talk about Huiling at all when I do bring up the topic. And the day after the dream was when we learnt about my uncle's brother's suicide. But anyway... I think it was just the memory of MGS and petty social bickering that reminded me of our "loners' group" in MGS, and hence Sue Mei, and hence Huiling. So it doesn't mean anything... only I wish I could talk about it to somebody and have them understand.

Well, I'm talking it out to my blog, now :) So I feel much better.

Last night, I dreamt again... This time about being chased in a group of people through fields and over rivers, kinda like in a war scene except it didn't look so "Chinese". I remember dipping my feet into the clear cold water of the river and looking for children in the tall grass. All of a sudden I was hiding behind a tree while a big car/bus/vehicle of some sort drove up, but I couldn't hide well enough and was discovered by a lady in a pink hat/outfit. Suddenly I was in some sort of talent agency (?) and being selected for some grooming programme... they claimed I had the most "potential" even though I protested and said "How could I possibly be better than all those other girls?"

Then I left the talent agency to go somewhere else and waited for a shuttle bus outside (shades of visiting Dad at CGH) and sat on a nice wooden park bench while doing so with my bag next to my feet. I'm not sure at what point Weiyi (from my JC class) was sitting next to me (because I have a vague memory, not sure in this dream or the previous night's one, of her sitting next to me in some random bus and us being surprised and chatting) but there she was on the park bench next to me, commenting about SiJia whom we had just seen some way down the road. I was saying something about how I didn't know SiJia was a Christian until I read what her T-shirt said, and Weiyi was saying something like "Yes, she doesn't really flaunt it around, she's not the type that always wants to talk about it" and I felt a subtle criticism about my own tendency to talk about Christianity and Christianity-related stuff in front of my friends, whether they're Christian or non-Christian (although presumably it only matters more to non-Christian friends). But I can't help it, Christ is so much a part of my life that I honestly don't see how I can compartmentalise belief in Him into just one little box labelled "Religion" instead of acknowledging that His spirit infuses (and is SUPPOSED to infuse) all and every part of my life.

Oh well. At any rate I woke up soon after that, or so I think :P I don't remember anything after that, so I guess I must have.

How strange dreams are. :/