Saturday, August 23, 2008

The First Consciousness

My Nokia 5300 fell to the MRT floor, and the screen went dark. To add insult to injury, that phone was already spoilt and thus it became more-spoilt. "Curses!", I proclaimed, and the whole cabin heard me - yet did not turn to look; their silent, unmoving backs as if witnessing a funeral.

I had to get Somewhere, do Something, but I was not quite sure of yet. I just had an inkling, this nagging within my gut. Follow my hunches. I thought.

Something had happened at work, and they were trying to pound it to a pulp, pound it till it ceased from being a wriggling, live thing, to a flat, bloody, dead mess. And then they would excavate somewhere unprominent and then hurl the carcass into the ground (yes, I deliberately used the word 'carcass' instead of 'corpse', for that's what they had made it become) where it -hopefully- would not be unearthed by nosy employees and itchy-fingered news reporters.

I knew - and they knew I knew - so I did the best thing I could do - I ran.

But with the MRT crawling at a speed comparable to that of a mollusc on salt, and my phone three-quarters dead, and like the salt that mollusc crawls upon, I am additionally unfit for stamina-related events, there was little I could do about running per se. So I did the next best thing - I tried to hide.

However, I am not a very small person. In fact, I am quite large. So it is quite hard to hide. Couple that with the fact that I was wearing something rather bright and that the organisation I had been slaving for was rather big, that would be very hard to accomplish too.

So I was on my way to find one of the afore-mentioned itchy-fingered news reporters. Uncover their malpractices I shall! I thought, while repeatedly dropping my already more-spoilt-further-spoilt-think-it-is-dead-time-to-get-a-new-one phone on the MRT floor, while people with their backs turned towards me quietly appreciated my rhythmic cacophony of mobile madness.

8:00 And then my alarm rang

The Second Consciousness

The first thing I remember was a sense of difference. I was sure of it. The whole house smelt of it.

And then I remembered my house had been under renovation. But was the renovation complete? I couldn't tell. There was no evidence of plaster dust nor white footprints nor fingerprints. There were no renovating tools left lying around. It was just as it had been, only different.

The first sign of difference were the double windows in my sister's room. And the nail. It was embedded into the wall, pinning a ribbon of metallic material to the wall. "That would be our new clothesline", the voiceless narrator behind me announced. So I pulled the ribbon taut and tied it to a bedpost, where it hence resembled a (rather makeshift) clothesline. "Will it fray?" I inquired, examining the material. "No it will not" the Voice said. "It is of a special metallic material and thus will not tear nor fray." "Good", I uttered with much disbelief.

The second sign of difference occurred not because I noticed it, but because it happened. That is a proactive difference. I was exiting my sister's room with the Voice when suddenly there was a loud sound and the prefabricated wall panel in front of me came loose and crashed to the side. "EGADS" I shrieked like a girl, which somehow I wasn't in this world. (I was more genderless, or perhaps leaning to that of a male human) This wall panel was not particularly connected to any room, so I had expected to see a long drop down and perhaps people's washing hanging out on bamboo poles out to dry with pigeons roosted and leaving their white-green-sometimes yellow fecal matter all out on the sill.

But there was no edge. It was another room. And we walked into it, the Voice and I. Even he was silent. This was the difference that sparked a whole chain of differences until I cannot count any further than two, for it then becomes infinity. And I sure as hell did not want to waste my time counting infinity, for I only have a finite number of years to live and a finite time to regal in this odd dream of mine.

This room was bare, save for a long narrow door in the left corner in the furthest wall in the room. I opened it, expecting the unexpected (which is not much expecting after all, since you don't know what to expect). It opened with relatively much ease, and I expected a smell to overwhelm me, for it had opened into what seemed the central rubbish chute in a HDB flat, only with removal of the chute and the addition of a door so you could see right down it. But it was bigger and wider that a normal central chute, but you get the idea, right? Below was a tiled floor, reminiscent of the small white bathroom tiles in some houses - the old-fashioned (and cheap) kind, which often pops out when too much water is afflicted upon it. There were a few bags of trash lying on the really clean floor below, with even a cupboard and a dustpan and broom in the corner. There was a door leading to the outside, where the rubbish truck would come collect all the trash and the cleaner would go in and sweep the floor's trash into the truck.

Talk about reverse waste removal from an entity.

Anyway, I digress. Apart from the new areas in my house, I have yet to mention I walked into the dining room and found it occupied. Four or five people sat around the dining table (which I don't have in real life) that was covered in a white lace tablecloth. They sat with pokerface and pokercards until I couldn't tell the difference between card and face.

The best thing was, I didn't know any of them at all. There were these Africans, then there were these Bangladeshis and then you have your typical ABC (American Born Chinese) and perhaps some random Asians. Well, I settled myself onto an empty seat at the table and proceeded to make conversation. In my attempt to find out what was happening, I pretended to be friendly, like a host, because this was my house in the first place. And the next best thing was, they had no inkling of how they had appeared there, just remembered strolling and the next thing they knew they had been seated here and supposed to play poker. (But some of them didn't) What irritated me the most (and I don't mean to be racist, but if having a racist dream means I am racist then so be it) were the scattering of foreign workers around my house which I discovered while exploring the house after that poker table incident, and they ate my leftover Briyani in the fridge and my pandan cake and my food (but they paid compliments to the chef, who was my mom - my mom does not cook Briyani in reality so this is odd. In fact, the Briyani she once attempted to cook was quite not-nice).

So after trying to weasel out information from the ABC/Asian fellows (who were exceedingly good-looking in this dream of mine) I remembered I had to take a shower so I excused myself. Thus, upon looking for my room (I admit I was lost in this strange house of mine) I encountered the fridge-raiding foreign workers and the ones languishing on my bed/couch/chairs.

And then quite suddenly, I was somewhere totally unlike my house. I was in a space between what seemed to be my house and a public vicinity. For I spotted my colleague waiting with a stalk of rose in one hand at a Chinese restaurant. Not that there was any queue, but it seemed he was waiting for someone and thus stood in front of the counter near the neat row of overturned chairs lining the entrance to cause a bottleneck during peak hours.

I glanced, and took this escalator down. I had arrived, at what seemed, the concrete jungle of Changi Airport Terminal 3. Did I want to watch a movie? Because I found myself in front of one of those stations very much like AXS and it was advertising Avatar: The Last Airbender MOVIE. Wow, I thought, my sister would love this. But it seemed to be screening in Europe and Japan and America but not Singapore. So odd, I thought, and the Voice agreed with me, startling me, for I had ceased to remember his presence after much dormancy.

I remember I transited between Airport and Home many many times. For what, I cannot remember. Blame the random neural firing in my brain that causes strange dreams like these. I kept seeing my colleague waiting, and then finally he gave up and had a long argument with the airport staff about how he did indeed call the person and give the person (or people) the correct coordinates, and did he inform them the airport had since been renovated? No, already adamant, but it was new anyway and client had never come here before so there wasn't any change in reality to be noticed. Even so, thunderous and booming by now, you ShOULD have. And the shouting match continued as a ascended and descended the escalator, the yellow and black steps churning churning through my lost mind.

9:40 mu smsed, and I fell back into the world of what-is-proclaimed-to-be-reality
...and dith babbled on at the insane hour of 10:05:00 AM