With all the weird dreams I have been having recently, I can't help but wonder if its really just pure coincidence for me to discover this game.

Anyway, yes its a game. And a darn old one at that. It was released back in 1998 (Pokemon anyone?) only in Japan for the PlayStation 1. LSD doesn't stand for the drug in case you are wondering. Its an acronym for Lovely Sweet Dreams. The game is anything but lovely or sweet.

Tell me how this translates into anything sweet or lovely?

Unlike normal games, there is no princess to be rescued in LSD, no final boss to defeat (there's not even random monster encounters), no world to be saved, no quests to complete, no achievements to achieve. The sole purpose of the game is for the player, which would be you or me, to explore the dream world in the game.

That is rather peculiar but intriguing at the same time.

The dream world in the game is actually real. Not real as in really real but real as in its not made up. The game was created based on the dream journal of an employee of the game company, Hiroko Nishikawa, which he has kept for 10 years. So essentially, we are seeing the dream of another person when we play the game.

The concept of the game is rather cool. Frankly speaking, I love it. But I am not so sure about the game itself.

A nightmare. No doubt about it.

I was expecting something more realistic but hey, we are talking about dreams here. But really, I was expecting something more dream-like, like a ghost haunting you, dreaming of happy moments with your crush -

Ok. I realized the flaw in my expectation after thinking for awhile of how to complete my previous sentence; there are no limits to the kind and types of dreams we can have. We can literally dream of anything and everything. Hence, there is no meaningful reason to try and categorize dreams into more realistic or fake.

Perhaps the graphics back in 1998 couldn't portray what the game developer was trying to show? I mean look at all those pixellated figures and images. Or was that exactly what Hiroko dreamt about?

Creepy.

Your first dream starts in a house, with you (playing in the first person perspective) facing the window. Each dream lasts for about 10 minutes during which you are free to explore around till your hearts content. To move to different places in the dream, you either enter tunnels in the dreamscape or run into objects/walls.

And you can die in the dream world, which will definitely happen should you run into the Grey Man during your exploration.

So he kills you in your dream... only for you to dream again so that he can kill you again?

 
I wonder what is the significance of the Grey Man to Hiroko... In any case, meeting the Grey Man is not the only way to die and dying in the dream "wakes" you up and returns you to the main menu, where you can choose to continue exploring a second dream. But before that, you will be shown a chart of some sort that supposedly rates the dream you just had in four categories - upper, downer, dynamic or static.

Looks like some drawings to communicate with aliens.

There is a video file in the game disc titled ENDING.STR which nobody has managed to open to date. It is rumored that the ENDING.STR video file will play automatically once you completely fill the chart but filling it up is very tedious given the random nature of the game.

Perhaps its not a video file but just another part of the game's programming code. Perhaps its really a video file that will be unlocked upon completion of the chart. Whatever it is, its mysterious stuff like this that sparks my interest.

There may be no main objective in the game but it keeps track of your gameplay by the number of days you spent exploring the dream world. Or dreaming, if you would. Reaching your 20th day of dreaming will unlock the Flashback option, which allows you to revisit previous dreams which you have explored.

You can dream up to an infinite number of days if you have the time and patience. The furthest I saw a player go is 79 days.

I haven't played the game yet but I've read its review here. I wonder if I can get it on my PSP.

On a side note, now I am inspired to start keeping a dream journal.

The Empire State Building and Pacific Maoi!?

Do we secretly derive pleasure from the sufferings of others deep down in each and every of our hearts?

Would you like some Iron? It helps in blood circulation.

I don't watch TV that much anymore ever since I became good friends with the computer. That aside, I am not much of a TV person to begin with. There are so many more things which I can do other than being passively entertained by moving pictures... like being passively entertained by contents on the interwebs.

But today, I rushed home to catch the 7pm show on Channel 8 - The Woman with the Broken Palm. She doesn't has a broken palm literally but rather, she has a palm line which cuts right through her palms. According to Chinese folklore, women with Broken Palms are destined to lead a life full of hardships and agony, bringing terrible, terrible luck to their family, especially their parents and husbands, and will never be able to enjoy a single moment of joy until the day they die.

Such is the accursed life of the bearer of a Broken Palm.

If you are a woman, good luck.

Incidentally, men with Broken Palms are OK and will still be able to lead a normal life.

And so, the female lead of the show, Jinyu (played by Jeanette Aw) really led a god damn tough life ever since she was born. Even after she was married (her husband had an affair) and gave birth to two children (her son is a retard and her daughter got pregnant at 16), her bad life was no where close to ending.

In tonight's episode, Jinyu's younger brother, Jinfeng discovered she was the one who framed him in a murder case 10 years ago. Bitter at having served 10 years of jail time for a crime which he did not commit, Jinfeng went to confront Jinyu. In the midst of the scuffle, Jinyu's son, Jieming, was mortally wounded by Jinfeng. Jinfeng himself died shortly after that.

That was the reason why I wanted to catch tonight's episode; to see Jieming get crushed by being dragged along a wall by the van Jinfeng was trying to flee in. Of course, national TV programs don't broadcast such grotesque scenes. They only showed the concept of how Jieming was supposed to die. If you know what I mean.

Not so sure if this is a better way to die.

If not for that brief synopsis I caught on the TV yesterday night, I probably wouldn't bother with the show. But after watching the whole episode tonight, I became rather interested in the very terrible life of Jinyu. Its like I want to see what will happen to her next.

Plus tonight's episode ended with a synopsis of tomorrow's episode; Jinyu's mother fell while chasing after her another daughter-in-law fleeing in a cab. She appears to be suffering from a heart attack after her fall. Will she die? I HAVE TO WATCH THE EPISODE TOMORROW!

This is what I am talking about. The drama plays on our (or just mine. But I believe I am not alone) innate desire to see others fail and suffer in order to capture viewership. In fact, I feel that the show is similar to those HK dramas about family disputes with relatives fighting against each other to inherit the family's wealth, or imperial princes fighting amongst themselves to claim the throne to their father's empire.

The english name for this show is "Beyond the Realm of Conscience". In other words - BARBARISM!

And then there are the Korean dramas as well. The ones which my mom is watching recently all have one thing in common; the lead actress are always being bullied and marginalized, either by their mother-in-laws or their worthless husbands.

Perhaps it is not the suffering that we want to see but rather, judgment being carried out upon the "evil" characters in the shows, how they will be punished at the end of the show and how the protagonist gets vindicated eventually.

But with the vindication occurring only during the final few episodes, and the process of the protagonist getting abused and marginalized constituting the bulk of the show, the part about playing on our sadist side doesn't seem so implausible.

Let's face it. We all just want to watch the whole world burn!

Why does every damn globe always show the US mainland? Even the burning ones.

Feeling intrigued, I Googled "dreaming of ghosts in your house" today at work.

Pregnancy? That might come in handy.

Looks like I am not alone.

The information I found were largely inconclusive with some sounding rather absurd and ridiculous. Case in point: dreaming about having sex with a ghost means that you can expect to receive some unexpected riches. Then there are sites which ask me to dial-a-psychic to have my dream interpreted for a nominal fee. Yeah, like people will actually do that just to find out more about a dream. Or do people actually do?

In any case, some of the more plausible interpretation (from a website full of grammatical errors, Hitler would turn in his grave!) of my dream from my brief research is as follows:


1. To dream of meeting a ghost of a stranger in your home or a different location might mean you are in trouble (you don't say). Or it could also mean that the ghost is checking you out to "know" you better before they haunt you.

The second interpretation feels more palatable to me.

2. Ghosts may represent a part of you which you do not understand (like my bewbs?) or have yet to come to accept. They may also represent things that are fleeting or unattainable (I can't be a Pokemon Master?). Dreaming of friendly ghosts is not a positive omen. On the contrary, dreaming about evil ghosts can be an indicator of good fortune to come (who writes these stuff anyway?).

The third interpretation sounds reasonable as well.

3. Dreaming that you are being haunted indicates unpleasant traumas from your past or repressed feelings/memories. You are experiencing guilt and/or fear for your past actions and thoughts. (I wouldn't be surprised actually... but then why only now?)

I have thought about the 3 interpretations for a bit at work today and wonder if I am wasting my time thinking about something which even science have no explanation for. Perhaps the best way to find out would be to do things the scientific way; observation and evidence. Simply put, I just need to install video cameras around my house to see if there's any party going on at night. I might not have the courage to look through the footage though.

Like hell I would want to know if there is something behind me!

But wait, I don't even have the money to buy a video camera. So lets just forget it.  

Anyway, I had another dream again yesterday night. This time round, I was in my living room, I can't remember the details but I saw my keyboard and mouse being turned in a 90 degrees direction continuously. And I seem to be arguing with someone. Or something. Arguing?

Weird. Maybe a video camera formation is really necessary.

You know, for all I know, this might turn out to be similar to a Fatal Frame plot where I will get trapped in my dream permanently eventually, having to escape from the ghost in my dream for all eternity.

Snapping ghosts for all eternity huh...

I wonder.

Oh. And I bought some strawberries today. They are some huge ass strawberries.

Looks like my nose for some reason.

Attention. Groove to the Tetris Techno Theme!

Eating Manga noodle at this hour makes me feel like a phattttttt boy. But it can't be help. A hungry man is an irrational man. Or just a hungry man.

The daughter of my grandmother watching her daily dosage of Taiwanese drama

And I discovered that the manga noodle I have been eating for my whole life is actually made in Singapore.
  

I always thought it was from Japan.

Japan. I went to a Japan festival event at Isetan on Friday to collect a special Lvl. 100 Pikachu which knows Volt Tackle. Not that any of you will know what it means anyway but hey, its a limited edition Pikachu. That is all you need to know.

The front of Pikachu...

... and its back.

I spent the evening reading THE LEGEND OF KOIZUMI, a manga in which world leaders settle international issues through a game of mahjong instead of negotiation or military action. Quite a good method I would say.

Other than skills, mahjong also factors in the luck of the players, which could mean the difference between victory or defeat. They say life is a game of chance, a game of luck. Some are born to lead a better lives than others. While others are born to lead a less fortunate life.

Is it god that determines our life? Or genetics? Probabilities? Destiny? Luck? We don't know. Another mystery of life perhaps.

With luck, small countries like North Korea and less advanced countries like North Korea have the chance to prevail against stronger and larger countries such as the US and A. In other words, everyone is equal before the tiles. Oh and don't worry about rogue countries like North Korea succeeding in carrying out crimes against humanity by winning a mahjong games through a stroke of luck.

Evil dictators with no good intents are deemed unworthy by the tiles and they are inclined to getting shitty hands everytime all the time. Even if they do get good hands, they will never be able to game if they are playing against righteous leaders, such as the likes of Junichiro Koizumi, whose invincible mahjong aura will guarantee them victory every single time.

As the saying goes, your hand will be good as long as your character is good.

We all know Hitler was a charismatic person but this... is too much.

The Super Aryan. Any argument is invalid.

This is the final and most powerful form of the Super Aryan. Wow.

We all know that Hitler, whether super or not, is an evil dictator. Neo Nazis might beg to differ though. But they will probably track me down and kill me first.

I didn't have to work today. Neither do I have to tomorrow. Its a much needed break from working 7 days a week for the past month. Yet I am still not as rich as I expected myself to be. I need to find a better way of earning money.

Any rich homemakers here need a gardener?

I bought a cake on my way home today wanting to give my mother a surprise since I didn't gave her anything during Mother's Day last Sunday and kinda felt bad about it.

It was a cute little ice cream cake in the shape of a heart with a rose as a decoration on top of it. The cake is chocolate flavored and the ice cream inside it is chocolate mint. Not wanting the cake to melt on my way home, as well as being exceptionally exhausted, I took the bus home instead of walking the usual route home. I thought I could give my mom a pleasant surprise.

Well. It was just a thought.

When I reached home, she was putting on her shoes at the doorstep, getting ready to go somewhere. She asked me what did I brought home and I told her it was a cake for her since I didn't get anything for her on Mother's Day, to which she replied:

"Over already then you buy"

"You don't want then I eat the cake myself lor"

"Yeah please eat yourself"

"-.-"

Her indifference irritated the shit out of me. I bought something to make it up to her specially and she doesn't seem to give a rat's ass about it. And her retorting me to eat the cake myself, which was only a joke on my part, irritated me even more so.

I never like being challenged when I was trying to be jovial. Ok maybe plus a tint of sarcasm as well. But I wasn't serious about eating the cake myself. 

I had a good mind to throw the cake on the floor in front of her. But I got the better of my anger.

Before she left, I asked her what time will she be back. She replied 12am or so and then left. So much for giving her a pleasant surprise. Instead, I think I gave myself a few more strands of white hair and wrinkles.

Anyway, I thought I will just leave the cake in the fridge and she can eat it tomorrow and hopefully, still be pleasantly surprised because she haven't seen the cake yet.

Another thought.

Before heading to bed just now, I decided to check on the cake in the fridge. Call it a hunch. An omen. My sixth sense. A man's intuition. Whatever.

Turns out there is a purpose for checking on the cake. It melted in the fridge. That's when I realized an ice-cream cake should be stored in the freezer. Nobel Prize for me, anyone?

The originally cute heart-shaped cake disintegrated into a form not unlike that of a mushed up brain, except its chocolatey and minty instead of bloody. And the innards spilled itself all over the shelf in the fridge. And I had to clean the mess up. Well, at least it was a fine surprise for me.


In the midst of cleaning up, the innards, being liquid, dripped all over the fridge. To think I had intended to sleep early to recover lost sleep from the past few days.

Yet another thought again.

And they say one should always think good thoughts. The way I see it, the disappointment of not having your good thoughts manifest itself can irritate your mental self to quite a large extent, for me at least. Perhaps I should start thinking negative, morbid thoughts. That way, even if they do manifest themselves, I have already expected them. And if the opposite of those thoughts occur instead, it would be a bonus for me.

Yeah that sounds legit. I am going to die in a car crash on my way to work later on in the morning. The culprit will be driving a Lamborghini. And he is a foreigner. Probably from China.






Well, at least I had some fun with the dry ice that comes with the cake's packaging, albeit some rather expensive dry ice.

A few months back, I posted about me waking up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason in my brother's room. After that, I stopped sleeping in his room, until last week.

I had to wake up at around 6am in the morning in order to reach my workplace on time and everytime my alarm rings, it would disturb my parents' sleep. So I thought maybe I should just sleep in my brother's room (it is empty at the moment) so as not to interrupt my parents' sleep. And also partly because I want to enjoy the feeling of having my own room, which I really really really yearn to have.

So, I started to sleep in my brother's room again last Monday.

I can't remember whether did I wake up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason last week. I guess I did but I can't be too sure. There are times when I will dream and I can't tell if I am in lala-land or in reality. Or I just can't remember it when I woke up in the morning.

But I would be inclined to believe that I did get awoken up for no apparent reason. Because I remembered clearly what happened on Thursday night.

I slept at around 10pm that night as usual. I was woken up in the middle of the night by my mom who came into the room to check on me. It was about 2am or so when I checked my phone before going back to sleep. I noticed that the temperature in the room was rather warm, which was odd because I had the air conditioner set at 20 degrees Celsius. However I didn't bother too much about it.

The next thing I know, I had a dream about me being inside my brother's room together with another person whom I can't remember is who. I just know there was someone else with me and we heard a female shriek coming from one of the wardrobe in the room. It was not those extremely loud, ear bursting kind of shriek. But rather, it was a soft shriek. A continuous soft shriek.

The person in my dream and I decided to open the wardrobe to see what is inside. I was the one who opened the wardrobe door. When I opened it, there was nothing inside, except for the usual clothes and accessories inside my brother's wardrobe.

Here's the weird part; immediately after realizing that there was nothing inside the wardrobe, I woke up from my dream.

I could really feel the heat in my room then. It was as if the air conditioner was turned off. And I had this super uneasy feeling. I felt as if something else was in the room. I didn't dare to move for quite some time, just lying still on my mattress. I checked my phone to see what time it is and it was around 3am. I immediately thought of the Witching Hour, which didn't do much to ease my uneasiness.

I continued to keep still, until I decided I had to do something. So I turned around on my mattress, scanned through the room and then quickly shift my mattress and stuff back into my parents' room to sleep.

I wonder... could it be something was trapped inside the wardrobe and when I opened the wardrobe door in my dream, I sort of freed it and hence, woke up? But the thing is the wardrobe door was closed when I woke up. So what is it? And if it was freed... then when I woke up...

Come to think of it, who was that other person in my dream?!

Goodness. I am getting goosebumps just by typing out this incident -.-

Seriously I wonder how I am going to live on my own in future. I guess I won't be sleeping in my brother's room again.

Damn it.

"... The boy few at Cranbrook School knew or remember was born in Chicago, grew up in South Bend, Indiana, and had a hard time fitting in. He liked to wander and "had a glorious sense of the absurd," according to his sister Betsy. When the chance to get out of Indiana presented itself, he jumped at it and enrolled at the prestigious Cranbrook. He never uttered a word about Mitt Romney or the haircut incident to his sisters. After Cranbrook asked him to leave, he finished high school, attended the University of the Seven Seas for two semesters, then graduated in 1970 from Vanderbilt, where he majored in English.


He came out as gay to his family and close friends and led a vagabond life, taking dressage lessons in England and touring with the Royal Lipizzaner Stallion riders. After an extreme fit of temper in front of his mother and sister at home in South Bend, he checked into the Menninger Clinic psychiatric hospital in Topeka, Kansas. Later he received his embalmer's license, worked as a chef aboard big freighetrs and fishing trawlers, and cooked for civilian contractors during the war in Bosnia and then, a decade later, in Iraq. His hair thinned as he aged, an in the winter of 2004 he returned to Seattle, the closest thing he had to a base. John Joseph Lauber died there of liver cancer that December.

He kept his hair blonde until he died, said his sister Chris. 'He never stopped bleaching it.' "

I was reading the news on Reuters this morning (a hobby which I picked up in the excessive spare time I had during my internship) and came across an article on Mitt Romney. For those who don't know, Mitt Romney is a presidential candidate who will be vying for the coveted seat of the PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES of AMERICA with current President Barack Obama.

In politics, it is not enough to just tell the people good things about yourself. You need to also sling mud at your opponents to ruin their image and reputation, together with their chances of getting elected.

And that is exactly what the article on Mitt Romney's not so glamorous past is all about.

Mitt Romney was enrolled in Cranbrook School (an elite school for the elites) together with John Joseph Lauber when they were younger. John bleached his hair and kept it long, which was in stark contrast with the norm in school at that time where boys were expected to keep their hair short and neat. While John's bleached and long hair did not constitute as an offense under the school's disciplinary codes, Mitt decided that it was unacceptable behavior and took matters into his own hands.

One afternoon, Mitt led a group of his friends to confront John, pinned him down on the floor and snipped the poor boy's hair, despite his crying pleas to stop. They even went on to label John as a homosexual.

That is the gist of the article. Basically, Mitt was an insensitive bully when he was younger and thus, is not fit to be the leader of the most powerful (for now) nation in the world.

While the content of the article is interesting, it did not bothered me much because its a typical political mud slinging example. What really bothered me was the last paragraph of the article, which I quoted at the beginning.

Reading through the short and presumably unhappy life of John Joseph Lauber, I seem to be able to relate to him. Like him, I was never a popular kid in school. I used to be bullied when I was younger in secondary school too, not because of my long/bleached hair but because of my nerdtard looks. I have to admit, I do look like a retarded country bumpkin fresh out of a China village back then. But still, it wasn't fair to pick on me because of that...

And then, I am also somewhat of an absurd fellow, having interest in things that are not that mainstream and doing things that can be considered to be, well, absurd. I have been trying to fit in with others but have never really succeeded. My failed attempts to join a CCA or other social activities are two case in points.

Its like I am a defective piece of jigsaw puzzle that doesn't fit into the completed picture and because its just one of me, it doesn't matter if I fit in or not. When people look at the completed jigsaw from afar, they wouldn't notice that I am missing.  

Even now, I still feel detached from my environment, be it at my internship workplace or my part-time job workplace despite repeated efforts at mingling with others. People just don't take interest in me I guess.

Of course, I am thankful for those friends who put up with my nonsense and stuck with me till now. But even the Sun will die out eventually. So, I don't know. Sometimes I dread thinking about the future.

Who knows maybe John and I could be more similar than I imagined. Maybe tomorrow, I will realize that I am a homosexual. Maybe I will end up leading a vagabond life like him too, having no permanent place to settle down. Maybe I will only get to know people very briefly and purely for formalities' sakes. Maybe I will have to do odd jobs just to get by with life. Maybe I will break down with some psychological disorders. Maybe I will die a lonely man.

While people like Mitt Romney move on to become presidential candidate.

Life. You ain't exactly the gift that you promised to be eh.