Category: Journal

I’m going from memory, as it’s been a few weeks since I had this dream and it’s all quickly fading away. This dream has been bothering me for a bit since I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean.

***

I’m sitting in front of a computer screen in a hotel room. The double bed behind has my suitcase on it, unopened. I think it’s my first night here. It’s completely silent except for raindrops beating against the window to my left. I look outside, I’m about twenty-five stories up, and look out of Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong. It’s night time and the streetlights run like veins through the city. I think I’m staying at the Regal.

I sit back for a while staring at my own reflection in the window. I’m not sure what I’m thinking off. I get up out of the chair and slowly walk towards the bathroom near the front door of the room, meanwhile unbuttoning my shirt and taking off my clothing. I step into the bathroom and notice that it’s a small affair with a bathtube, a shower that’s integrated with the bathtub, a small sink with a mirror above it and a toilet. I take my complimentary soap, towels and robe and put them on top of the toilet and I step inside the bathtub and turn on the shower. Hot. Steam starts filling up the small room. I step into the shower and wash my hair. When I’m done I reach around the white shower curtain towards the sink and try to find my toothbrush and toothpaste. I can’t find it so I pull back the shower curtain, letting water drip out onto the floor. I notice that the mirror hasn’t fogged up, and I look up expecting to see my own reflection…

…and then I see her standing there, on the opposite side of the mirror. She’s smiling at me, a friendly smile. She is holding a square, low whiskey glass in one hand and she has her other casually folded over the other. I smile back at her, as if it’s normal and I find my toothbrush and paste. I decide to keep the shower curtain open as I continue my shower. Every now and again I look over and find her still standing there, in that mirror world, looking at me, sipping her whiskey. She seems to enjoy it.

I get out of the tub and start to dry myself off a bit. I put the towel around my waist and get the other towel to dry my hair. I walk out of the bathroom and into the small hallway. There are a few shitty paintings on the walls, small posters really, framed and I can see her in their reflection, looking back at me. I walk towards my bed, and I can see her in every reflecting surface, walking with me. It’s comfortable to know that she’s there.

I look up to the full-length windows, and the sliding door that leads out onto the small balcony and I can see her standing there, in mid-air, past the railing of the balcony, floating above Kowloon Bay. She’s beautiful. With the towel still around my waist I walk over to the door, slide it open and step out onto the balcony. As I stepped out I noticed that there were no city sounds around me, and I saw the balcony “stretch” out, elongate and shoot out away from me. She was no floating above the balcony floor. Still calm and smiling, still holding her glass.

I walked up to her, my feet on the cold stone tiles, and she settled down on the floor. I stood opposite from her and I smiled. She unfolded her arms and held out her free hand. And then jammed her index finger in my left pectoral, just above my nipple. The sounds of the city washed over me like a tidal wave as I tried to draw breath. The pain was so intense that I lost my footing and fell down to my knees. She walked a few steps back to admire what was happening.

The burning pain in my chest moved to my stomach and I double over. Now the viewpoint shifts. Slowly the viewpoints starts rising up and I’m looking down on the scene from about twenty-five feet up. I can see myself in pain and I can see her standing there. The city sounds suddenly stop and I see myself looking up into the air, arms out wide, shouting in pain. My eyes are bleeding. Blood dripping down my cheeks like running mascara. In the background I hear Samuel Barber’s Agnus Dei playing. I hear laughter through my own shouting, and I look over to see her laughing at me. Laughing at my pain. Mocking me.

I look back and I see myself still kneeled down, still looking up into the sky, arms wide and suddenly I see myself rise up, as if picked up by an invisible thread attached to my chest. My head and arms hanging back, my legs hanging slack. The music reach a crescendo as I hang about twenty feet up in the air, fighting against the force that holds me, my eyes still bleeding her laughter still in the background and then all goes black.

I wake up.

I was driving along at a 160 kph, and I saw a Honda Prelude loom up in the distance. It was red [which is a bit of a shame], but the tires were about as broad as mine, so it was probably a nutcase like me. Now, I drive a Honda Civic, a substantially smaller Honda…but with those tires it looks absolutely mutated. Also, I have golden logo’s on my car, which is a clear indication to any Honda fan that I am a total Honda drooler. So I drive up, he’s in the middle lane, I’m in the left lane. I notice that he has golden logo’s as well, so I slow down to match his speed and look over to his car, and then to who is in the driver’s seat. It’s a guy, about 22 years old, looking mighty proud of himself. I give him an appreciative nod and I switch back to third gear and blast off. I switch lanes and go and drive in front of him. I can see from my rearview mirror that he sees my logo’s and I decide to race off. I’m zooming in and out of traffic and all of a sudden I see his car [way much faster and more powerful than mine] drive up, two lanes away from me. The road comes to a splitsing. He veers off to the left, I to the right. He looks at me and nods appreciatively and gives me the thumbs up. My morning is good. :)

I want a tattoo. I’ve wanted to have one done for about a year now. I know which one I want too. I want my social security number tattooed somewhere on my body in barcode form. “Somewhere” is not defined yet, I can’t decide.

I want the barcode to be “streetlegal”. It has to be able to be read by a scanner. Personally I’m very fond of the UPC-A, which is the UCC american retail standard, but that doesn’t incorporate an international country code like the EAN-13 standard does. Also, the EAN-13 standard is the world-wide retail standard, while the UPC-A is United States only. The only problem with EAN-13 is that it has several checksums to which my social security number will never hold up. And then there’s always the Code 39 and Code 128 standards if you want to incorporate alpha numeric as well as numeric digits.

There’s only one problem…

…there’s always a problem, isn’t there? Yes, there is, and this is it :: The ink of tattoo’s will slowly fade and spread over the years, the capilary veins in your skin will make the ink slowly spread and a straight, fine line will slowly blur. If you would simply tattoo a barcode on your skin, you’ll have one big black ugly mass a few years later as the thin lines will merge together. Also, the thinnest lines of a standard barcode can’t be reproduced with normal tattoo’s.

The solution :: Make the barcode bigger. But in making it bigger, it will become humonguous and therefor ugly. Also, I could opt for removing some of the lines from the barcode, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of having a real barcode on your body. I might as well just think up something that likes kinda cool.

I’m contemplating finding a permanent make-up visagist in order to see if they have special tools that will be able to create the lines I desire.

Also, I should wait a little while since it will look totally tacky if I, in the wake of the computer game Hitman – Codename and the television series Dark Angel, get a tattoo of a barcode now.

And yes, I have considered it well. I’ve considered the social implications and the reactions of everyone from my mother on to jewish holocaust victims that were locked up in concentration camps during WWII.

Well, yesterday around this time the last of my guest flew back home. Again I’m overcome with ambivalent thoughts; on one hand this has been a truly awesome couple of weeks, where I’ve had an incredible amount of fun, made many interesting aquaintances and friends and saw old friends again.

On the other hand, my house is left in ruin – literally – it’s fucking disgusting. There’s junk everywhere and stains in my carpet I really don’t even want to philosophize about how they got there. I’m behind on my administration so in that area there’s a ton of phonecalls to make and things to arrange and next to that, I am left entirely broke. I’ve cannibalized my credit cards and I’m wondering if I have enough money to cover it all. If I don’t, I’m fucked…because this time I simply don’t have a safety-net like I did before. Luckily I’ve charged a bunch to my Visa card, which I can pay-off inch by inch.

So I’m left alone again. Left behind to clean up the mess. Left with a bit of an empty feeling inside of me as they leave. The cleaner that comes by once a week will fumigate my house tomorrow afternoon, so it should be bearable as soon as the weekend starts.

By that time, however, my cousin Kim will move in. She’s a little younger than myself – 2 months younger – and is studying “advanced nursery”. She’s supposedly really good at what she does, especially psychiatric work, as she gets recommendations and job offers wherever she passes. She’s trying to finish college first and she’s gotten in a little bit of a jam since her family situation isn’t all that optimal. Seeing as how I love her to death – we used to play all the time when we were kids and have always been pretty close – I don’t want to see her family situation fuck up her chances for a good shot at a career.

You know what else? She’s depressingly beautiful. She’s been asked to pose for Playboy and everything. There’s a Dutch saying that says :: “You are contaminated by those people you associate with.” Which means that if I hang around her, perhaps I’ll become more depressingly beautiful than I already am! :)

Ever since I came back from the United States several weeks ago, I’ve had very little chance to properly work out. Because of that, I’ve gained a shiteload of fatty-tissue. I would say about 5 or 6 kilograms worth. That’s a lot. That’s a whole lot. Now some of you might think that the lack of time is just an excuse, and on one hand it is, but on another hand it isn’t.

You see, when I came back from the US, I was already heavier than when I went there. It seems that everytime I go there, this happens. I don’t want to draw any conclusions without having all the information, but it seems to me that the diet there, and the lack of excercising on my part combined result in added weight.

After me return I fell ill. Really ill. No excercising for me. Then I had a fuckload of guests come over from the United States and Denmark, which resulted in less time to excercise and living a bit of a hectic lifestyle which leads to imporper diet.

You see, I don’t eat very healthily. I eat in restaurants often and though the food in restaurants is good, it’s not very healthy at all. I compensate my terrible diet by excercising regularly. My regular schedule is as followed;

– Two times a week I practice Classical Kung Fu [Choy Lee Fat] for an hour and a half per session.
– Once a week I practice Modern Kung Fu [Wu Shu] for two hours, but this is on saturday evening and I often slack greatly around that time.
– Two times a week I do aerobics [Tae Bo, Body Shaping, Spinning, etc] and power fitness for about an hour to an hour-and-a-half at a time. This is to compliment my Kung Fu excercises more than anything else…also, it’s necessary to keep my tummy flat and my health up.

That’s not too shabby if you ask me. But still, I’ve turned grotesquely fat [relatively speaking] and I need to start watching my health since the cough that I had when I came back from the US still hasn’t subsided. So I was talking to VDL about this, and he recommended a better diet; check. Also, I’m going to go back to my regular fitness schedule. I hope that within a few weeks I’ll be back to my normal level.