Dreaming crazy, or a crazy dreamer?

Wow haha. I was going to dedicate my next post of EVHS’s Battle, but I had one of the weirdest dreams ever haha. Believe it or not, it beats the dream I had were the dream consisted of me just putting on my socks and realizing I was dreaming because I didn’t feel my socks. Sorry Battlers, but this dream takes precident.

I’ve discovered the methods to going about inducing a lucid dream. Well, I still need to work on the “realizing it’s a dream and taking advantage of it” part, but I have learned how to basically force a dream. Sleep as you normally would, except set an alarm to get you up an hour or two earlier than you normally get up. Then, set a second alarm to go off roughly 30 mins to an hour after the first alarm. So you basically break your sleep up into three parts, big chunk, 1 hour chunk, then the rest of your usual sleep schedule. During the final portion, you should have a particularly vivid dream. This was mine.

It started off in a Hong Kong or Hong Kong styled restaurant. There were two very young, anime-looking girls. They looked very similar to Lucky Star or that one Hayate butler anime styled characters, but they weren’t anyone in particular. They were broke an d hungry. The scene then cuts to an adult asking the waiter/waitress to give him his check because he was done eating. He still had an assload of food on the table. The girls show up and beg him for his leftovers. At first the man refuses and the girls and the man argue for a bit. The man agrees to give them his leftovers if they take him to the local spa/hot spring resort. The girls agree, and the scene cuts to that scene. Now all of a sudden, I’m physically there at the spa/hot spring, and I see the guys from the manga, Angel Densetsu. The two girls and the adult fromt he restauran are no where to be seen. It’s one of those “bathing suit required, co-ed” spas/hot springs, but there is a section for girls who don’t want to be around guys. I look around and some guys are trying to climb the fence that separates the girls only section. However, instead of actually climbing with them, the fence starts to lower, and I can start to see the tops of the heads of the girls. Then, Kitano Seiichiro yells at the guys for being perverts, and the fence shoots back up. I start to explore the hot springs and I see a bunch of people who were helped by Kitano’s kind actions in the manga. The weird thing is though, there are people I recognize as real life classmates and friends, many of which I believed to have been helped by Kitano. The weird part about this was, I thought this was perfectly natural.

I explore my way into a room where a bunch of college looking guys are putting together a pinball machine. I find myself testing the machine, and the machine warps into some kind of strange combination of a pinball machine and a skeeball game. Theres all sorts of weird mechanics involved to shift around the balls and the colored lights and whatever. We eventually decide the machine is perfect and all of a sudden: and this is the weirdest part;

I find myself as Haruhi from Ouran High School Host Club. In my dream, I believed myself to BE Haruhi at this point. As per with dreams, everything feels natural so I didn’t feel (whoa I, Alex Tran, is Haruhi), and instead, I felt (I’m Haruhi.) There’s even Kyoya Ootori on my right making a quick comment on the planned success of the pinball/skeeball machine. Out of nowhere, I’ve come to the understand that there is to be some kind of strange celebration/event being planned, and Kyoya and I spot a random person being hassled by guys in speedos. Kyoya remarks that they are part of the swim team, and I rush off to go help the random guy. Along the way, I (as Haruhi) trip and Kyoya rushes up to catch me, but we both end up stumbling. I (as Haruhi) find my head resting on his shoulder as we both lay there on the ground seemingly forgetting about the guy and the swim team. It’s quiet for a bit, and now I’m seeing the scene unfold from a narrator’s point of view, the scene flashing between close ups of Kyoya and Haruhi, both of them blushing and softly enjoying their closeness. Then, I’m back as Haruhi as Kyoya tries to get up to I suppose continue helping the guy. But, I wrap my arms around his back and pull him into a close hug, my head against his chest, and him laying on top of me (as Haruhi). We lay like this for a relatively long while.

The scene then jumps to me being Alex Tran again, and I’m walking with a bunch of random guys down a hallway, once again noticing people that Kitano has helped. Among he group is Kyoya, andwe are heading to the swim team locker rooms. There’s a sign that says “NO SENPAIs ALLOWED.” We kept calling Kyoya Kyoya-senpai, so I guess things would have gotten weird, but I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. We went in and like, the swim team seemed to be made of body builders going for the Mr. Universe title. We walk into an office, say a few words I don’t remember, and then we just leave the locker room. Weird.

Then I’m rushing somewhere, I’m not sure where but my dream self seemed to know. Along the way, I was stopped by a girl in my Calc and USAP class named Vivian. She asked me to help her sister with a with a Calculus problem. I don’t even know if Vivian has a sister, but dreams are dreams. I look at the problem and holy frak is it annoying. Its like, let g(x) = a, f(x) = b, some complicated ass polynomial function using a and b, with g(x) and f(x) being their own annoying ass polynomial functions. I look through my Calculus book, only to find that pages 500-1400 are missing. Or the numbering is like that anyways, since there seemed to be only one page missing in the book. I apologize to Vivian and her sister and rush off somewhere.

Then I’m in an auditorium getting ready to give a speech. My friend Roy, who is standing behind me, has water balloons that sound like crinkling aluminum foil instead of water. Someone in the auditorium says something to provoke Roy, and Roy is about to throw one of the water balloons but I stop him. He then crushes a balloon in his hand and orange sand pours out of it.

The event turns out to be some sort of celebration of the new found happiness/peace that we have come to have with each other. I bring up Kintao Seiichiro’s name and the auditorium does that groan that people do when I use a bad pun. Before the event/speech can continue any further, a bunch of police officers or similarly looking people present us with bills and warnings of our littering due to the event. I had no clue what was going on, everyone’s mood, including my own, was ruined. There was some weird events that I can’t quite remember, but then the scene shifts again.

Now I am Kintao Seiichiro, and I’m on a beach. Behind me is Koiso Ryoko, Kitano’s girlfriend and in front og me is a boy on a boat. It was one of those boats that has a log running parallel to it to keep balance. The boy told me that I (as Kitano) was going spear fishing with him in his grandmother’s place. Apparently, I (as Kitano) had promised the grandmother to help her with her spearfishing but didn’t return in time, so I would be fishing with her grandson. This is particularly odd because in Angel Densetsu there are no grandmothers, no old ladies, and no fishing.

We hit the ocean, the kid and I, and start chasing what I recognize as the golden eel. Not a real life golden eel, but apparently the dream golden eel. It looked like a snake of yellow jello surrounded by a coating of clear transparent jello. We went about chasing it on the rough ocean managing to stab it now and again, but it didn’t seem to be affected at all. It started to rain fiercely, an the boy and I agreed that it was time to go in. When we arrived to the coast line, Ryoko was there waiting for us, standing in water up that went came up to just under her eyes. I felt at peace watching her like that, my reasoning being she was worried enough to come out as far as she could to watch over us. It doesn’t make sense, but dreams are dreams.

Ryoko went back to shore, we pulled the boat in, and there was that “end of a anime/manga” feeling were the boy, Ryoko, and myself (as Kitano) agreed to stay together as a family.

The end of my dream. So strange. I’ll do an analysis of it later, I skipped lunch to write this haha.

Timestamp – 1:03 PM

Friday is nostaliga day!

March 21, 2008 was an awesome day. For starters, it was the prelude to Spring Break, and therefore was a minimum day as per most high school’s traditions (except for EVHS, dang weirods :3) . After 7th period ended at 12:20, I started walking home, only to get called over by Maggie who has discovered Bryan Tran, a friend of mine. Won’t go into details, but I hadn’t seen Bryan since my birthday party and never got a chance to hang out besides that since he stopped going to ST after sophomore year. I had plans to watch EVHS’s Battle (called Fantastics at other high schools) and was hoping to go home and just relax until 5ish to meet up with EV friends. But as I was walking, Maggie called me over and I saw Bryan among other friends. We hung out and talked, and talked to a surprising number of teachers who were leaving school haha. We eventually left for the tennis courts when two police officers told us the school was going to be locked up for break.

Over at the tennis courts I picked up a racket and did some rallying and volleying (ie just hitting the ball). I hadn’t played since sophmore year and the rust was there. Unlike DDR where it only takes a solid 8footer to wake up, tennis is about form and skill, so I wasn’t up to scratch haha. I was able to somewhat bring back my forehand, but my backhand and serves were dead. It felt good though, getting back into playing tennis. I had decided against tennis junior year because it just took too much time out of my schedule. Not just practice, but the commute back and forth as well.

Bryan, who was also on the tennis team freshman and sophmore year, hadn’t lost it at all. He was taking a tennis class, so the only thing affecting his game was his jeans and using a racket that was not his own. He and Jing played a doubles game against Hao and Anket (sorry about name mispells guys). At first, Hao and Anket took the lead, 4-1. Later though, Bryan and Jing won it with 7-5. It was just crazy. Also, when I let Albert play my PSP for a bit, Ed remarked that Albert looked exactly the same as last year when I let him play my PSP haha.

After tennis-ing, I went home and prepared myself for Battle. I’m a little too tired to go into the details right now, but all in all I saw alot of faces I hadn’t seen before in a long ass time. Teresa (the goddess who got me my Battle ticket), George (who I owe Starbucks), Thanh (hadn’t seen him since the last Battle), Chris (hadn’t seen since Chaboya days), Tanya (Chaboya days), Kevin Liao (Chaboya days), Andrew Pang (Chaboya days. Still as esoteric as always), and a few more haha. I’ll continue this next post. Too tired now :p.

Timestamp – 1:27 AM

9 through 15, spent fighting sickness

So picking up where we last left off, the party was rocking. But it did come with major repercussions. As I mentioned earlier, I was sick prior to the party. Then hours of DDR and socializaing did not help me out at all haha. I didn’t feel it at all during the party, but on Monday I was definetely reeling. I was just drained lol. Little did I know, I would then suffer the full brunt of things on Tuesday. I went to sleep feeling warmer than usual on Monday and woke up on Tuesday with an intense internal burning. I get sick often, and as I’ve said before usually just in time for the weekend. But, I additionally usually get slammed with a cold; nothing severe. I had no clue I was suffering on Tuesday due to a fever. It was a strange combination of feeling extreme heat on my skin while feeling cold within. When I got home I literally killed it with sleep. I slept for damn near the entire day, onyl getting up now and again to use the bathroom or take a swig of water. That was my Tuesday really. Being awake was hell, so I forced myself to sleep and combat whatever the hell had hit me.

Wednesday I had effectively killed the fever and went to school feeling pretty good. But I had stomaches. Stomach pain and really couldn’t digest anything. More suffering throughout the day. I got home and opened up Ginger Ale and basically starved myself to let my body fight the remants of illness. Two things inspired my small fast: the first being my eldest sister’s Julie’s advice that the body doesn’t tell you you are hungry when you are ill. This is because digestion actually sucks up a lot of eneygy, energy your body wants to use fighting the illness. Second, On Discovery Channel was the special about the uman body and the amazng feats it does. The key one I saw was, the brain does crap that doesn’t seem right in order to make you as a whole feel better (a guy saw fish eyes and organs as delicious becasue his body needed the vitamins only found int he unfavorable parts. his brain literally told him, “fish eyes? hey man, thats dessert”). So I figured my brain shut off my fever to make me feel better without actually finishing the fight against my illness. On Thurday my stomach still had problems, but on a lesser scale. I could eat, but I limited myself to what I considered easy to digest and no water. I remember reading that water isn’t good for dierreha, and while I didn’t have dierreha, I decided it coudln’t hurt to saty away from H2O.

Friday was my recovery day. Haha. All of last week was just difficult for me to deal with. It was so problematic, I felt as though I had to blog about it. Feeling beter now, although I think I’ve got a cold. Or allergies. I’m not sure since I don’t have eye irritation, but I do sneeze and have a runny nose. I liked winter better. I don’t get sick in winter, just slightly uncomfortable.

Timestamp – 11:46 PM

Dancing in the month of March

It’s been a while ladies and germs. Addressing my previous post, I’ve decided to live, swim, laugh, and pass. It will be hard climbing up, but I’ll make it eventually. Now let’s move away from those nasty thoughts, eh?

So I was sick. Some kind of cold or something hit me around the 6th. Martin’s birthday party was on March 8th, held at Chuck E. Cheese. I initially was going to go to Nahida’s party on that same day, but I’ve known Martin longer (as in more time spent hanging out). Nahida’s party did get cancelled though, can’t remember the reason at the moment. (wasn’t my fault!) Anyways, earlier on Martin asked me if I could show up to his house early, get taken to Chuck E. Cheese (which we will refer to as CEC from now on to make typing easier) to set up for the party. Which we did. But at the party, Martin’s mom believed there would be 40 people coming, and because of that, she bought a literal fountain-load of tokens. I had to stand there at the machine for an embarrassing number of minutes just filling cups as everyone in line behind me looked extremely impatient. Eric helped me out though, thanks buddy. However the grunt work didn’t end there.We then had to filter the tokens into 40 tokens per cup. Mai, Misao, Eric, Victoria, and yours truely working at a mountain of tokens carefully making stacks of 20 and 10 to be filled into cups. SO annoying.

There were alot of poeple, about half of them I didn’t know since Martn and I don’t go to the same schools. Among the people I did know were: Eric, Misao, Phi, Jessica, Victoria, Cassandra, Cassandra’s little bro Brandon, Tejinder, (semi know) Hendrix, and Tony. If I left anyone out, whoops and I’m sorry but there was a ton of people. I spent the time mainly playing DDR. I’m not joking haha. Just dancing away. I even played double, both sides at once. It is so liberating. You feel like its dancing, not just hitting arrows since you’re moving around much more. I want to do it more haha. I also manage to do alot of songs on maniac. That’s right punks. Not ITG’s unimanginative “challenge” not Supernova’s misleading “heavy”. Maniac. I was playing down to roots DDR 5th Mix plus! Quite possibly my utmost favorite of all the DDR’s. Extreme is a close second though.  I played so much, that I literally regained my former middle school glory. Dynamite Rave, End of the Century, Bumble Bee, Dive, Sychronized Love remix, Butterfly, utterfly Upswing mix, Sky High, B4U. The songs that moved my feet to the beat of my heart slammed straight through my ears with nostalgia. I’m sick and tired of these lame songs on the DDR Supernova and In the Groove. Sick of em. No enegry.

DDR and its ilk has degenerated into some toture machine where “cool” is feet blistering at sonic speed matching a hail of reversed staggering arrows that turn invisible every now and again. Don’t get me wrong, that requires mad skill I could only I have if I was in some kind of a dream inside a dream made of pure fiction fantasy and a drug induced mind. But skill is not dance. Dance is music. DDR once carried awesome songs that were undoubtably fun to dance to. So what if Butterfly on maniac only registered a 5 on the difficulty scale of 10 (12 in In the Groove)? It is a fun song, and I will continue to play it in front of those Speed Demons. That is, if I can find a place to play it. I miss the days where DDR was about music and dance, not dance and speed.

However, I must admit I can tear down a few 8-9 footers myself. Paranoia Evolution, Dead End, Drop Out, Disconnected Hyper mix, Tsugaru, Midnight Blaze and some others are among my most frequented “skills” songs. Paranoia Evolution is like the song that defines my rise in DDR  skill. Back when I was playing DDR on a borrowed and modded ps1 with a controller, Paranoia Evolution was the song to break your thumbs with. I had a very serious relationship with Paranoia Evoultion. I would practice constantly, trying to nail all arrows in one combo. I did. Once. Maybe twice. Among all the other songs, both skill and dance, Paranoia Evolution was definetly the song I had missed the most, and CEC had it.

Maritn and I threw down dance after dance, sweating likes beasts bring back our skills. Soon, to end the arcading, Martin, and I threw down a round of Paranoia Evolution. I could literally feel my legs dying. Earlier on in the party, I had been playing just as frantically, so it shouldn’t have taken much to bring me down. But I survived. And so did Martin. Afterwards we damn near exploded with triumph. We hadn’t lost it, and that is a very very satisfying feeling. However, the thing is, we had two songs left over. We knew we shouldn’t let this get away from us so we did a nice and easy cool down song. The funny thing is, a guy (who looked obviously DDR pro like myself and Martin) was watching us take down Paranoia. I could see his approval/amazement at our success. When we went to do our cool down song, I saw his bussy come up to talk to him. There’s no way to be sure, but I think the first guy was telling his buddy to not judge us by our cool down song. I felt like giving his buddy a show, so I asked Martin to do Dead End again. (we had done it alot earlier on) Martin intially refused, but he changed his mind quick. This time I felt my legs want to give out. The muscles like, did a quick spasm or something. But I refused to back down. We passed the song again. The pain I felt was a definite sign: I was back.

Anyways thats enough of a tangent, back to the party haha. Sorry to have bored you with my little DDR thing, but it’s important to me. Before playing, we got sodas. I went for Diet Coke (like the taste, could care less about health issues) and Eric mixed some soda. We got into a small talk about my like for Diet Coke, and Eric said something along the lines of “Well my soda is alot better anyways.” He did a mix of Rasberry Fanta soda and 7up or Sprite. I think it was Sprite. Anyways, I took a sip from his and it was like, taste bud heaven. It was so sweet hahaha. Just thinking about makes me want to get some more. After that came the pizza. Nothing special and I mean that in both: no special events and that the pizza was ok. I only had 4 slices. 2 when the pizzas first came out, and another 2 after hours of DDR.

Inbetween my rounds of DDR I hung out with people, sat down and talked. Eric was playing Street Fighter on the PSP haha. Victoria started drawing custom Kirbys, so I added a completely original Alex Kirby to the napkin. There was also some jokes about how Victoria’s Triforcehand reminded me fo the dollar bill. “In Ganon we Trust” lol. I did the “tap one shoulder and move to the other side trick” to Jessica. It was classic, and I of course classically recieved pain and threats of pain from Jessica. She didn’t have any trademark books to use, so she went to kicks which were more Elementary style than Chaboya style. Just hanging out with familiar and not so familar faces really gave me a blast from my old middle school days. The party was awesome.

Haha, Martin’s mom made name tages for everyone. There were even blank ones to write in names, which is what we had to do for Tejinder. Victoria wrote out te lengthy name of a video game character, and we proceeded to put it on Brandon. Later he declared “I am not Cecil” only for me to find the fallen nametag, stick it back on him, and say “Hi Cecil.” I had my name on the back of left hand. I put it there so I could push up my glasses dramatically and reveal my name. After a round of DDR though I realized my sweat would make it fall off so I just stuck it to my shirt haha.

Martin got alot of clothes for gifts lol. Like, 4-5 shirts. A girl (his girlfriend?) gave him a box of hand made paper roses, with a chocolate in each rose. Sorry I cant remember her name , but it was really cool. Haha, and I gave him my package from hell. Every plastic bag he used to wrap up my gift was used to wrap up his gift. I got him an N-Strike Maverick and a refill set. I wrapped the refill set in the bags and put that in a box. Then I took a second box and put the maverick in that, but I put tissue paper over the maverick and my shoes over the paper. I taped the two boxes together and put it in a Food-4-Less bag. That’s right, Food-4-Less. Not Food Max, which is it’s current name. My parents horde brown paper bags lol. He opened the bad and saw the two boxes,. He went for the show box first, and I told him the shoes where there just as weight and tht his gift was n the other bos. Unlike me who unwrapped each bag individually, Maritn just tore through bag after bag lol. He got to the refills and jsut said what? Then I revealed the Mavrick in the other box. It didn’t trick him since he kind of saw it coming, but it was funny none the less.

We ended the night at CEC taking pictures and waiting for Tejinder’s dad to pick up Eric, me, and Tejinder of course. It was fun and I have my tattered name tag as a momento of the night.

I’m going to end this post here for now,  and continue catching you guys up on my week later.

Timestamp – 2:59 AM

Lol, I really do need better sleeping habits.