November 27, 2007

• hmm..

  The night before I received the job offer, I had another strange dream. It was so vivid that I resorted to keying in the entry using my cell phone over the course of several days on the eight-minute train rides to and from work, haha.

  ~~~

  I once again found myself in a classroom, sitting behind a desk towards the far end of the room. This classroom, however, was a relatively large one at least twelve desks in length by eight desks in width, spaced out evenly in a perfect grid. The room was very brightly lit with white fluorescent lighting reflecting off the cream-colored walls, so bright that I was unable to see the students’ faces at the other end of the room.

  Perusing the room again, I noticed that the desks were not of the standard issue variety with the eight inch squasre tabletop that one might find at a high school or university. Rather, these desks were the type that I remember using when I was in elementary school; they had the large, rectangular surface with a wide compartment for books and writing implements.

  The board in front of the room was not a modern-day whiteboard, but the classic, dark green chalkboards also utilized during my elementary school years.

  No one in the room looked familiar to me. I was just sitting there, occasionally stealing glances to my left and right curiously to see if anything interesting around me was happening. That was not the case at the time. A few students were performing the usual pen twirling acrobatics with expressions on their faces indicative of sheer boredom.

  All of a sudden, the student to my left began to speak. “Hi, my name is Joe,” he announced to no one in particular.

  He then spoke with the air of an accomplished orator, speaking as if he were the President giving the State of the Union address. For a few minutes, I listened intently to his voice but for some reason was unable to decipher his utterances and associated hand motions.

  Looking around a third time, I realized that none of the other students were not listening to the banter, simply staring nonchalantly at the front of the classroom as if they were playing the role of department store mannequins.

  Turning my attention back to Mr. President, I realized why the class’s attention was not diverted to the loquacious orator. His utterances were nonsensical streams of words that one might encounter in the vocabulary section of a college entrance exam.

  One of the mannequins, in a sudden fit of animation, apparently saw my bewilderment and turned her head towards me. All I can remember about her was that she was around my age.

  “Hey,” she said as she eyed my confused face. “That guy has always been like that. Every class he goes to, he just starts spewing out random things.”

  I merely nodded at her with an expression of understanding.

  “Yeah,” she continued matter-of-factly. “In fact, every time he starts by introducing himself using a different name.”

  “Well,” I replied, “that certainly explains things.” My expression reverted to one of puzzlement as I realized that her comment did not really explain much.

  She looked at me quizzically for a second but nodded her head as if to signal that she understood perfectly.

  We then heard a loud, exasperated “eh” from one of the students at the other end of the room, triggering the students in the class to leave the classroom. Apparently, the lecturer or whoever we were expecting violated the famed Fifteen Minute Rule, the mantra that we followed in the college days to declare a professor a no-show fifteen minutes after the scheduled start time of the course.

  As the young woman next to me and I prepared to leave, we could not help but notice Mr. President continuing to address his nonexistent audience as he walked out of the room. We both shook our heads as I let out a mild chuckle in response to the sight.

  I woke up, dumbfounded, as I realized that the events occurring during my slumber only composed a dream.

  ~~~

  Hmmm…

  • 12:04 am
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