Erwa's Dream Log - July 2011

In my dream, I was in prison. I think my sentence was only one day. At first, I was in this relatively big room, which was filled with dirt. The elevation difference between the door and the floor was about 10 feet, and there was a spiral sloped dirt path around the edge of the room that led from the door down to the bottom.

I was standing along the left side of the room, at an elevation midway between the door's elevation and the floor's elevation. I was peering out into the vast room and looking at the cesspool on the other side of the room. Suddenly, a zergling (Zerg StarCraft unit) appeared at the door. It then jumped off the ledge into the cesspool. The cesspool reeked; I could smell it from where I was standing. I wonder if the zergling liked the raunch smell. I wasn't too concerned about the zergling attacking me because for some reason, I was confident I could kill it if I wanted to. Maybe I was a marine (Terran StarCraft unit) or something.

Suddenly, I was outside the prison. But I knew I still had a short (maybe 1 day?) sentence I had to serve. My brother, dad, and grandma were with me, along with this other dude, who also had to serve a short term. We were right along the wall of the prison building. What I had to do was construct my own prison cell. There was a shovel lying around, so I used it to dig into the grass. About three-quarters of a foot into the ground, I hit rock. Excellent. I shoveled out some big rock pieces and started laying them in a line perpendicular to the prison wall, marking out the boundary of my prison cell.

Then I noticed a door in the prison wall. I asked the other prisoner, and he said that was the entrance to my cell. I had to build my cell around the door. Then he opened the door to reveal a clean, utilitarian, hospital-like corridor inside. Across the hall was another room, and the prisoner said that was his. He told me escaping would be easy - presumably through my cell.

I looked down and my shovel was gone. Presumably, the other prisoner had taken it. Maybe he planned to dig a tunnel under the hallway into my room or directly to the outside. There were some other small tools lying on the ground outside, and I found a metal rod with a bent tip to continue digging with.

My dream came in two parts. In the first, I was back at Yale, on Old Campus, with my fellow Lairmates. I think it was the beginning of the school year, shortly after move-in day. I was chatting with Erik Santoro, and he started telling me a story. He said Annie Wang had asked him to put in a word for her little brother, who was currently applying to Yale. Erik worked at the admissions office, so he did. And consequently, Annie's little brother got in. To thank Erik, Annie trekked across Old Campus with a big package, which was Erik's gift. However, the campus police stopped her and opened the package. It was a giant package of weed. It never got to Erik. And Annie's little brother ultimately decided on Harvard, anyhows.

In the second part of my dream, I was back at Whippany Park, playing with the band in a concert. I was still playing clarinet, as I am now, except rather than the usual concert band set up, we were all sitting in neat rows with an aisle down the middle, as they usually set up the stage for graduation or marching band rehearsal. And, instead of situating me in one of the front rows, where clarinets are usually placed, I was sitting in the very last row, in the left side middle aisle seat.

We didn't know what the concert order of the pieces was. Instead, Mr. Sabatino called out a piece, and then we struggled to find it fast enough before he called out, "1...2..., 1, 2, 3, 4." Several times, I could not find the right piece in time, and I was still flipping through my music folder while the first few measures were being played. It was a very sloppy performance.

At intermission, I chatted with Sab as I walked outside with him. It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon. He asked me how the first half of the concert had gone for me. I told him it was one of my worst concerts ever. He sympathized with me and told me last weekend, the marching band's performance at the state competition at Glen Ridge High School in Newark (in RL, this high school is in Glen Ridge) had been the worst of his career. I was sad to hear this, and reminded of how it seems the WP music program is dwindling.

We made a sharp, 180-degree turn outside and walked up a small hill. Most of the bandies were gathered there. Sab and I saw a pastry box open on a wooden picnic table, and we stopped to help ourselves. In the box were what looked like giant cinnamon rolls. Sab thought it was some sort of cheesy cake. He reached his hand in and kneaded the rolls, and the cake rolled around in his fingers like some elastic ball. The consistency was unlike any cake I had ever seen before. Then I stuck my hand in, ripped off a small chunk, and tasted it. It just tasted like your typical breakfast danish.

I left Sab and went to join the bandies up at the top of the hill. There were mostly people from the WP class of 2009 - Max Chang, Peter Coccia, Chris Jeng. I sat down and started chatting with Max, and then all of a sudden, Max's identical twin appears next to Max. They're both wearing light blue Hanover Township soccer T-shirts and shorts, very comfortable exercise attire, typical of what Max wears.

I never knew Max had an identical twin (he doesn't). Chris Jeng explained, "This was Max's recent physics project. He figured out how to clone himself using a GPL" (I had no idea what a GPL was except GNU Public License, but that didn't seem to make sense here.). Was the twin Max real? I reached out to touch his twin, and it was solid. This was so cool. "How does it work, Max?"

The real (?) Max and I left and went to a fast-food Chinese dim-sun restaurant. We got our pork buns and headed up to the counter. While in line, I asked him to tell me more about his project.

"I've seen you spending hours in the computer lab working on a research paper. Is this what you were working on?"

"Yeah," he said. "We got the paper published."

"Wow, really? What number author were you?"

"Seventh."

"Out of?"

"Thirty something."

"Cool."

"Yeah. Now I finally have an Erdős number."

We paid for our pork buns using our lunch swipes - Max with his Stanford ID, me with my Yale one. As the cashier swiped, I hoped I had enough points left on my card. Fortunately, I did. After the transaction, according to the receipt, I had about $16 left.

We went back to the hill and continued chatting. Suddenly, I realized there were only a few of us left on the hill. Looking around, the grassy landscape looked empty. I exclaimed, "Intermission must be over!" I ran back inside, toward the stage door, and I saw Mr. Sabatino peeking into the band room, looking for the stragglers. I burst onto the stage, and surprisingly, it was still fairly empty. In my haste to get to my seat, I knocked over several clarinet stands lying on the ground, including my own. Fortunately, I caught the clarinets I had tipped over before they struck the floor or a chair. Flustered, I sat down in my chair and woke up.