Erwa's Dream Log - March 2012

I was attending school as usual, when one day, I came home, and my family was gone. They had been kidnapped. For some reason, I immediately transferred schools (or maybe the kidnappers forced me to if I didn't want my family to be harmed).

My new school reminded me of the dorms (Allen Hall?) I stayed in at Rutgers University during the Governor's School for Engineering and Technology. I was very sad that my family had been kidnapped, and I walked down the hallway knocking on people's doors to try to find someone I could share my sorrows with. I opened random people's rooms and went inside. In one room, I saw a single person lying on a queen-sized bed. I thought that was strange because all the other rooms were doubles with bunk beds. I soon found out he was one of my family's kidnappers. A few rooms down, I found another kidnapper. In another room, I initially thought it was empty, but then went closer to the bed and noticed there was a girl sleeping on it, with the covers strewn haphazardly over her. I said something and she replied - it sounded like she hadn't fallen asleep yet since her voice was still very clear.

I sat down in the doorway and started crying. A group of girls walked by. One of them asked me if anything was wrong. Another told me that Steve Summers - my area, region, and all-state band clarinet buddy (and frequent stand partner) from high school was here. I thought that was strange because not only is he two years younger than me, he also went to the Governor's School for Music, which I presume was held at a different university.

The two kidnappers then summoned me to come downstairs with them. I followed them and in the lobby, I saw my family waiting! They said their kidnappers had allowed them this visit to come see me. Then it was time to head back to the kidnappers' headquarters. I accompanied them back to spend more time with them.

On the way back, I spoke with my family in Chinese to get some information without the kidnappers understanding. My brother told me that the kidnappers' place was only a few blocks behind our house. I noticed my dad was also walking with the help of a single crutch under his left arm. I asked him what had happened. He used a Chinese term that I wasn't familiar with, which he then translated to drill bit. Apparently, the kidnappers had drilled something into his left hip.

Well, we reached the door of the kidnappers' apartment and they said I had to leave. I was not allowed to see inside. I thought it was funny that they let me come even this far because now I knew exactly where the apartment was and what room number. I left and started walking back through the crowded streets. It must have been rush hour or something. Also, at this point in the dream, I realized I was in Canada, probably in one of the cities like Toronto.

After walking for a bit, I heard a voice behind me. Turning around, I saw it was my mom. "What are you doing here?" I asked. "They let me go," she replied. We kept walking for a bit, and then we heard our names called out. We turned around and the rest of my family - my brother, dad, and grandma - was there.

"Why'd they let you go?" I asked.

"I guess all they wanted was money," said my dad. He then showed me a photocopy of the check he had written them. It was for 1.6 million dollars. I didn't even realize he had that much money saved. Looking at the check, I also saw it had originally been written for a much smaller amount (like $100,000), but then a lot of numbers and letters had been crossed out and the new value was written in. I didn't think the bank would accept a check with so many cross-outs on it. I also didn't know if banks would be able to cash a check for this much money. "Now they can buy all the pot they want," my dad continued.

At this point, I started crying a bit. I knew my dad must have worked his whole life to save up that money, and now it was gone just with a penstroke. However, my dad didn't look sad or angry at all. He actually looked happy.

I was in English class. It wasn't a typical college English class; we had vocabulary quizzes as well, which reminded me of high school English class. I recall taking one of these vocabulary quizzes in my dream. The multiple choice questions were mostly analogies or synonym questions. I remember thinking to myself that some of the questions didn't make sense. I knew what all the words meant but none of the words fit as the answer.

In the next class, we got back a ton of graded assignments, including the vocabulary quizzes. I remember getting decent grades on my essays, and then getting ~70% and ~80% on my vocabulary quizzes. I remember the teacher saying "nice job" to students who had gotten 98s on their vocabulary quizzes, but she just gave me my vocabulary quiz without saying anything.

I also remember seeing a grade on one of my essays - which was an 89 that had been scribbled out and changed to a 90. At first, I thought it was a 99 and I got excited, because that would have been one of my highest essay grades ever. But I was still happy with a 90, because that's pretty good for me. I flipped through the essay and saw that at the end of my essay, I had included some pseudocode for an algorithm that was relevant to my analysis. One of the comments the teacher wrote in regards to my pseudocode was, "What do you mean by 'on'?" I think this was in reference to pseudocode lines like "on completion" or "on exit". I thought it was strange that she wrote this question because I thought the meaning of "on" was pretty clear. Maybe I should have used "upon" instead.