Of Concerts and Planes

Hello, here I am back again with another dream diary entry! I swear I've been having vivid, weird dreams lately. And today I'm gonna talk about two of them that I had few days ago.

This was the dream I had on Thursday night.... It's kind of a nice dream but at the same time also a stressful one. I dreamed that I was asked to play with SPSB again for MD! So in the dream I received a WhatsApp message from Cheryl asking me that I need to play for MD. Of course I replied yes, even though I know I haven't touched the clarinet in 7 years and that I am in Indonesia.

So yes in my dream I was still in Indonesia. The concert was supposed to be at 9 PM, I have to be in Esplenade for sound check at 8 PM, and the time in my dream then was 7 PM. So technically I have one hour to take a flight to Singapore HAHAHA. I remember I was running frantically, grabbing (magically) my clarinet, my blazer, tie and so on and hopped into my car. And then panicking that it is surely impossible to go to the airport and fly to Singapore in an hour hahaha.

Magically I even got time to have dinner halfway! Feeling stressed out, I decided to take a motorcycle taxi (gojek) to Singapore. Yes. And it did happen. I was grabbing my stuff on the motorcycle and arrived in Esplenade at 8:30 PM. Then Jaws came and told me that I have missed the soundcheck. But I still need to perform later 30 minutes later. I don't even know the pieces we were playing. So stressful!

Then I woke up. I'm glad I woke up hahaha. Even though I'd love to "see" the performance!

Then last night I dreamed of me being in Singapore and trying to take a flight back home. Due to COVID protocols, I have to do some swab tests thingy. In my dream I was walking along Orchard Road and I was buying stuff to bring back home. I looked at my ticket and my flight was at 2 AM (weird timing I know). I went back home (to Pandan Valley) and started packing up. It was 10 PM back then, when I realised that I looked at the wrong timing for my flight!

So 2 AM is the time of my flight back to Singapore. My actual flight to Indonesia is at 12 AM! Meaning I have 2 hours to go the airport. Once again, magically, I managed to grab a taxi to Changi, and somehow smoothly checked in my luggage, did the health tests and so on, and went inside my gate at 11:35 PM. I almost missed my flight. And then I went inside the plane, and I woke up.

I'm really not sure why I've been dreaming of stressful scenarios. According to psychology, dreams like this means that there are some unfinished things that we need to do. Well yes I did have a few work this past week and perhaps that's one of the reasons. I just love (and hate) how real and ridiculous these dreams are. How the impossible can happen, and how they turn to the possible haha.

I've always been fascinated by dreams. Just like Inception, we don't know how we ended up in the middle of our dreams do we? Dreams are also believed to be us experiencing our "mind" when we're sleeping. And that's why I find them so fascinating. And also why I started this series.

Alright I hope you had an Awesome August. It was rather quite a brutal one for me. Here's to a more Superb and Subtle September ahead for all of us I guess. Take care and stay safe! 

Epilogue?

Today is kind of a historically, weird day. Today we just did our last flower delivery for the year, or even maybe... Forever. Well I am planning to continue planting again, but right now that is just a plan. We are not sure of what lies ahead. All I know now, is that we have no more flowers at the farm. Well we do have flowers, just not that many, not enough to be delivered to Jakarta anymore. It's such a weird day. Seven years of doing this, and everything comes to a halt now. All due to a virus.

Well all of this started in March, when the pandemic hit Indonesia. Weddings were cancelled, Jakarta was put on a partial lockdown, and so on. My earning was reduced by 80-90%. Everything that we planned went haywire, we only harvested 10% of the flowers we planted for that month. I knew I couldn't carry on like this. This business is no longer viable. So I was left with two choices, like many other companies that are similar in nature. To continue, or to stop. I decided to continue.

But in April I guess reality hit me hard and boy I couldn't continue. So we had to stop planting the flowers. The costs were not sustainable by our earnings. We almost even stopped everything. That means no more maintenance for the plants. We could have done this, and just let the weed grow on the flowers. But if we did this, we wouldn't be able to harvest flowers for Lebaran, which is quite a pity. So I decided to keep going, and managed to harvest 30% of the flowers for Lebaran.

Well now, we have to reap what we sow (or not sow) 4 months ago. We have no flowers at the farm now. I can't believe that 7 years of doing deliveries, of planting flowers have left us to this state now. All thanks to a virus. Even though I knew that this day might come, I never expected it to come this soon.

It's been a tough call but I guess we have to make peace with reality. This business isn't viable anymore with the pandemic. Unless of course someone is kind enough to give me money to sustain the business haha. But not all things are bad - we have decided to switch to planting vegetables now. Which prices are ridiculously low and it's very fluctuative. But it's better than letting our lands got arid I guess?

I really don't know where the universe is taking us to. But like one of my favourite quotes/mantras say...

"Everything that you are going through, is preparing you for what you asked for"

I don't know who said the quote but I got this from The Artidote page years ago, and it has stayed with me ever since. And like what the flowers have taught me all these years,

You cannot stop the flower from blooming.

2020 is such a terribly weird year. But here I am now, going through this year, this pandemic. Where will I land, where will the universe take me, only time will tell.

Too soon, too quick

Today we lost one of our best people. A partner in crime, and most importantly, a friend to me. 

When I returned home 7 years ago, I knew that I won't have many friends here (apart from my family of course). So it became natural that my workers become my "friends". Or at least people that I interact with almost everyday. To lose someone whom you've been interacting with almost everyday really hits hard. Especially when he has helped us a lot, and when he has been with you since the beginning.

A hardworking father, who always offered help when he could. I've never really treated him as a worker, as I feel he's a friend to me. Thank you for helping me get my gig tickets. Thanks for accompanying me to try veg food when I'm in Jakarta. Thank you for bringing me around town when I need to. But most importantly, thank you for helping us maintain this business all these years.

We started with 2 customers in Jakarta, and now we have almost 40 customers under his helm. Most of whom are our loyal customers that he helped maintain the relationship with. But now our business has been ruthlessly brought into a chaos thanks to Covid. I feel so helpless. I don't know how I can ever say thank you to him. And I'm gonna need some time to get used to his absence I guess.

No one to send me orders to check with every delivery. No one to send the data of flowers to sell to. No one to accompany me for food when I'm in Jakarta. It's so weird. But I guess I'll get used to it.

To my partner in crime, and my friend, rest easy now. Thank you for everything that you have done.

Selamat jalan Pa Irwan

Of Gig and Dreams

Alright hope I'm not gonna bore you with another dream journal but here it is! Not sure why but I've been having bizarre dreams lately haha. This time - watching a concert in the middle of a pandemic.

So as usual my dream began with me in walking in the middle of a place. This time round it's a huge mall, apparently it's a new mall in my hometown. It's pretty huge, almost as huge as Takashimaya in Singapore. And it was the basement, and there were lots of food stalls, just like Taka. It was rather crowded and whew so many people were not wearing masks (I was). And I'm freaking out haha.

And then we reached the end of the basement and there was a supermarket. I was just shopping around and suddenly Neal was there and so was Jes and then we suddenly shopped together heh. After that we made our way back to the basement and on our way, there was a concert going on? And it was Coldplay. This is so weird heh. And because of social distancing rule, the audience was very small and they were also separated by 1 metre rule. But some people broke the rule and rushed to the stage.

So while Coldplay was performing "Adventure of A Lifetime", this stage crew just stopped Chris and spoke from his mic reminding people to practise social distancing. And this happened a few times heh. Imagine, a random stage crew stopping Coldplay once every while just to remind the audience to keep themselves 1 metre apart. What the hell is happening! Haha. Weird dreams I tell you.

We made our way out of the mall and there was this building that resembles a school. There was a classroom and people were seated in the exam format and I went in, asking what's happening. Someone then told me that they were watching Coldplay's AHFOD dcoumentary cause they were not allowed to watch the gig at the mall (HAHAHA). And so I decided to join them. Weird weird weird.

Then I woke up.

Not sure why I dreamed about this but perhaps it's probably because I was listening to Coldplay's AHFOD the night before. But yes, this is another weird dream. Mind me but I think I'm going to write a lot of dream journal entries. Perhaps it's an interesting way to keep the blog filled! :P

I will see you soon. Hopefully with a not-so-weird dream next time. 

New York, Tattoo

Alright I'm going to try to document as many dreams I have as possible in the dream diary series. It's quite an interesting thing to do. And also last night's dream is really a weird one!

Okay so the dream began with me getting tattooed by the tattoo artist that I got my tattoo from (hi Ash!). Somehow the tattoo was a surprise. I was getting tattooed on my back, and I didn't know what I was getting tattooed with. Eventually the tattoo was revealed, and it was a huge, pink chrysanthemum spread across my back. I was so shocked because... Okay I do plan of getting a chrysanthemum tattooed on my body, but definitely not a big and pink one! Haha. But it was a nice design nevertheless.

Now this is where the dream gets weird. I then found out that I was actually in New York. Even though Ash is actually in Singapore heh. So anyway after getting tattooed I decided to have lunch. Of all places in New York, I decided to get KFC for lunch. I was trying their vegan Beyond chicken nugget and some Beyond burger. And I was just eating them while making my way home. So absurd haha.

And yeah I didn't know what happened next, I was just walking and walking and then I woke up.

Not sure why the tattoo dream but it might be because I was watching some tattoo videos the night before (about someone getting a tattoo). As for the KFC part maybe because I was watching a vegan fried chicken recipe before. And so my mind decided to go to KFC heh.

Alright that's all for this random dream diary. Here's to more weird and beautiful dreams!

Hello

Well hello, wow I haven't been writing here for a long time indeed. I can explain!

Okay not only do I not have anything much interesting to talk about, but also for the past 2 weeks or so I have actually been... Falling asleep. Okay this is kind of good news and bad news. Good news because it means that my insomnia seem to be leaving me behind. Bad news because I didn't have much chances to blog. Also it becomes this bad habit of mine of sleeping, waking up, not being able to sleep, and then trying to go back to sleep, and yeah, this pattern is kinda annoying. 

Like usually I would sleep at 5-6 AM ish (if I'm down with insomnia, till 7-8) all the way till about 1 PM. Nowadays somehow, I would fall asleep at 4 AM ish, wake up at 7-8, not being able to sleep till 9, and then yeah the pattern goes on. I would fall asleep either after: reading a book, or after my meditation. I don't know why but I would feel very sleepy in these times. Sometimes unknowingly.

Which brings me to my next point: I think I might accidentally find the reason behind my insomnia. And sadly it's my favourite drink, AKA tea. So recently I did a blood test to check after being vegan for a year. My result came all amazing except for one: iron levels. Okay it's 2 points below normal. And so I went to do a bit of googling for the cause of low iron levels and I found out that black tea inhibits iron absorption. And after finding this out, I do realise that I drink a hell lot of tea.

I would drink black tea after every meal. Breakfast lunch and dinner. And I even drink 3 glasses (not even cups) of tea after lunch. So I decided to stop drinking them. Or at least give it sometime before I start drinking tea after my meal. Although I do stop drinking tea for breakfast and dinner. And for lunch now I limit myself to 1-2 glasses. And yup I do realise I fall asleep easier after doing so.

I used to tell myself that the caffeine in tea has no effect on me. But I guess it does! Well the funny thing is that before I went vegan, while still on a vegetarian (but mostly vegan) diet, my iron levels is always above average. I still drink lots of tea back then. So now I reduce my tea intake, and also consume some Vitamin C rich food while eating high iron food. Vitamin C helps to increase iron absorption! :)

Alright that's a bit of an update to why I haven't been blogging heh. I think I'm gonna blog more often in this month cause I have a few posts in mind. Okay that's all for now. Here's to an Amazing August for everyone. I swear I can't wait for this pandemic to be over. Urgh.