Colleagues and Countries

From France the other week to dreams about the Orient the last two nights, all of which for some reason involved nearly all my work colleagues in one way or another...

The first dream of three was set in China, where I had initially set forth with my dad and (younger than in reality) brother. We'd not been long into our trip, however, when at Beijing train station my dad and I decided to get on a train just to see what Chinese ones look like inside (after several real-life months spent in the country I do actually know this - like glorified cattletrucks). Just then though the train started moving, and we realised to our horror that we'd left my little brother (not the most experienced of travellers) lost and alone in the middle of one of the most teeming and disorientating metropolises on the planet. As soon as we were able, my dad and I got out at the next stop, but to our frustration couldn't seem to communicate to any of the Chinese locals present that we needed some kind, any kind of transportation (taxi, bus, private car etc) back to Beijing and my by now presumably freaking out little brother. At this point though the situation morphed, and I found myself on yet another train together with my Czech colleague and a bunch of other random people on some type of guided tour round China. Being a died-in-the-wool tour hater since practically birth (am not the sort of person who can realistically ever follow round a designated leader with a little red flag on a stick without going murderously insane), I decided pretty quickly to break away from the group, making my own way instead to the Yangtze River and Seven Gorges region, which on my last real-life trip I hadn't been able to fit in and had always wanted to see. And so it was that not long afterwards I found myself blissfully solo on my third train of the dream, heading east and taking in a beautiful sunset from the window, only then to receive a call from David who unbeknownst to me had been on the initial tour as well and was cross with me for having struck out alone - not, apparently, for leaving the group, but for the way I had gone about it and things I'd said to people in the process. Given that I myself had no memory of actually separating off from the group in the first place, I was understandably suddenly struck with anxiety about what I'd actually said and done (in the same way as you might the morning after drinking too much...), as well as gutted to have inadvertently parted from David when we could have had such a great time travelling through China together. Woke up to the second, dawning realisation that I'd only gone and left my camera with the group as well and couldn't very well get back to them now... crap.

The next night I dreamt I arrived at work in the morning, where at the entrance my Swedish and Dutch colleagues were dropping some big hints about a huge surprise that awaited me at my desk. Sitting down at my place, I found a letter informing me that I'd recently passed a company-wide written examination, and along with a select set of other employees (including a Turkish colleague from my team who'd also received the same letter) would be setting off an all-expenses-paid week-long trip to Singapore and India the very next Monday!! Initial euphoria soon mingled with increasing scepticism as to the authenticity of this message, however, as I noticed the letter was written in multi-coloured jelly pen rather than being officially typed out; the business (like many others out there at the moment) is currently cost-cutting rather than funding any superfluous company jollies; I couldn't actually remember having taken any kind of significant test of late; and - most tellingly of all - my Swedish and Dutch colleagues were sniggering away together in the corner, presumably at the ingenuity of their (well meant) little prank on the two of us... In fact the more I thought about it, the more things as a whole looked slightly off, as I realised my office didn't look like it normally did (being housed in a treehouse rather than our normal shiny corporate surroundings) and instead of computers to work on we instead all had old-style, ink-and-blotter type school desks. Suspecting at this point I might very well be dreaming, I tried to conduct some of the lucid dream tests I'd recently read about on the internet, but none of them seemed to work - still, having pretty much cottoned on nevertheless by this point, I woke up anyway, much to my own frustration at not having succeeded in prolonging my lucidity beyond initial awareness...

The Middle East was the setting of my third and final dream, as myself and my Turkish and Australian colleagues somehow found ourselves in the middle of a traditional oriental souk, each attempting to levitate 200 crown notes off the ground by way of alchemy. Of the three of us, only my Turkish colleague had managed to get the hang of it so far, leaving me and my Australian colleague utterly befuddled by the whole affair. Nor was the process of elevation made any the easier in this case by having levitation teams from other companies (notably Exxon Mobile and Accenture - the two other main expat employers in Prague) all gleefully looking on and mocking our alchemical inadequacy either...

As ever, fuck knows what any of the above means - but either way, I am still of the opinion that our office reality is probably infinitely more surreal (in the nicest possible sense!) than my dream one at any rate....... ;-))