island tales #28

i've always tended to remember my dreams, which are of course usually quite bizzare. like last night, for example. for no apparent reason, i dreamt i was going to russia... of all places.

apparently you can just walk across the nearest border (with a quaint little checkpoint) and tadaa~ you're in russia. complete with sudden climate change and everything. i rented this little place there just down the road from the checkpoint (surrounded by uh mango trees?!), and visited the nearby uni (again, conveniently located along the same road) to look for my russian medical friends. and all this without being able to speak a word of russian, but fortunately for me the road signs there were in chinese... uh.... and i could have sworn there was a russian spiderman zipping along above the streets. and then i woke up.

anyway.

staying at the shop half the time as a kid has plenty of advantages. and one of them is.. a supply of cigarette carton boxes!!! and no, i dont smoke, nor do i enjoy people smoking around me, and i definitely am not encouraging you to light up. back then, i used the boxes to draw on, with their blank insides serving as an excellent replacement for paper.

i would draw people and animals and superheros and cartoon characters, then cut them out and uh, use them as the characters of whatever storyline i was conjuring in my head at the moment. sometimes, i'd add in 6-sided dice, make up some rules and then, urm, aggressively persuade my brother to join in. hehe. he was a lot smaller back then!!

oh, and i used to take cellophane tape from the shop downstairs, until it was pointed out to me that this was called stealing. whoops. that was honestly one of the most astonishing revelations i had as a kid. cello-tape consumption was reduced from then on and i made sure i actually asked before i took anything... *sheepish grin*

of course, i no longer get to cut my own toys out from cigarette carton boxes, but i guess that's one of the reason i found programming so fun... now i can move little people around on the screen! and my brother's too big to bully... haha. but i've always wanted to make something i imagined as a kid: a machine that can design, make and repair other machines! but i guess that's not gonna happen anytime soon...

friday again. i've got a larger than usual lunch to go to later... 2 birthdays and 1 farewell rolled into one. well.. back to work for now.