The wacky starts

The UN General Assembly is upon us and it seems that the whole UN community has been burning the midnight oil to prepare for a massive influx of world leaders, senior officials, and their entourages.  My office has not been spared this, but things have come together and we're ready to roll.

But if you've been paying any attention at all, you'll know that even in normal circumstances I am no stranger to crazy-ass dreams.  And so you can just imagine what acid trips my subconscious takes when I haven't been sleeping well for days at a time.  Allow me to present Exhibit A (aka, last night's dream):

So I was on the bus back in Adelaide.  Lost, as usual. I can't remember where I was supposed to be headed, but I know in my dream I was nowhere near it.  A lady comes to sit down next to me - about my age.  Tall, and with a crazy mop of brown-black hair.  She has recognised me, and I start to worry because I have no idea who she is.  Slowly but surely we piece it together and she is a girl from my high school, who I literally have not clapped eyes on since we graduated (*cough cough* number of years ago).
She tells me how thrilled her parents would be to see me again and would I come to her place and have dinner?  Since she seemed to know where she was going, and I clearly did not, I accepted. 

I turn up at her place and my Dad is there waiting for me (am I telepathic now?).  He looks just as anxious as I do, and yet we go inside my school mate's HUGE house.  It's an ancient Queenslander-style home, with sweeping verandahs all around the property and large swinging screen doors, left open to let the gorgeous cross-breeze through.  The wooden floorboards are all in original condition and the house is stunning.  Dad and me make appropriate remarks of admiration as we take the tour. 

Then my aunt is there, standing alongside a giant white-haired woman, who may or may not be crazy.  She is certainly mute, and she is so tall that she renders my aunt tiny in comparison.  My aunt isn't at all surprised to see me or my Dad there, but she doesn't talk to us.  She spends all her time fussing over the white-haired giant lady. 

My school friend takes me and my Dad outside to see the backyard.  The place is INSANE.  Firstly there's a really deep pool, filled with what looks like mangroves.  A dark mass moves quickly under the water, and my friend's Dad strips off to his shorts and dives in.  "He's fishing for barramundi," my friend says, as if this happens all the time "we'll have it for dinner".  Of course.  As her dad catches farmed barra with his bare hands, overhead a few family friends are surfing on the surface of the water, with the aid of a (clearly) self-made wave generator.  My friend tells me that the combination of the mangrove plants and the surfing helps to aerate the water and the barra grow big and fat. 

I turned around to see my aunt had (for some reason) put on her nurse's uniform - she is indeed a nurse in the real world, so this is the only part of the dream that made sense.  Only all of a sudden, my aunt had a tight, white perm hairdo even though she was still the same age as always.  She had taken white-haired giant lady by the hand and was guiding her back into the house, presumably for a nap or medication (both of which sounded pretty good to me).  I turned back to tell my Dad what I'd seen, and my Grandma was there, assuring me she'd tackle this and find out once and for all why my aunt was working so hard on what was supposed to be her day off.   Where did Grandma even come from?! 

Clearly this didn't bother me enough to investigate further, because I directed my gaze back down the garden I noticed ears of corn, and a couple of dirty children assuming the unenviable task of picking them.  Who grows corn AND farms barra AND has capacity for surfing, all in their backyard?  I guess the same people who own a pair of albino meerkats, because at that point in the dream, two gorgeous little critters ran out of the cornfield and stared right up at me, before dashing off again.

Then I woke up.  I mean, seriously.  What the?!  There is so much in here, I don't think any dream dictionary in the world would be able to handle it.  Best to just cast it off into the "WOAH, CRAZY" pile (where so many of my other dreams have gone to die).  I suspect that as this madcap week rolls on, there is likely to be more adventures brewing in my subconscious.  I just hope they don't involve barra or corn.  It's never fair to dream about food.  That's like teasing or something.