Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Effective Marketing

"In my experience, bottom-line, people of all ages and geographies are influenced to buy through their peers, family and reference groups. These groups are usually influenced, writ large, by meaningful content in a meaningful setting (e.g. storytelling or media articles), in-person meetings (e.g. events or sales meetings) or external influences (e.g. experts, celebrities, etc.).


... As you might be able to tell, I approach marketing from a very specific thesis: namely, content is king, and that bringing digital conversations into brick-and-mortar events/meetings are the true ways to build core repeat customers and scalable results."

- Neil St. Clair

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Remembering a Dream


Its not very often one wakes up remembering a dream in vivid details. Three nights ago,  I woke up from a 15 - 20 minute power nap (of sorts...), remembering every single detail of the dream I had. I decided to record it all down before crashing back into bed again. 



So the memory of my dream kinda begins with my sister, Elaine, walking into a fully furnished room, one very similar in design to the living room of our old flat, clutching on to some eggs. Soon after she walks in with them, they hatch into young monitor lizards, about 6 in total. I experienced a short time-lapse here, where everything kinda blacks out. The next thing I remember is finding myself standing in a garden watching the 6 lizards, now significantly larger, frolicking around in a garden. Whilst they're running around in the garden, one of them finds a young fledgling in the bushes.  The young bird was struggling to escape the damn lizard when I jumped in, desperately trying to put it back in the trees. Sadly, it fell off the branch and got eaten up. I noticed some movement in the bushes nearby and realised that there was a medium size terrapin trying to slide away from the commotion but had inadvertently attracted the attention of the monitor lizards. I ran over and snatched the tortoise from the ground. 




Picking up the tortoise, I ran over to the house and managed to slide past the closing doors. I experienced another short time-lapse here, and the next thing I remember doing was looking frantically around in a kitchen, similar to the old house for a container to place the terrapin in. I remember not being able to find that container and freaking out entirely, throwing (yes I remember explicitly flinging the flailing animal on to the table top...) the tortoise aside and sweeping everything on that counter top onto the floor in my usual dramatic fashion. As soon as I finish doing that, I start to loose control of myself, sliding to the floor, twitching uncontrollably. This whole twitching episode , I remember distinctly,  and the sensations were scarily familiar hence I suspect that I was actually experiencing an episode of sleep paralysis too. 



Just as soon as it began, the twitching and paralysis stopped and I next found myself back in the kitchen with Sri, my former domestic servant. She was milling around, lamenting about the mess I created and insisting that I, for a change clean up the mess. I relented and proceeded to clear up all the mess in about the same time it took me to cause it. Just as I finished cleaning up the place, the damn lizards appear once more and start chasing chasing me around the kitchen. They succeed in cornering me in the living room, the same one where the dream began. One of them leapt forward, mouth agape, and I avoided it by jumping back on to that very familiar black leather sofa that I used to spend many hours on. I tried scaring it away by swatting it with the red pillows that we used to put on our sofa but the lizards held their ground. Interestingly enough, I noticed that they were now frilled; just as large but frilled and they were getting all hissy (like cats...) and upset with me. I was freaking out terribly and I yelled for my sister. I shouted for her to move fast because they were destroying most of the pillows. She came down the stairs  (don't ask how) and snatched the pillows out of the lizards' mouths. 

I next remember myself getting off the sofa and walking down the narrow corridor towards my the master bedroom. As I was making my way towards the inner hall, I realised that I was being stalked by my entourage of childhood soft toys. I remember explicitly seeing the baby blue bear, the big brown bear, the green spike dinosaur amongst other soft toys just lumbering behind me as I made my way into the house. I distinctly remember the pace of things accelerating at this point... almost as if someone was pressing the fast forward button continuously.




Things get a little freaky from here onwards. I next remember myself kneeling on the ground with all these little soft toys lying in front of me, with their bellies up as I give them all a belly rub. I recall tearing a little as I started rubbing the blue bear (my very first soft toy given to me when I was about 1 year old...) and the bear in that denim overalls. I remember accessing their thoughts in a telepathic sort of manner with a Whatsapp sort of display manner (Again... I am not sure how to describe it accurately...). They kept asking me about how I've been all these years and what I have been up to etc. I was just choked up with emotions and could not answer any of them. I vaguely remember hearing mum in the background encouraging me how I felt about everything... as she started fading away. I woke up shortly after my mum's voice faded. My mum wasn't anywhere around me and I glanced at the clock and realised that only about 15 minutes had passed since I knocked out. 

And that pretty much sums up my first (shared...) recorded dream :)