The power of dreams.

Dreams; they can highlight our wishes and our fears, help to expose problems which we cannot consciously face,foretell our coming triumphs or disasters. In the bible, they said "Young men see visions,while old men dream". So it seems like most of us are old men at heart. lol.

So, what are dreams? Through the past centuries, dreams were defined as "states of consciousness occurring during sleep".

I had a vivid dream like never before yesterday. It somehow took place in a realm of fantasy. Somehow the idea of "Around the world in 80 days" took place. The characters are actually, myself, my sister, my mother,and a couple of children and a dog. We took a specially created giant box, probably 100 times more gigantic than the giant basket shown below, which works similar to a hot hair balloon. And there we went, floating metres on top of the highest building(which is not significantly high in the fantasy setting),and flying around, with my heart fearing the flight stability. I was the only one holding on, pulling down and up the bar rod to generate the pumping of the hydraulic, in order to maintain the flight. I was somehow the flight controller, the flight captain.

Finally,we landed, and we explored around with the dog clinging and scratching onto a side metal of the seemingly bumper car ground. And then my mother went over to a counter, after an attendant asking her to take some packets of special "Nescafe" in the usual red cover transparent containers that we see,and there she took a few packets. We made our way around the play land...and then with this dreams goes on, it suddenly transcended me to another place where i was at a "Dojo"(Martial arts training hall), supposedly wanting to meet the Dojo Sensei(teacher), who wasn't around,but his students were present. From that point, i guess i woked up....

Having pleasant dreams can make your day and mood feels more pleasant, but having a bad dream can irks you, or dreams of violence such as murder or murder involving your family or anyone you know, gives u a kind of momentary phobia for the day. However dreams are interpretive through the uses of Dreams dictionary.

If you have a Dream dictionary at home, and you can remember your dream(s), be it vivid or vague, you'll be surprise to discover in the Dream dictionary the associated meaning of the objects,animals or human in your dreams that are linked. For examples, if u dream of a "Dog", and it is a happy dog, the dream dictionary may tell you that it signifies "Happy time and pleasure with friends". And then when you have children or family together in the dream, you check for "Children", it will tell u it signifies happiness in business interest or domestical affair. And then you check for "Family", it tells you it means general upswing in all your interest. This associated meaning are interpreted as positive and happy,probably related to your personal or business interest.

The other times, i checked the Dream dictionary for a couple of animals in my dreams,and found out that the different animals somehow appear with associated meaning, through the interpretation of the dream dictionary. It is a negative interpretation though.

In general, I see this association of interpretations of dreams from the Dream dictionary not mere coincident,but a miracle.

Almost a decade back, i had this problem of playing this VCD. At that time, i was finding ways to play it, as it seems there is a function or code to set, before i could watch this VCD. I almost gave up, until i had this dream. I dreamt of using my that own particular VCD player, looked for the "PBC" mode and set it. When i woke up, i and went over to the player, and indeed, i saw the "PBC" mode and set it. Eventually my VCD works. Sometimes dreams are so intrigue...

Somehow they said, dreams are the opposite of reality. That would be good, when one had a nightmare or negative dreams, then this theory will be of good adoption for them.

Perhaps,everyone dream for a reason. But whatever the dream is, let's not be affected by it in our daily lives.

What will you defend?

Friday 13 Feb, a day some people will deem it a good day, a day some, will say is a bad day.

Sat 14 Feb, Valentine's day for couples all over the world to express or re-express their loves for their next halves.

Sunday 15 Feb, a Total Defence day of the nation. It is hard to come by with the consecutive run of the 3 days that are being placed in line together.

"What will you defend?", a tagline marked for this year's total defence. Total defence, with five aspects namely, social, psychological, economic, civil and military. This is the 25th years of the Total defence day.

Our Organisation had organised our first Ladies self defense at CSC Tessensohn,a 3 hours basic workshop for the ladies. The theme planned by myself was the "Valentine's morning self-defense". However,forgotten about 15 Feb, i could have made it more relevant; To set it on Sunday, a Self defense for ladies, to play part of the Total defence.

So what will you defend? As a patriot, and once a Commando, and in the Auxiliary Police Force, the first common thing that comes to my brain was, to defend the country? To defence our nation's security? Well, however there are many immediate avenue of vulnerability in our lives that we need to tap on, to strike a balance, than to just keep ourselves focus on defending one point, and forgot about our back, or anywhere where there may be a loophole for a kill that we forget to cover ourselves from. So I will defend 2 points, which is myself pychologically, and my family. If u were to be able to defend yourself psychologically, u will have no problem in defending ur family, or the nation. I'll let u play with the logics.

In the investments for the military defense, a long term defence planning and capability build up become clear when one considers that the combat capabilities deployed for various missions took years of steady investments to raise, train and sustain. The theme " We dare" is the slogan for our SAF Commando Special Operations Force(SOF), one of the Commandos Formation's Elite Unit, with a Special breed of men, a cut above the rest".

A case where the SOF stormed Singapore Airlines flight SQ 117 at Changi Airport on 26 March 1991 and saved 123 crews and passengers. Four Pakistani Hijackers had demanded for the release of their compatriots from jail, and if demands were not met, 1 hostage will be killed every 10 minutes. They gave the authorities a short 5 minutes to decide what to do. With that,the authorities need less than that timing. With 3 minutes into the countdown, the SOF settled the issue. The zealous SOF Commandos stormed the Airbus and withine 30 seconds, shot dead all four Pakistani hijackers. Perhaps the Pakistani Hijackers had undermined Singapore's Counter-terrorism preparations, and thus was ownself outwitted. At that time, the Police STARs were heard to be there as well, to standby and lent their secondary support.

The operation codenamed Thunderbolt, marked the 1st time the SAF resolved a hijacking with deadly force.

Total defence is of paramount important. Looking at the crisis in the recent years,such as SARs. A combine effort of pulling together as a nation psychologically, working to keep the economy running and living together as a cohesive, gracious and compassionate society helped the nation combat and overcome the challenges of the situation.

The civil defense is also task to do front line rescue missions on any situation that may arise, such as fire break out, building collapse, where search and rescue teams are highly ultilised. The SAF has also sent their Construction Engineering Team(CET) of soldiers to Afganistan to help facilitate in supervising the constructions of schools and the medical team to assist in the Medical Care centre in Afganistan. The Police are important in upholding law and security, and response to immediate crime situations of the society. The Prison, a place of rehabilation, trains and equip inmates with relevant skills and study, added good point for them to have a new lease of life when release.

Every objectives of the forces are good and contributes to the good will of our Singaporeans.

I'm neverthelss proud of our Singapore's government's planning and objectives, and hope that in times to pass, we come together and overcome this period of recession.

Singapore has tapped it's reserves, have you even create yours?

Singapore has unveiled a massive S$20.5 billion plan in its 2009 Budget to help Singaporeans keep jobs and viable companies stay afloat. Thinking of that, i was lucky not to tap on my personal reserve during this time of recession.

And for the first time, the government will be dipping into its reserves to draw S$4.9 billion to fund two temporary and extraordinary measures. They are the Jobs Credit and a Special Risk—Sharing Initiative.

The government will help employers with their wage bills by giving a 12 per cent cash grant on the first S$2,500 earned by each employee on the CPF payroll.

The scheme, called Jobs Credit, is for a year and will be paid out very quarter, starting from March.

This will be equivalent to a nine percentage point cut to the Central Provident Fund (CPF).

So retrenchment will be made the last resort.

But will this fully work? Perhaps not. Because with 12 per cent cash grant, if the company has come to the depth of non-profiteering, they would still rather retrench,shut down, or vice versa, to save on 100%.

However, this scheme does help to a certain point, in retaining manpower through paying less CPF to the government, and this will mean paying overall lesser salaries to employees. This nevertheless does help to cut cost. Depending on the ratio of the company's strength to their earning, this can be of a great help, or little help, or of no help at all.

One thing i'm not sure about, are all MNC/SME companies in Singapore included? I mean companies such as US Merril Lynch, RHB, or any other overseas investments banks located in Singapore, are they inclusive?

Profiteering companies in Singapore also shared the same priviledges, of getting the job credit scheme. Although this may sounds abit annoying, it is cited by one official that it has to help everyone in times of need, to share and balance the society with unbianess towards all companies in Singapore. And if a Profiteering company, though does not need help, the job credit scheme is to help to maintain the company's strength, to prevent any future adverse effect of the company's decision to retrench one or few of it's staffs.

Base on all these, let's hope the economy will recover in times to come.

Learning point from to government is, even for individual like us, we need to have a 'personal reserve fund' for ourselves, an untapped fund place in the bank for us to use, only for "Rainy" seasons. The best thing is not to tap on the reserve fund,and let it grow as long as possible. Should we need, we will only tap a very small portion of it once awhile, and make sure we place an input now and then back into our reserve fund to let it grow, perhaps, to even see a 'surplus' of our every intended amount saved.

Right now, I'll have to take my leave. Take care!