we be jamin

Most people have a worst nightmare where they’re falling. Or being chased. Or suddenly naked in public. Or in a natural disaster. Or covered in snakes. Or drowning.
My worst recurring nightmare is none of these - it’s not attending maths.

At least two or three times a month I dream variants of the same dream:
I become aware that it is week [6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / …] of semester and I have not attended any of my [statistics / calculus / linear algebra / engineering for mathematics / …] lectures for which I am enrolled because I have [forgotten I was enrolled / been too busy / been skipping / been playing netball].
I attend a [lecture / tutorial] in the [arts / architecture / engineering / physics / ref] building and realise as [Dr Stoyanov / Prof Owens / Dr Ma / My boss at work / Pippa from Home&Away] is talking that I [don’t understand anything / have no chance of catching up / have missed most assessments / have an assignment due tomorrow] and will fail university.

The dream is never resolved, I just wake up and it takes a moment to overcome the terror and realise that I graduated university four years ago and will never have to do another maths course again. My bro Jimmy also has similar dreams with the difference that his aren’t maths lectures. I wonder if it is a common nightmare.
I also wonder if these nightmares will ever cease, or if I will be constantly tortured forever for actually unenrolling from 3rd year statistics after skipping the first three weeks of lectures to play intra-uni lunchtime netball and finding that I could not catch up.

I turned ten thousand days old today. I worked this out while bored at work a few years back and it’s finally come around. I took the day off work to celebrate, and later me and the other kids went home to my folks’ place for dinner. We had cake. Not exactly the wild party that I had thought of organising to celebrate the occasion, but it was an icecream cake, so everything worked out for the best in the end

I googled “10,000 days old” and came across

• a number of sites that calculate when this occurs;
• a site that sells 10,000-days-old merchandise, cards, and organises 10,000 day parties in the UK;
• a number of sites offering 10,000 days old whiskey; and
• The album “10,000 days” by Tool. Apparently that was the length of time between the lead-singer’s mother becoming partially-paralyzed and dying.

The next milestone for me will be turning one billion seconds old (1,000,000,000s) on 30 August 2010. I’ll have a big party then. Put it in your diary. BYO.