I dreamt that I was in an apartment or an upstairs bedroom, and the building had a feeling of being in student accommodation. The window was open, and all of a sudden a small bird flew in through the window and started attacking me. Yu Lee helped me to get the bird off and I threw it back out of the window.

A few minutes later I was attacked again. This time the bird hit me quite hard and really hurt me. I was flailing my arms around trying to get it off of me, and after struggling for a few minutes I managed to throw it back out of the window again. When I looked up at it I realised it was a different bird, and this one looked like a pheasant.

I looked out of the window and noticed something on the outside windowsill: it was a crude nest with a notebook in it. I leaned out of the window and grabbed the notebook and pushed the bits of nest off over the edge. I was sure that after doing this the birds wouldn't return.

I can't remember what was written on the notebook any more.

I don't remember much of this dream, but me and Yu Lee were in the car and Yu Lee was driving us somewhere. When we got to our destination it was difficult to find a place to park but eventually Yu Lee spotted somewhere.

She pulled over onto the "space" which was a paved area right next to a pond. The surface was paved in small, dark concrete tiles and was inclined gently towards the edge of the water, and was just about wide enough to fit the car on.

As soon as Yu Lee had pulled onto the space the car started to slide sideways, and in a couple of seconds the car was in the water, sinking towards the bottom of the surprisingly deep pond. We managed to get out and swim for the surface and I was telling Yu Lee how stupid she was for thinking that was actually a space.

In my dream we are on holiday in China, although it's more like it's "supposed" to be China but most aspects of it are really like Spain. I'm on holiday with Yu Lee and Ai Seng, and for some reason I have gone off on my own. I think I bumped into someone and started having a conversation in Spanish and they told me that they would meet me in the main square.

I talk to a Spanish lady on a boat in the river for a while. After a couple of minutes I feel like I should go back and meet up with the others so I make an excuse and leave, but on my way back I bump into someone else and have another conversation, until I make another excuse and leave again.

When I make it back to the square I easily find Ai Seng and Yu Lee and they are doing something, looking at the buildings and taking notes. I tell them that I ended my conversation by saying that I had to meet with Ai Seng for dinner.

The next thing I remember is going to get some dim sum. The others tell me that there are two places that sell excellent dumplings, and that they both sell exactly the same dumplings but one of them is significantly cheaper than the other. I ask why there's such a difference in price and they tell me that one place is basically posher and knows how to sell them better.

We enter the cheaper of the two dim sum restaurants and it's massive inside, more like a banquet hall than a restaurant. I don't remember seeing Ai Seng or Yu Lee for the rest of the dream, but there is a man with me and a couple of other boys who I assume are his sons.

At the front of the hall is a stage, and on the stage is a man with a microphone and a couple of other guys who I assume are just people visiting the restaurant. The guy with the microphone gives some dumplings to the other men and then asks them what they think of them. The men both say that the dumplings are delicious, and the host asks them if they are as good as the other dim sum restaurant. The whole thing seems really uncomfortable and I think to myself, "no wonder this restaurant is cheaper than the other one." The whole thing is a farce and makes the restaurant appear cheap and tacky.

While we are waiting in the queue the man who's with us starts to get agitated, saying that we look scruffy and that it's disrespectful to the locals. His sons have long hair and he makes them tie it up and makes them tuck their t-shirts into their trousers. He comes up to me and starts tucking my hair in behind my ears and trying to "neaten" me up.

By now he's getting really angry and a lot of the other people in the restaurant are looking at us. I look around and don't think the other people are particularly smart and can't understand why he's being like this.

Next he tries to make me tuck my t-shirt into my trousers and I finally snap and get really angry. I flick my hair out from behind my ears and put it back how it was at the start and ask him why he's doing this. I tell him that we all look ridiculous with our hair and t-shirts tucked in, and that nobody is dressed particularly smartly or cares how we are dressed.

At that moment a waiter walks past so I get his attention and ask him what the dress code is. He looks at me, with a distinctly "not amused" expression on his face and says "do whatever this man wants please, so that he can shut up."

I turn to the man who's with us again and raise my voice a little, arguing about why he always does this. I feel very frustrated that he gets so angry about silly things like this.

At this point I woke up with my heart pounding.

I don't remember much of this dream, but me and Yu Lee had just bought a new house and were getting some work done on it before we moved in. The house was single storey and had two bedrooms, one of which was about an average sized double bedroom and the other was pretty big and had an on-suite bathroom.

Yu Lee had pretty much decided that we were going to sleep in the smaller of the two rooms. The building work was mainly being done on the bedrooms, and after the builders had finished for the day I went to look at the two rooms. I couldn't understand why Yu Lee would want to sleep in the smaller room because the bigger one was clearly better.

We're having some kind of party on a bus. I don't remember any of the details or who actually organised it but I feel like I was involved in it somehow.

Everyone's on the tour bus when a couple of guys get up and walk into the centre of the bus to a section where a couple of rows of seats are missing. They say they're going to play a song, and if anyone else has brought their guitars they're welcome to join them. Several people get up and make their way to the middle of the bus, and when one of the people stands up their friend grabs them and pulls them back down into the seat and everyone laughs at them.

The guys all start to play and it sounds really good. I have no idea what they're plugging their guitars into but they are playing metal music and the guitars are definitely amplified. I suddenly realise that I recognise the music and that the two guys that started it must be from Vacant Stare as they're playing the first track off of their album.

At this point most people are sitting at the front of the bus and I'm the furthest back. About halfway through the song the band reposition so that they are facing sideways, and one of them keeps making eye contact with me.

When they finish their song, two other men who are playing with them look at each other and then one of them starts playing a complicated bass line on his bass guitar. The other man starts playing a riff on his guitar and they are really playing quite hard and loud. The other people with instruments all look at each other as if to say "I can't play along with that," and one by one they head back to their seats until only the two men are left playing. I feel like it has kind of ruined it and with that the original group were still playing.

Sometime while this was happening, two people had sat down in front of me, and the person on the seat directly in front of me was an attractive young woman with dark brown hair. I was tired at this point and was slouched in my chair and half asleep.

All of a sudden I feel something touch my feet (for some reason I am not wearing shoes or socks) and the girl in front of me screams and jumps out of her seat. I realise that she had put her feat under her seat and they had touched my feet which had startled her, so I try to say to her that I didn't do anything and that I was sitting like this all along, but she's already gone so I give up.

People are gradually leaving the bus now and it's starting to feel empty, like the party's over.

I'm sitting on my own, deep in thought, when suddenly I see Yu Lee and Zen walking down the aisle from the back of the bus. Zen is wearing a suit and Yu Lee is in a fancy dress and has a lot of make-up on. She also has shortish hair and has done something to it that makes it look different. When I look at her I think she looks really young.

They walk past me and talk to someone just out of site, a few seats in front of me. Yu Lee says "Thanks for everything. We're going to head in now, and I guess this is going to start being a stressful night for us." I think maybe she is talking to her sister but I'm not sure.

At that moment I suddenly realise that while I can see Yu Lee a few metres in front of me, I can also feel her sitting next to me! I have my arm around her and I can feel her head on my shoulder. I start to wonder how she can be in two places at once, but then I fade out of the dream and into reality and I really do have my arm around her and she is asleep with her head on my shoulder. I guess I'd started to wake up already and could sense my real life body whilst still being in the dream world.

I remember a lot of vague fragments of this dream.

• Yu Lee and I weren't living together, but apart from that our situation was still the same.
• I'm sure I spoke to Yu Lee at some point in the dream, either in person or on the phone.
• I remember getting a phone call from Carlos and talking to him for a while, and then the sound quality got really bad and I had to hang up.
• I remember driving to a car park. I think someone was giving me directions, and I ended up parking in Homebase's car park which was completely empty because it was the evening.
• I remember going into work (WorldPay?) and someone said "Someone's been drinking haven't they?" I felt a bit offended because I'd only had half a bottle of beer and was still in a fit state to drive.

The part of my dream that I remember most clearly was (as usual) at the end of my dream. I was living in a house share with 2 or 3 other people, and one of them was an Italian lady who was teaching me Italian. She wasn't anybody I knew from real life, but the way she acted was similar to my Italian teacher, although she looked nothing like her and was a bit overweight.

It was evening, and I'd just arrived back at home. The Italian lady was in the corner of the hallway and had just hung up the telephone. I had a question so I approached her and tried to explain it in Italian, but I didn't know all of the words. I tried to guess how to say whatever it was by adapting the Spanish words to Italian pronunciation (a trick that works pretty well in reality!) but I'd obviously not got it quite right, and she stopped me half way through speaking to correct me.

Before she'd finished correcting me she stopped mid-sentence, came in close to me and said in a half-whisper "Whatever happens between you and me is our secret. You don't have to worry that I'll tell anyone."

As she said it a series of images flashed through my mind of what she was implying, and then I thought of Yu Lee and thought that it was definitely not something I wanted to pursue.

I don't remember much from the first part of the dream, but I'm pretty sure that I was missing the sun, just as I am in real life. I decided that the only way to fix this was to go and visit a hot country so Yu Lee and I went to UAE (United Arab Emirates) to get soak up the sunshine. I have no idea why I'd go there in my dream because it's certainly not somewhere I plan on visiting in real life!

We could basically take our pick of where to visit so we looked on the map and picked a spot at random. The map of UAE in my dream was actually a map of Saudi Arabia, but I guess that's pretty close really!

I'm not sure how we get there but the next thing I remember is arriving at the beach. When we got there the beach was full of westerners, mainly other English people. I remember being surprised that there were no locals there at all and thinking that it felt comfortable as I know exactly how to act around other English people.

It was really hot on the beach. The main thought going through my head was that I didn't want to get sunburnt, and the first thing we did when we got there was to put on a load of sun cream. After that we decided to go for a wander around and we also wanted to find a place that we'd seen on the internet where there were a series of giant stepping stones in the water. We asked one of the other tourists where the stepping stones were and he told us that they were not at the beach and were a short way up a river. We looked on the map and the river was miles away, so instead we decided to go back to our hotel.

The hotel was quite odd. It was a single storey building that was split up into a number of apartments. Each room was more or less like a self contained flat, but they weren't very big and it felt like a lot of people were crammed into a small space.

In the room was a small black remote control with a red button on either side. I was curious as to what it did so I pressed the buttons together, and as soon as I did so a little symbol with a red flame on it lit up on the remote and the fire alarm went off.

I was totally surprised by the reaction I got. Firstly I wasn't expecting it to set off the alarm, but even more surprising was the reaction of all of the people in the apartment building. Everyone dropped what they were doing and started to run around, and the receptionist was screaming "We've got a fire! I know it's a real one because someone's manually set off their alarm!"

Someone came into our room and I told them that I didn't mean to set the alarm off so they helped me disable it. Everyone went back to what they were doing before and the receptionist seemed to be very angry with me. The man who'd disabled my alarm explained to me how it worked, and he said if you disable it within a second the alarm won't go off, and then he proceeded to press the buttons so that the symbol lit up again and then immediately pressed them again deactivating it. He did this a couple of times and each time I did it my heart skipped a beat at the thought of the alarm going off again.

Interview

I'm at work, and I think I'm working at Jagex. We're doing some kind of weird project where various members of staff go to a room in pairs and are interviewed about a piece of technology that had been developed here.

I decide that I'm going to volunteer to do an interview, so I look at the list of technologies that I can talk about. There is nothing left on the list that I've actually worked on before, but there are two items that I recognise: Courtney Brown v1 and Courtney Brown v2. The weird thing is that this is the name of my parents picture framing business from when I was a kid. I decide to talk about Courtney Brown v1.

When it's time for my interview I'm called to a small room and there is another employee waiting outside. We go in together and sit down opposite a strange webcam with two lenses (maybe it films in 3D?) and the interview begins. They ask us a few questions and I know the answers to them because I spoke with my parents about it when I was younger. I also remember them having two sheets of labels on the table that said "Courtney Brown" on them. One of them was plain and one had a stylised logo with a picture frame on it. I realise that the plain ones are the version 1 labels and the ones with the logo are version 2.

After the interview someone starts talking to me and I remember thinking that they are just talking rubbish. He is standing right next to Andrew Gower (the founder of Jagex) who is being filmed, and I don't want to get in the shot.

Barbecue Chicken

This is the part the I remember by far the most vividly from this dream.

After my interview I go back to my room. We must be at some kind of event because lots of employees are sleeping in a large dormitory in some kind of hostel. It's about 7:00am and when I get to the room half of the people are sleeping and half of them are awake.

I lay down in my bed and close my eyes, but after a couple of minutes I hear an annoying mechanical sound. I look up and two other employees are sat on their bed playing with a small machine. The machine is some kind of tennis game, and when you move some levers on the bottom a little metal figure moves around, and you both have to try to hit the ball past the other player. Every time they pull the lever there is a loud noise as the parts move around.

At this point someone comes in with a plat of barbecue chicken wings and offers them around, and I haven't eaten breakfast yet and I'm quite hungry so I take a couple and eat them.

After eating the chicken wings I have this sticky brown sauce all over my fingers. I look over at the two people playing the annoying tennis game and they are still playing. I get up off of the bed and walk right towards them, and put my hands out and wipe every last bit of barbecue sauce all over their toy! I don't say a word and make eye contact with them the whole time. At this point their mouths are hanging over and they're looking at me like I'm crazy.

Once I'm done making a mess of their game I walk back over to my bed and get back in it an close my eyes. They watch me the whole way, but a few seconds afterwards I hear the click clack of the figures moving again.

Ramps

I get up eventually and go to find Yu Lee who is also staying in the same building. I'm not 100% sure what happened here but I remember shouting through the walls of each bedroom trying to wake her.

The next thing I remember is being outside. I must have gotten outside before her and wandered off because I'm trying to find her, and I call her to see where she is.

There seems to be some kind of festival going on, but to be honest this bit doesn't make a lot of sense. It's something to do with there being ramps all over town, most of them with a stream of water gushing down them. Part of the event is to walk up the ramps.

When I finally get hold of Yu Lee on the phone I ask her why she isn't at the spot where we agreed to meet, and she says that with her bad back she's not sure that she can make it up the ramps. I tell her I'll come and find her and we can find one that's not too steep and I'll help her up it.

This dream was creepy!

It's night time and me and Yu Lee are alone at home. I hear some weird noises over and over again in the garden so I go out to investigate.

I walk down to the end of the garden and shine me torch and there is a pretty big rabbit sitting at the end of the garden. I shine my torch right on it and I can see that its eyes are swollen and bleeding which is typical of rabbits that have myxomatosis (I used to see rabbits with this disease all of the time when I worked at the science park).

Wild rabbits with myxomatosis are blind or nearly blind, and normally if they've had the disease for a long time they become really dopey, like they've given up and lack the energy to do anything. When you approach them they will often just sit there, or slowly hobble away from you. Initially the rabbit in my dream acted just like this and didn't react like a healthy rabbit.

I stood there for a few seconds looking at the poor rabbit and feeling sorry for it. Then the rabbit started to get agitated and made a noise that I can only describe as screaming. It was not the kind of noise you would expect from a rabbit.

The rabbit ran past me towards the house. I realised that the rabbit was massive, more like the size of a dog than a rabbit. I picked up a stick to try and chase it off and approached it again, waving the stick at it. Every time I tried to scare it off it ended up moving closer towards the house until eventually I had it cornered.

I was trying to scare it away and leaving an obvious escape route but the rabbit was just huddling in the corner and making the screaming noise. Every now and then it would start to run away from me and end up kind of running on the spot as it was running face first into the wall of the house. I was banging my stick on the decking now and was aware that I was making a lot of noise, especially considering how late it was.

Eventually I scared the rabbit off and it ran between my legs and off into the night.

I went back inside the house and we settled down to do whatever it was that we were doing, and suddenly I heard a repeated banging sound. Yu Lee asked what the noise was and I realised it was the rabbit.

I don't know why but the idea of the rabbit banging on the walls of my house filled me with dread. I knew I had to go outside and get rid of it somehow, and I was disgusted at the weird, diseased rabbit that kept on roaring at me in the garden. Even writing this now is sending shivers down my spine.

The feelings overwhelmed me and I woke up with my heart racing.