Tag: big cheese

My Disappearance – Navalny –  Big Cheese – Cairo – South Kensington Dream – 28-03-2026

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is this morning’s dream again with little or no obvious connection to real life here yesterday which we spent wallpapering.

The dream opens in England in and around London. Some kind of missive has gone out, been circulated, concerning my whereabouts. I have gone missing, disappeared and cannot be contacted. Nobody seems to know where I am nor how to get in touch. Tim, Tom and Susan are involved in the search all of whom are “important”. Tim and Sue have made inquiries concerning me but are unsatisfied with the answers. “He just disappeared” does not explain. Other people from the academic clan are involved in the investigation and some of them were known to me. Those involved are mostly of a similar age to me, like Paula, my peer group. Though there are others. The inquiry is largely London based. Although not huge there are questions to be answered that just won’t go away. There is a pendant question of “where did Alan disappear to and why?” There is very mild press and media interest brewing. They, the inquirers, don’t like loose ends. There is a time pressure to solve.

The scene changes and I am in a brightly lit wood / forest with Alexeï Navalny. It is a crisp winter morning and the cold makes dragon’s breath of our breathing. We are sat at a small very basic table on two old-school school chairs. On the table is an open bottle of vodka and two small glass tumblers each of which is partially filled. There is a small plate of gherkins and a large cheese in a round wood circular box like a Camembert. Navalny lifts the lid off the box and places the wax paper wrapped cheese onto a wooden cutting board. He gets a hunting knife out of an ankle scabbard and proceeds to cut the cheese into wedges. He pauses and we take a sip of our vodkas. He is discussing how cheeses can cause problems for other people. All his problems have come from upsetting big cheeses. When you think about it, it is nearly always people who are cheeses that cause problems for others. The reason we are in the wilderness, in exile, is cheese. Navalny reaches down into his knapsack and pulls out a rough-hewn rye bread. He says that he likes vodka, cheese and bread.

The scene changes and I pull up in my car into a very smart posh area of Cairo. The cars in the car park are all expensive and I am driving a black one. I get out and know that this is the posh, upmarket financial centre of Cairo. As yet it is not busy. I go into an upmarket “private” bank usually for high net worth individuals. It is well swish. I go to reception and am ushered off into a side room where I have a meeting with an expensively dressed woman who is wearing a hijab of fine expensive material. She is very classy. She has attached between her subtle noise piercing and ear a fine golden chain. She speaks very good accent free English. She wants to know why I want to open a bank account with them in Cairo. I say that my other bank and utilities have given my information out to others without asking my permission. They have done so at the request of others without checking with me first. This includes my bank in Paris. I am looking for a more personal and reliable service, based on trust. We shift into speaking French. She guides me though the application form which she fills in with a beautiful fountain pen. She says that the bank is very pleased to have me as a customer and that I will always be welcome in Cairo. Outside in the main marble hall of the bank customers are coming in.

The scene changes and I am in a kitchen of a British house. It is my parents’ house only it looks nothing like . The place is a bit of a mess, a shit tip. On the counter top is a Gaggia style coffee espresso machine. I make myself a coffee and one for the wife. She is with me but  I cannot see her. We drink the coffee.

The scene now changes to South Kensington. In a kind of arcade is a coffee shop come café. It is very urban, chic and trendy. Sat around the table are those ~ a decade younger than me. They are gossiping about me. There are Jason Laura and Camilla. They too have been wondering about my disappearance. There has been a lot of gossip and tittle tattle. It is a hot topic.

I walk in with the wife and sit down at the far end of a long table from them They looked surprised. I explain that they have been making a huge to-do about not a lot. I have not disappeared they have just not been aware of where I have been. For instance, we have not long come from South Wales where we have been drinking coffee at my parents’ house. I say that they have turned the whole thing into a massive spy-whodunnit-drama. They are embarrassed. It is well out of proportion.

The dream ends.

South Korea – Quantum Perimeter – Dream 13-03-2026

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Here is this morning’s dream the subject matter of which is out of the blue.

The dream opens on a bright sunny morning in a campus like estate with mid-rise modern buildings. It is “Singapore” clean and tidy. Many young people are milling around. They are smartly dressed and of mostly of East Asian appearance. The place is alive and buzzing. There is a sense of hurry and of purpose. From the signage and the writing thereupon I can tell that we are in South Korea at a hybrid university – business – technology campus of which Samsung is a major part. The logo is present but not dominant. The young people are well dressed and there is a sense of going to work. I have been invited there.

I notice that there is a lack of coffee shops and other outlets at ground level in the architect designed garden spaces. In the distance I can see a small kiosk come shop attached to the corner of one of the low rise buildings. I make my way there. For some reason I want to buy some cigarettes {I have not smoked in quite a while}. Looking through the window I cannot at first see any Marlboro Gold. I go inside the shop and ask if they have any Marlboro Gold. The man serving is an Asian man of a similar age to me. He is balding and has slightly unruly hair. He says in accent less {to me} English that he thinks he has some somewhere. I check my wallet and only have a limited amount of local currency. He finds some Marlboro Gold and brings them over to the counter. He gets the card payment machine and I make a payment using my dark blue French bank card. He then hands me the change, which is in the form of five gold coins, two of these are about four centimetres in diameter and three of these are about six centimetres. They fall on the counter in the form of the Olympic rings logo. The hue of the golden coins is slightly reddish like Welsh gold. This he says is the change and he hands me a packet of Marlboro Gold which contains fifty cigarettes. He says that these are all he has left, packets of fifty, and that they are especially for me. The coins morph into chocolate biscuits enclosed in a golden foil wrapper. I am able to eat the gold / golden covered biscuits if I want. I note again that there are five of them. I take out a velvet old school drawstring pouch-purse and pop the coins in. I pull the drawstring to and slip the bag in my pocket. I pick up the cigarettes and leave. There is a tremendous sense of confraternity with the man in the shop. We have known each other and do recognise each other. We bid farewell.

I am now upstairs at some trade delegation put on by the Korean government – university – incubator committee. It is top-notch with servers in traditional Korean costume. The buffet to one side is gourmet and presented with a marked attention to detail. There are a lot of “suits” there and the organisers are encouraging networking and deal making. I start having a conversation with a local big cheese and his wife. I am commenting that I find the spoken Korean language quite easy on the ear. It has a nice sound to it. In the dream I realise that I am actually talking Korean which the woman in particular finds very funny. She hides her mouth with her hand to chuckle. We return to English speaking. She wants to know if my wife is OK with the idea of moving to South Korea. I say that we have not discussed it yet but that the Korean woman can meet with her if she would like. There is a sense that they work to ensure the whole family is on board.

The scene changes and I am walking along a corridor in a low rise research institute. It has ceiling to floor glass windows and looks out onto the campus. The corridor leads to a  café come hang-out space. I am walking and talking with a man in a white coat who is some kind of prof / scientist. We are in the “Quantum Perimeter Institute” which is a specially funded new initiative here in South Korea. I know that in the basement there are a number of very high specification laser laboratories. To the side of the building is a purpose built refrigeration / cryogenic plant. It is high specification and can handle huge loads. We are talking about a theoretician, a recently recruited quantum specialist. The professor is suggesting that I work with him. I can add the experimental know how to his ideas.

In the dream I know that I am at the Quantum Perimeter Institute because of my left field and unorthodox thinking about some of the esoteric implications adjunct to quantum science.

We continue to walk down the corridor towards the smell of coffee.

The dream ends.

“Post Mortem” Dream and Going Through the Motions – 25-02-2026

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This morning I had a dreaming segment in which a now emeritus British academic came to inquire of me and my ideas concerning some cobbled together science project or other. She is/was a big cheese in UK science and is the sort of person who would get an obituary written. She asked multiple probing questions but avoided the subject as to why I decided to jack it all in way back.  She was trying to ascertain if I had a scientific mind and was sane. The “interview” took place both at current time and twenty five years ago. She also interviewed my ex-wife in the earlier time frame. From the dream it was clear that our lives {ex-wife} were already divergent back then. The big cheese seemed to find that I was not actually insane and that my scientific thinking was OK. She was going to report back to some committee or other. Some review some post mortem as to what happened way back then.

Commentary

It is very typical in both scientific and political arenas to hold a “placatory review” in which an inquiry is launched and a report made, a white paper written. The aim of these charades is to calm things down and appease by giving the impression of actually doing something. Rarely does anything ever happen after these. The recommendations are noted and consigned to some cobweb filled archive waiting for for Lara Croft to find them several centuries hence. It is extremely rare for any such inquiry to err from the status quo. But it gives the impression of listening, caring and taking action. In fact these are just going through the motions, there is no intention or appetite to change anything.

The dream points at the fact that I have made several decisions which were largely unanticipated by others and about which sense making has been difficult for them. Most of these were handled very poorly because of a lack of interpersonal skills held by others. They were very “Basil Fawlty”.  

“Don’t mention the war!!”

There is no point in holding a post mortem if there is no intention to do anything nor learn from events. It just gives a vague warm feeling of responding albeit long after the horse has bolted. It is by way of post hoc stable door closing. There is an illusion of doing something.

Two Mistakes -Academic Conference – Yet More Car Crashes – Dream – 10-02-2026

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Here is last night’s dream. If follows on from the three “real” world car crashes we have had outside our house and into our drive. Two of which were quite spectacular.

The dream opens in some kind of conference centre on an underground floor leading to modern lecture theatres. It is in the UK query London. People are milling about. There are reception desks with badges on lanyards and others with promotional literature. There are a couple of stand up banners. People are gathering, relatively smartly dressed for an “important” conference or meeting. They are mostly younger than me some around two decades so, the next generation. The feel is modern. I am there but not there. I am observing but not fully present. In the dream I think it will be interesting to see how things are done these days.

We all go in and I take a seat a few rows back from the front. The first speaker, a woman, starts a scientific talk in which there is a lot of show or glitz and little content. There is a glaring mistake early on because she has failed to research properly. A beginner would know this to be wrong. At the end to my surprise the applause is enthusiastic and congratulatory. I am wondering why, there was no substance. The second speaker is a male, suited. He is introduced as being a big cheese. His talk is also full of pizzazz but I struggle to find any information, genuine novelty or substance therein. He asserts on a number of things which I know to be very wrong and entirely inaccurate, a schoolboy error perhaps propagated from a bad source. Again to my surprise there is enthusiastic applause. I think to myself that standards must have dropped a great deal.

There is a coffee break and I am met by some younger people and organisers. They ask me what I think. I say that the standards have changed and that you cannot talk about these things without mentioning activation energies. I say that I am surprised. It is all showy and kind of ends there. I say there have been two very obvious mistakes, glaring even.

We go back in and another speaker starts and his slide pack does indeed have a graph of activation energy but it is so utterly complex as to be impenetrable. I am pretty sure that he does not know what he is trying to convey, what he is talking about and is simply trying to appear clever.

Later I return to my apartment. People from the conference and the organisers are in the flat below which is much smaller than mine. They are having drinks, a kind of post conference party. I tidy my flat up a bit and find some bottles of aged single malt Scotch whisky. I go down stairs and say to them if they want to spread out a bit they can use my flat for the gathering, there are nibbles and high quality vintage Scotch.

They start to file upstairs. I am looking out of the kitchen window onto the parking area below. Up pull two very large truck rescue vehicles one red, one blue. They are each towing a large wheel base mini-bus. These have been involved in serious accidents and are badly crashed up. They relate to the conference. I know that they represent group consciousness, group awarenesses. The drivers unhitch the crashed minibuses and come up the steps to my door. They want to hand over paperwork for the crashed minibuses. I say that they are not my minibuses, they do not belong to me. The drivers say that they know that. But that he have been advised to leave the buses here overnight. I can report this to the police in the morning and have them towed. I say that I do not want them there. They insist and hand over the paperwork. In the dream I think, “oh no not yet more car crashes!”

I awake the dream ends.

  • Cars and vehicles are the dreaming symbol for state of awareness. These are not mine.

Wet Memory – Intrinsic and Extrinsic Entropy Dream – 30-01-2026

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Here is last night’s dream which is out of the blue and does not relate to the day to day of fence repair after another visit by the wild boars. Where this came from I have no clue.

I am walking through central London, Mayfair Piccadilly. It is a bright sunny day. I notice people converging on an ornate building in light coloured near white stone. It is a hybrid of Burlington House the old Royal Society of Chemistry where I spent many enjoyable hours in the library and of The Royal Society. People are gathering for some kind of scientific meeting. There is a mixture of academics and industry figures. I am not invited to this meeting. Through the doors and in the atrium I can see a reception desk which is being staffed by some women whom I used to know, a generation younger than me.

On a whim I walk in to say hi. They greet me and I ask if there is any chance of a cup of coffee. They get me one and warn me that it is not all that. I see that the conference is on “New Frontiers in Memory”. It has the theme of molecular architectures and memory and is of a think tank type of conjecture meeting. Rob walks in with one of the invited speakers who is a yank around 40. He is some kind of big cheese at the conference. Rob and I recognise each other after all these years. He introduces me to the speaker who is going to talk on protein molecular architectures and memory storage in the brain. He tells me that memory is all about entropy. You have to work against entropy to remember.

Rob invites me upstairs to look around. There are academic posters and a coffee service area. We queue and get a coffee and then stand at a pub style chest height table. In my mind’s eye I can see the way the cheese tries to address a memory array stored in a synthetic gel matrix. It is his way of modelling a wet memory, a mimic of biological memory which he seeks to incorporate into the next generation computers. I say to him that the encoding is of two types and that there are intrinsic and extrinsic entropies. The intrinsic entropy relates to where an individual amino acid is found along a protein chain and the pattern of its neighbour molecules. The extrinsic entropy is related to its local environment, degrees of folding and how space filling it is, how many gaps and voids are incorporated in the macroscopic protein structure. He says that he not previously thought about the molecular location entropy within a given protein strand. It might answer one of the questions he has. I can see in my mind’s eye an address matrix or tensor in mathematical form which defines coordinates for a given amino acid in a 3d protein amongst a wider gel matrix. The intrinsic lack of entropy is how a memory is stored. Memory works my comparing entropy. Anything not expected entropically is a memory. Low entropy is memory.

I say that the coffee is poor and that I hope they enjoy the meeting. I am off in search of a Starbucks, Costa or Caffè Nero.

The dream ends and I think WTF was that…

Mainstream Thinking – They

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Many find some comfort if their thinking and opinion is shared with others. What the peer group believes and what “they” say can have a very strong influence on individuals. If someone is in a position of authority or power others take on board whatever it is they say no matter how well considered that might be. These days being adamant can be mistaken for being accurate. There are many who are dogmatically insistent. People can gob-off without thinking about consequences.

If you are a big cheese or have power by association you are given air time and taken more seriously. Your words may become gospel.

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It can be important to some to be seen as “right” and to “win” an apparent argument. They can get quite heated.

I have less of a need to agree and comply with mainstream thinking. Technically as a quasi-hermit I do not have a peer group. I do not have to worry about getting cancelled nor about career progression. I have often considered the so called wisdom of the omniscient “they” as flawed.

There is an experiment currently underway in the USA on the propagation of adamant opinion. It will confer quantifiable outcomes.

In principle free speech is a freedom of the democratic “west”. In practice social factors mean that this is not the case. You can lose your job for saying nigger or commenting on the right for Palestinians not to be starved and slaughtered. You can be arrested for calling out murderous bullies. People in frocks and with penises are no longer allowed into ladies toilets. There are many taboos which may not be strictly against the letter of the law, others have been legislated against. Freedom is curtailed. We cannot have anarchy…old chap…

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Peer pressure, the whims of the herd and hive, forbid certain ways of being, of thinking and certain elements of speech. I am not surprised if I am avantgarde and not immersed fully in the norms. I have always had an entrepreneurial orientation. I do things people have not done before. I get balls rolling and break new ground. Whoopee…That is past history and probably over for this lifetime.

You never know who is reading what you publish on this internet thingy. There is always a mild risk of things getting propagated, of people cutting and pasting, using things well out of context. The amount of cut and paste text on things alleging to be spiritual is large. This is a non sequitur. If someone is trying to promote a “spiritual” way of living they probably did not ought to nick stuff, rob it. But hey it is on the internet so it is free, fair game.

I personally am now finding the suggestions of algorithms on some internet platforms very boring and difficult to get past. The use of search engines gets a bigger and bigger waste of time day by day.

I do not type “please show me some paid for advertising or promotion”.

We are, because of these omniscient algorithms, presented with an ever shrinking pool of information and knowledge, suitable for the statistically significant click-sumption as measured by the lowest common denominator of the average “they”. It is yawn-some and sucks the will to live out of life. Before long we will be cloned by Facebook and X into a mind-numbing blob. A blob which does not think nor offend, which lacks any originality. A blob which is adamant of opinion and that arrived at by algorithmic consensus.

The wisdom of they will be monosyllabic and conveyed solely by emoji…

Mainstream thinking will be blob. The future is blob. Long live blob.

English Village Parish Meeting Dream 22-08-2025

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Here is this morning’s dream. It is out of context. We did however watch “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder” the other day and I once helped a NIMBY protest against an incinerator build for a Buckinghamshire village.

The dream starts on a small, grassed square outside a red brick village church / parish hall. Despite being made of very dark red brick and flint the building is centuries old. A special parish / village meeting has been called. It is very important for the village as there is some unknown sense of danger which needs discussed and a plan needs to be made. Under the thatched roof of the “bus stop” around a pub table are sat a couple of women my age. One of who is of Indian origin. They are discussing a recipe in poor French, Franglais. It is all village fete, quintessential even. I am sat on one of the park benches with the wife. Everyone is invited especially those who do not attend church. The vicar has made the church available and the town council committee has sent out invites.

Inside the church the angling club is holding a meeting. We are relatively new to the village, the first thing of interest / excitement to happen there in a very long time. It being a small village the word has gotten about. There is some expectation of me. That in some way I will play a role perhaps an important role. I have been pressed to come by some of the village “elders”. As the village gathers the hubbub increases. The young farmers from outside the village bounds are chatting excitedly. They are opposite us sat on a low wall. They have a slight schism with the influx of townies. The head of the angling society opens a window on the side of the church and tells everyone to be quiet. They have important business.  The middle finger of my right hand extends downwards in a gesture. The farmers note this. The wife is mortified but my gesture has gone down well.

One of the famers, whose family have lived in the village long, says to me, eye to eye, that the head of the angling society is a “right wanker” in a slight west country accent. The famers start calling out “come on you toss pot we have got things to do, hurry up so that we can get started.” This has broken the ice in the assembling villagers. The man closes the window. We can hear chat inside and know that the meeting has been called to a close. The head of the society was once a big cheese in the village but his stock has fallen of late. Before the doors to the church are opened everyone starts to make their way into the hall.

The dream ends.

Who Do You Take Seriously?

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I’ll start this off with two omissions.

Of late we have heard a lot of the orange-drone-voice-man and his quest for Swedish Krona. The body language of his interaction with Vlad the Impaler has been dissected, no doubt for a fee, in various outlets. Not one of them has thought to mention that Putin is a dan grade judoka. Probably none of these body-language experts have been on the mat. If like Putin you are a lifelong judoka you cannot but help assessing where the centre of gravity of people is. This includes during handshakes. Instinctively one adjusts position and weight to see how another responds. A player of with-caddy-cart 18 hole golf has a different mentality to a judoka. Always there is an inkling of what throw one might attempt. A golfer might not anticipate this. Putin might one day step in for an Ipponseionage and bam…Putin will always be a judoka to the core.

Unless I am mistaken the history of the tribes of Israel as per the old-testament speaks of the wrath and retribution of God. There is Divine intervention on a biblical scale. Right now Israel is going biblical on Gaza. Maybe they have checked this out with God and he is on board, maybe not. If he is unhappy with this bellicose vengeance he might have to intervene. I have not heard this aspect discussed. But large scale divine intervention is a part of their religious hagiography. Maybe God is no longer as important as Netanyahu.

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As an old fart in rural Brittany there is no reason why anyone might take me seriously, even were my observations apt and applicable. This is because I am not famous nor am I a big cheese. I do not have thousands of followers on this internet thingy. If you are a nobody, nobody takes you seriously. You have to have a gang, a club, a peer group or be properly institutionalised. It is possible that people who have been in the same institution for several decades might imagine me the lunatic!! Life has a few quirks.

I don’t think that golfer boy is noting a shift in the way the world is. He is a bit too stuck in the past. He does not have a wide encompassing view of humanity as a whole.

As a rule of thumb people give the most credence to people who are relatively close to them physically, their colleagues, who think in a similar manner. They like what they hear back so they take it seriously. Anyone outside can be seen as misguided, an enemy even. Their views and opinions are not taken seriously, they are discounted. Even people who know intellectually about this prejudice cannot resist it. It is a fundamental flaw of group-think and group-mind. Peer “pressure” is way more powerful than we care to acknowledge. The desire to not rock the boat and to comply is endemic.

“Which idiot would dare to put their head above the parapet?”

If anyone did, they would only be taken seriously posthumously and in retrospect. Genius is most often ascribed posthumously and with hindsight. Rarely is it proclaimed in vivo. Everyone knows this and yet repeats history by non-acceptance and in some cases derision.

Things must not be too different in order to be taken seriously!

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The obvious question here is why do unicorns always point to the right?

Some people do not like those who have a different perspective from them, they resist hearing it and in any way assimilating. They just can’t or won’t take divergent views seriously.

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Do people have to see the world in a similar way to you in order for you to take them seriously?

Must everyone think just like you?

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