Posts in category "Daily Life"

One-Year Mark

I think I’m com­ing up to my one-year dry spell mark, but to be hon­est, I’m not sure. I used to tease Trolley about his dry spells, but now, well, yeah…heh.

I’m aim­ing for four. We were watch­ing a dat­ing show on the Life Network once, and they were try­ing to set up this guy who had a full out four-year dry spell. On his actu­al date, he could­n’t stop talk­ing about how his fam­i­ly had an inter­ven­tion con­cern­ing the amount of time he spent on the inter­net. He kept going on and on about how his par­ents want­ed less than two hours a day but he was adamant on keep­ing at least four. My the­o­ry is that any­thing past three years does dam­age to the brain. I want to be able to doc­u­ment every dis­in­te­grat­ing part of my intel­lect Charlie Gordon style. I’m dying to find out if it’ll be a grad­ual process, or I’ll just sud­den­ly wake up one day with­out my san­i­ty.

I got the idea from Dave, a guy on the floor in res in first year. He was in the reserves, so he always told us these crazy sto­ries about when he was serv­ing. One time he had to stay awake for three days, doing noth­ing but eat­ing and defending/digging a trench. After the 30th hour he start­ed start­ed hal­lu­ci­nat­ing. After that, Pita and I made a pact to pull a simul­ta­ne­ous three-nighter, just to see if we’d start to go insane, but I keeled over in my room at about the 23rd hour. I had nev­er pulled an all-nighter before then.

This time though, I’ve had a bit of prac­tice. Not three years prac­tice, but prac­tice. I want to go for as long as pos­si­ble, sort of like serv­er uptime.

Soul Calibur 2

I was on gam­ing hia­tus for a few months (my longest yet), but now I’m back into the old swing of things with Soul Calibur 2. I did­n’t play much of it before because I did­n’t know any­one else who played it, but Aaron and Jessie have been addict­ed since the begin­ning of the month. Now I actu­al­ly feel like I can invest some time into train­ing a char­ac­ter and learn­ing their fight­ing dynam­ics. The game is so deep and involved that I can prac­tice for weeks and weeks and still be con­sid­ered a begin­ner. I mean, Virtual Fighter 4 had a pret­ty involved sys­tem, but SC2 extends past the “basic” guard>attack>throw>guard with added sidestep>vertical attack>horizontal attack>sidestep, and mid-guard>high/mid attack and low-guard>low/high attack, not to men­tion the options that open up with soul charg­ing and unblock­ables.

The prob­lem is that SC2 has so many cool char­ac­ters that I want to use. There’s some­thing about using a char­ac­ter that match­es the per­son­al­i­ty. It’s like a pro­jec­tion of the self in a fan­ta­sy world. Whenever I do RPGs, I usu­al­ly cre­ate a char­ac­ter that’s like me (although with height mod­i­fi­er +6 when the option is there). That’s why I nev­er use the “evil” char­ac­ters in fight­ing games.

I start­ed SC2 with Kilik since he had the most rec­og­niz­able tra­di­tion­al Shaolin fight­ing style (my favourite), although Xianghua’s and Yunsung’s moves have fair­ly obvi­ous Chinese roots as well. Kilik end­ed up being too bor­ing for me (no per­son­al­i­ty, pre­dictable moves), so I switched to Yoshimitsu, cause he’s real­ly cool and sneaky, but his moves end­ed up being too awk­ward. I real­ize that this is how Yoshimitsu is sup­posed to be played (with off-tim­ing bal­ance), but the char­ac­ter did­n’t click for me.

Right now I’m using Raphael, who hap­pens to be the most inter­est­ing char­ac­ter move-wise, but also the biggest pan­sy out of all of them. He can go in and out of stances eas­i­ly, with sev­er­al attack­ing options in each stance, mak­ing him an offen­sive, but dif­fi­cult-to-mas­ter, char­ac­ter. He has amaz­ing­ly vari­able com­bos, and in between hits, his foil guard-impacts, just like a fencer. He’s unlike any oth­er char­ac­ter in the game, and I have to applaud Namco for com­ing up with the idea and mak­ing him so real­is­tic.

My ner­dy­ness is com­ing back. The same ner­dy­ness that used to say, “Why make out with you when I could be play­ing a game?”.

On a side note, I’m also back into big break­fasts with bacon, sausages, and milk tea on the week­ends. My arter­ies hate them, but I for­give them and love them all the same.

Heavy

I woke up this morn­ing, and the sun was hid­den behind the dis­mal morn­ing sky, like a post-apoc­a­lyp­tic calm in the atmos­phere. It all felt numb, and I put on a bit­ter­sweet mix, hop­ing to awak­en my tor­pid sens­es. Every song hit me for a few bars, then fad­ed into the back­ground.

Heavy thoughts on a heavy morn­ing. Heavy music for heavy rain.

Possibly His Only Chance

A few days ago, I dropped off some pants to get hemmed. They weren’t ready when I went to pick them up, and this turned out to be a major incon­ve­nience; there were some things I had to do at the mall and I want­ed to get them all done at once. The tai­lor told me when they would sup­pos­ed­ly be ready and I made my plans around that.

When I made the extra trip to pick up my pants, there were two Thai women, lean­ing over the counter, flirt­ing with him. Being a Thai man, he flirt­ed back. The women stood to the side when I approached the counter, and kept mak­ing com­ments and then ask­ing me in return, “You’re look­ing good these days. He looks good, does­n’t he? And you have a good busi­ness going. It’s a good busi­ness, isn’t it?”. I was about to say some­thing regard­ing the tar­di­ness of the ser­vice, since I was thor­ough­ly irate about the extra trip, but decid­ed against it. Here he was, being hit on by two women. Who knows when he’d have the oppor­tu­ni­ty again.

Bon Echo '04

Went camp­ing again, most like­ly the last time for the year. I’ve dis­cov­ered that I’m too much of a city slick­er to keep up with the oth­ers; I miss show­er­ing too much. The camp­ground was nice, but the paved roads and wash­ing machines sort of took away from the entire out­doors expe­ri­ence. Of course, we also had com­fort sta­tions, lighters, pre-chopped fire­wood, and fresh water taps, so it’s not like we were hard­core camp­ing any­way. It’s good to be able to get away every once in a while, to places with no com­put­ers or cell phone ser­vice, but once or twice a year is enough for me.

Bon Echo '04 Day woods

Bon Echo '04 Night woods

The woods were great. Trees stood taller than any I’ve ever seen, and the made the sur­round­ing areas thick with veg­e­ta­tion. The entire camp­ground was gigan­tic, with mul­ti­ple beach­es, qui­et areas, rock climb­ing, and cliff div­ing.

Bon Echo '04 Aaron as trucker

And Aaron pre­tend­ed to be a truck­er. The sto­ry behind the hat: Trolley got a free Hurley hat with a pur­chase he made. Trolley hates truck­er hats though cause he can’t pull them off, and was going to sell it on eBay. Aaron saw it one day when he was over, and tried it on (cause he always tries on the most ridicu­lous things as a joke). Somehow it works for him, although the hat must be worn high on the head and slight­ly tilt­ed to the right.