Entertainment Value

Recent Purchases

When I first got back on Steam, I bought the Freedom Force double pack for two bucks, as you know. Ever since then, Steam has been gradually swallowing my lunch money, which is fine because it’s just my lunch money and I don’t actually eat lunch very often.

Since those early days, I’ve bought Far Cry 2, which I’m sure is not a bad game, but I’m really not in the mood for a shooter now. I played about an hour of it, though this is one I swear I’ll be back on in due course.

I’ve bought the Total War pack. I’ve always been interested in the series, but this is one where I wonder if I’ll ever get to. I know that strategy games are a component of my diet, but I wonder if this is the series for me.

I bought Serious Sam HD, because I thought I should have something to exercise my trigger finger with. In what brief time I could afford it, I realised very quickly that it’s actually not an easy game. (Silly me.)

I bought Trine. This has actually so far been my favourite purchase. I’d recommend it to anyone.

Hammerfight. Hmm, I like interesting indie games, and this certainly fits the bill. The fighting feels awfully random to me. I’m sure I’m just not skilled enough and my laptop mouse is just too tiny, but there is definitely the element that I don’t really have very much control over the outcome of the battle, so this has been a little suspect for me. I don’t exactly regret it, and in fact I think I might end up liking it in the future when I take the time to explore it.

I bought the Ben There, Dan That! and Time Gentlemen, Please! pair because I like such games, I’ve just come off a good experience with Machinarium, and I wanted to support them, but I’ve placed them in reserve (I don’t imagine that they’re too long) and am currently enjoying Toki Tori and Bob Came In Pieces. I like the chicken game better than the spaceship one so far, but they’re both charming in their own ways.

And I’m supposed to get back to Mass Effect 2 someday.

Awful

The days continue to be awful, which is why my growing game library is a welcome sight. (It fits nicely into that hour or so that I reserve for such entertainment every day or two.) It’s not school work. It’s so many other things, in a fairly complex issue. Yesterday I spoke to someone and I used the word ‘cost’, and then I realised that I knew inside of me that the fact that I’d used such a word implied that there are things that are going to be irreversible. I’m not sure what they are, and there is a slight sense of dread that I will have to find out.

But otherwise, everything has been pretty much normal.

Editor

Lorin Stein has been named successor to Philip Gourevitch as editor of The Paris Review. [via The Paris Review]

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Beckett On A Budget

Note: This was supposed to go up on 26 February. I don’t know why it didn’t but here it is now. Since then, I’ve received a new copy of Essays, but it’s still slightly damaged, though I suppose it’s something I can live with, and I can’t bring myself to trouble them again. I’ve also received The City And The City.

Here is a randomly arranged list of books bought recently:

• Essays, by George Orwell

The book arrived on Wednesday. It’s the sumptuous Everyman’s edition. I ordered it from the Book Depository, but it arrived somewhat damaged, with a crumped and folded dust jacket. I contacted the representatives and they gave me a very prompt reply. And while I’m sure it wasn’t the simplest thing to arrange, they were certainly able to help. I’m definitely shopping there again.

• Endgame and Act Without Words, by Samuel Beckett

I bought this from the NUS Co-Op, which either sounds like special forces or a chicken habitat depending on how you read it. It was cheap because school prices can usually be a bit better if it’s being used as a textbook.

• More Pricks Than Kicks, by Samuel Beckett

Again I got this from the NUS Co-Op, at half off, in fact. They’re having some kind of clearance sale now. Who would’ve thought I’d be shopping there like it was Kinokuniya?

• Dream Of Fair To Middling Women, by Samuel Beckett

This was found among a mess of books in the MPH store at Raffles City. They’re undergoing renovations soon and have used it as an excuse to get rid of many old copies of books. Actually, now that I think of it, I believe renovations have already started. It’s not in the best condition, but it was cheap and I think minor things like these add character.

• The Tempest, by Billy McShakespeare

Pelican Shakespeare edition.

• Nazi Literature In The Americas, by Roberto Bolaño

I was using this to test if the Book Depository would work well for me, and it did!

• Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keyes

Replacement for my old copy, which I’m either giving off or have already given off. This book was part of a reading programme I had in secondary school. It was probably the only book I really enjoyed and it became one of my first true loves.

• The City And The City, by China Miéville

I haven’t read anything by him before. I thought I should try. It hasn’t arrived yet. Probably later today.

• Nocturnes, by Kazuo Ishiguro

Pre-ordered. It’s the tiny paperback edition, also known as the student-on-a-budget edition. It should be coming in under a month.

As you will have noticed, I have been completing the Beckett section of my library with a trio of cheap books. I wasn’t specifically looking for him. It just fell into place that way.

I’m also very happy with my experience with the Book Depository so far.

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Adventure Quota

Sometimes…

I’m a really boring person. It’s just my nature. I write; I read books; I play some games; I enjoy being an armchair football pundit; I don’t garden, cook, play sports (just running). But yesterday, I did something very adventurous. Well, adventurous for me anyway. There was a rush of blood and I just basically ran away as soon as I’d done it like a scared little boy. But at least nothing horrible happened. And it wasn’t illegal. Or even ethically wrong. Whatever you think it is.

I think I’ve used up my adventure quota for the year though. It seems that I’ll never be Indiana Jones. Or the Doctor. Or Philip Marlowe. Whatever the outcome of yesterday’s adventure, though, I’m sort of glad that I did it. And I have to thank a friend for being there, if only just so I could laugh at him…

However, the whole incident has left me a little light-headed. My heart is still skipping beats. So I think I won’t write too much right now.

In the meantime, A.S. Byatt talks about Alice. [via The Guardian]

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Non-Leap Year

The Saints Go…

Oh new month. How exciting. Flip your calendars.

Monthly Stocktaking

With a new month, of course, comes new goals and objectives and whatnot. February was a good month in terms of work. Sure, the trend is that I’m on a decline in terms of productivity, but that was something I’d expected anyway. I’m doing okay, though this potentially life-changing week will probably have something to say about it. We’ll know more in a week or so, but for now, I can only hope that I won’t react too badly to anything that occurs in the imminent future.

In other words, it’s probably not too wise to make too many plans for the month. The best laid plans and all that.

In the meantime, I do have some other plans, and some of those have to do with my job prospects, so I’m looking into that. I’m also still in the midst of shifting my room, so some things will no doubt be underway soon enough. I have to go to the dentist too.

Of course, school will take place as well, and many things will happen, and we will all grouse and grumble, but it will happen. I’m managing. Not particularly well or particularly poorly, but simply managing.

Awful Days

These days, everything seems to be going wrong. Misaligned. Mussed up in some way that you can’t quite put your finger to. Have you ever experienced that? I think everyone gets things like this every so often, though, not being everyone, I can’t actually be sure. Fairly annoying, nonetheless.

I know that there’s a proper reason for all of it, of course, but I can’t really figure out what it is. It is most frustrating because I don’t mean to alienate anyone, so I try very hard not to, but it doesn’t always work. Is something changing? Some life perspective, some outlook, some character trait, perhaps? I don’t know, but it’s not exactly the most pleasant experience. In the meantime, I’ve put my trust into the things I know best–foolishly or not–whether it be music, art, or humour. I’ll also do everything I can not to offend anyone while I slowly figure things out. I mean, I’ve had more than two decades of civilisation. That has to be the least I can do.

Bookstore

Oh wow. What a lovely place. [via The Book Bench]

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Old Is New Again

Room Transfer

I’ve been busy changing rooms. My dad has orchestrated this event and we began shifting some of the things around (desk, computers, and bed from my old room; cupboards, desk and more cupboards from the current one) during the weekend. It took a little bit of clever thinking too because it’s easy to overlook things when you’re planning these complicated manoeuvres.

The process is far from complete, but I can basically survive in this new room just fine right now, because all the important things are over. I’m still short of my wardrobe, where I hide so many things, my bookshelf, and a rack that I think I might not keep. There’s also my whiteboard, but I’m not too concerned about that. I also want to start hanging up a couple of decorations.

To say this is a new room for me is I suppose just a figure of speech, since it had been my bedroom for many, many years. Since I can remember, in fact. I only shifted out to the other room somewhere when I was maybe 16? I can’t remember.

In the meantime, I’ve still to grow used to my new room. It’s not just the feeling of being in somewhere slightly unfamiliar. There are small little practicalities too, like how I realise there’s no desk now at my bedside (it’s moved to the tail end of my bed) so I can’t check my clock in the middle of the night and have no convenient place to leave my glasses. But yes, there is the slight sense of alienation that isn’t tied to any practical explanation. I can’t help noticing, for example, that even the wall’s a different colour. I’m sure that will happen in a week or so, especially if I get more of my things over. For now, I think I’ll just continue feeling like I’m in a hotel room.

Jukebox

I’m currently listening to:

• Embryonic by The Flaming Lips
• The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars by David Bowie
• Roseland NYC Live by Portishead
• On Tour With Eric Clapton by Delaney & Bonnie
• Mingus Ah Um by Charles Mingus

A mix of the old and new and the not-so-old-not-so-new-and-just-something-I-didn’t-get-to-at-first. I can see Delaney & Bonnie getting replaced in the next couple of weeks. Though I might be wrong. I usually am.

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Quietly we watch the gloaming.

TV

I was watching a bit of the Channel 5 lawyer show, The Pupil. I found it fairly interesting. Most curiously, it reminded me of Channel 8 dramas. That is, it’s like a strange blend of the very well-established local Chinese drama form and the seemingly new and teeming local English drama. The script flowed well, for the most part. At least in my view. Of course, it gets away with it mostly because it’s a bunch of lawyers. Nothing wrong with that. I use that trick too. That said, sometimes someone pops in and says something completely unnatural, and it irks you a little bit.

Extremely dramatic though. Like The Practice or something. I’m sure all my lawyer friends will tell me that it’s nothing like that. The only thing that seems remotely realistic is the fact that there’s a lot of photocopying to be done. Of course, I’m just guessing. Maybe it really is all that exciting in real life. Then, damn, I should’ve been a lawyer.

Although, I think, I should say that the realism bit isn’t actually a problem for me. I’m just pointing it out. Almost no television (except documentaries, of course) would work without throwing realism out of the window. Even reality TV, as you will no doubt tell me.

I’ll keep my eye on this. I’ve been mildly impressed by the recent English shows in some respects. Fighting Spiders, I think, caught my attention for a while (though it was really long with plot threads that I didn’t really enjoy). Red Thread too (until I realised it was really a soap marketed as a gripping drama). The water polo one was completely not to my tastes. The Pupil seems okay, if there’s something about its stock characters that disturbs me.

Trine

Trine is fun. It somehow reminds me of LittleBigPlanet. Except it’s single-player. And you get to smack things. For a 5-dollar game, it’s certainly turning out to be quite excellent.

Tekkonkinkreet

I hope to get to watch Tekkonkinkreet. I’m looking for it. In the meantime, can anyone tell me if it’s any good?

Three Percent

A review of the latest Kenzaburo Oe book to be translated by Grove Press, The Changeling. [via Three Percent]

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Assortment of things.

Sorry, Shakespeare

I was going to watch The Tempest. It’s in April. I was saving up for it. I even had a small fund established and had pretty much saved the money I needed for a good ticket. I think I’ll perish the thought, though. Firstly because almost no one around me will watch Shakespeare. Also, it does have a prohibitive price considering the fact that most of my friends are poor students. Finally, it is a little strange to ask random people out for Shakespeare.

I suppose the money can be put to good use in other places. For instance, I also have an Audubon fund running; I hope to obtain Birds Of America this year. And there are camera plans too, of course.

Things We Like

I finished my first run of Mass Effect 2 yesterday. Lovely stuff. Certainly like it better than the first installment, but while the finale sets you up for the third very successfully, it also feels a little unsatisfying in terms of the stand-alone game.

I’m moving onto Empire: Total War, but I’ve also tried my hand at some Trine, and I really enjoyed my time with it. That is, the first twenty minutes or so. I really dig the presentation, although for some curious reason my movie files don’t manage to complete. They just stop halfway as if they’d finished. No biggie, but still a small irritation.

Books

I ordered five books online. A stand-alone copy of The Tempest, the Everyman’s edition of Orwell’s Essays, a new copy of Flowers For Algernon, a China Mieville’s The City and The City, and the forthcoming paperback edition of Ishiguro’s Nocturnes (preordered, that is). I suppose that will be all for my book expenditure for a while.

Work

Not exactly fantastic, but at least I’ve got stuff done here and there. Having been writing so much, I’d forgotten just how short a thousand words actually is, so when I tried to draft one of my essays yesterday, I had to sort of crimp it down to make it fit. It’s also been a long time since I did any such writing, so I’m sure that first draft is fraught with awkward expressions and ugly sentences.

But I have two others to deal with and a project, and a test. Or two. So that’ll have to wait.

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Catching Up

As you will know, the past few days have been a little rough. It’s also been far busier than I anticipated. This implies that I’ve had less time than I would’ve thought I’d have. It also means that I’ve kind of had to readjust, to get back into some kind of working rhythm.

Well, that’s really the wrong tense. Because I’ve yet to do it. So, I have to get back into some kind of rhythm.

That starts today, I think. I hope. I have my fingers crossed very tightly. It’s not easy simply because there’s so much to do, and the sheer ahem variety just makes you lose your balance. I don’t know where to start, and I don’t know what I’ll have a realistic chance of completing.

I suppose I shouldn’t find it curious how completely unrelated things can get in the way of one another, but I do.

I’ll do what I can. Today I hope to sort out some administrative things, start work (planning, at least) on two essays, and invent some kind of contingency plan. The contingency plan is most worrying for me, mostly because it means that I’m running on faith and it could very well spell disaster. It’s for my project. Apparently, our current solution may not step up to the mark. I need a new one, and I need it fast. The fact that the preceding sentence is an action movie staple will hopefully mean that this will have an action movie happy ending.

Oh yes, I also need to write. But the uh volume flow rate will probably have to go down a bit in these more trying times. This is exactly what I’m always afraid of. Life has a habit of getting in the way. And some people say that as long as you’re disciplined enough, you will always make time for writing. While I think that’s true in a way, it also seems to suggest that you write in the same way no matter the circumstance, which can’t be true.

Of course, it’s not to say that I would’ve fared any better if things hadn’t turned out the way that they did, so let’s not worry about that and make the best of the remains of the… week.

(Ouch.)

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Goodbye, Old Friend

Over the Chinese New Year weekend, I bade goodbye to a friend, an old friend, a beautiful friend. It’s the reason things have been a bit out of order over here. It’s the reason this year has begun on a very strange note.

It’s been difficult, more so for some others than myself, surely, but difficult nonetheless.

I remember when the news hit on Saturday morning, and though we’d all in a way seen it coming, I can’t say that it wasn’t unexpected. I’d woken up that morning and I had done a whole bunch of things before my dad came by with his phone and asked if he was right about his interpretation of a message. He wasn’t, I told him, and just to be sure, he made a call to check; but by that time, it had all descended upon us like dust.

We did our best. In fact, I was fine until this afternoon. It was all extremely unreal, though. Friends, relatives, strangers, all under one banner. And I watched these half-familiar faces, faces from all those years ago. It humbles you to think that so much has happened to you in the time since then, and so much more must have happened to them all. And yet, in spite of this grand divergence, there they all were, there we all were, sitting together in a curious unity, talking about the things that didn’t really matter, and helping each other to move on. And he was there throughout it all, lying there, imbuing the occasion if not with blessings then simply with a purpose.

These are human things. You gather, you huddle, you hold each other because it’s the only thing you know how to do. This is how we live.

Today, I finally wept again. Before it, I made up my mind that I would do whatever I could not to, but of course it didn’t work. There were others who cried too, and some who didn’t, but in all of them you could see an exceptional and yet not uncommon courage. These things overtake us. They challenge us and humble us. They remind us of the little we can do. Yet, these people, they don’t give in. They hang in there. They remember and mourn, but refuse to be broken. It was a message that this shared friend of ours knew well. He didn’t always have the words for it, but if you had just met him, you’d know. You’d know.

Of course he wouldn’t want us to cry, but in a way, I was glad that I did, because through the tears, I saw his smile again.

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Busy Weekend

And yet it didn’t feel as if I did too much.

I wrote. I wrote a lot. Or at, I wrote a lot more than I thought I would.

I did tutorials. They were not friendly. I spent a bit of time worrying about the upcoming weeks. I’ve got essays, a project, and two or three tests. (Three, I should think. Maybe four. Maybe… Oh never mind.)

I read. Readings. Not for leisure.

I did research. This was for a variety of things, including said project and also for my writing.

I drafted emails. That took a long time. And I had to ask for some assistance. (Thank you!) These included an email to follow up on my submission, and one for the project. I have to draft two others but those are not quite so urgent and I have no idea what to reply.

I bought a game. I bought Far Cry 2 from Steam because it was on offer and I was surprised to find that I could run it on my laptop. That said, I’m still on Mass Effect 2 and whatever time I can afford it is well worth it. Unless it’s planet scanning. I think I scan too much.

Ahead of me, the week looks busy too. I’ve got classes, of course, tutorials to attend (odd week!), and a project to discuss. Lab too. I’m supposed to have my reunion dinner before the New Year, so that’ll be on the cards too. I think I’m having dinner with some friends just before that. And that might involved doing the craziest thing I’ve ever done in a long time. I hope I survive that.

Meanwhile, I know I have to keep up with the writing, and I’ll have to start work on those essays and papers soon. And then there’ll be the lab report. And I’ll also have to make sure that the past few weeks of lessons haven’t been completely lost on me.

Brr. That’s a lot of things to do.