Where would I go?

If, for whatever reason, I were forced to leave America and live in another country that I had visited in the past, which one would I choose? That question was posed to me at a dinner party a while ago. At the time I threw out a quick answer but afterwards I thought about it some more and today I’m going to share six countries that came to mind as a possible new home. Certainly if I took the time to ponder the question longer I could come up with addition locales but these are the ones that came to mind first.


Spain
I think I’ve more extensively explored Spain than any other country I’ve visited. There are plenty of towns that I could see myself settling down in, such as San Sebastian, Segovia, and Granada. Long ago I could speak Spanish at a high school level and I’m quite confident that with a little time and effort I could recover those skills and move beyond into full fluency. With my Mediterranean skin color I also fit in, to the point where Spain has been the only country I’ve visited where locals have mistaken me for being one of them. Obviously my American accent gives me away once I start speaking but I think I could assimilate pretty well into Spanish society.

Japan
Living in Japan might be cool, but there’s the fact that I’d forever be gaijin. Foreigners can have a hard time getting work visas, they’ll never become citizens, and Japanese is a notoriously difficult language to master. I guess I’d have to make up my mind on whether the interesting parts of Japan would be worth the hassle that a gaijin like me would have to endure to live there.

Britain
This is sort of an obvious choice just because there would (theoretically) be no language barrier and the culture in Britain isn’t too far off that of America. The problem with Britain would be that I’ve only been to London, so I can’t say that I’ve seen much of the country and thus wouldn’t have an informed opinion about living anywhere outside of the capital.

Korea
Korea might offer a good compromise for living in Asia in that I’d get the experience of living in East Asia but without some of the trouble that would come from living in Japan. While I did like Japan more than Korea, I still thought Korea was a fascinating place and I think I could find a good place to lay down roots. The Korean people are also probably the friendliest I’ve met in the whole world, which is a great bonus. Yes, I’d have to learn Korean, but from my casual observations it doesn’t seem like it’s as hard to learn as Japanese.

Croatia
The Balkans region of Europe is an interesting place and my personal favorite of the nations there is Croatia. The capital city of Zagreb was enjoyable both times I visited and is the nation’s most advanced city, so I would find a place to live there. Croatia would also have the benefit of being a little cheaper than most other nations in this post.

France
Much like Croatia, I could live in France but it would be in a very specific location. There are lots of nice places in France, but for me I’d pick the Normandy region. Normandy is a quiet (and rainy) part of France that’s full of history but doesn’t attract the big crowds like you find in Paris or other parts of France. If I had my pick of towns I’d opt for Bayeux, a centrally located and very charming town that’s got most of the conveniences of a large city but without the traffic and other annoyances of big cities.

Where can I get one of these?

We’re still years away from getting mech suits like in the anime I used to watch, but each year we seem to get a little closer. The above video is a piece of promotional material that I discovered thanks to social media and it got me thinking again about how cool it would be to pilot some sort of robot suit. It also triggered the amateur engineer side of my brain about how to make the suit better. Being entirely human-powered, I suspect that it can’t lift heavy objects, so some sort of power system should be added. Maybe hydraulics. You could mount more mechanical parts to the suit’s back and that would give the added bonus of creating a counterweight that would help when lifting objects. I can’t tell if there are shock absorbers in the legs, but they should definitely be installed so that the suit can jump and land without hurting the pilot. Related to that, I don’t know if this thing can get back up on it’s own if it falls over and if the pilot is sufficiently protected from falls. Being as tall as it is, and with those large shoulders and arms, the suit looks top heavy. More weight needs to go to the middle and lower sections to balance that out.

But, yeah, concerns aside, where can I get one? For those interested, below is a more informative video on the same robot suit.

2017’s Posts: My Picks

I published 235 writing pieces in the year 2017. Naturally, some of them stand out from the others, and today I’m going to give several of my personal picks for posts that I think deserve to be highlighted, either for serious or silly reasons. Below are my selections, in no particular order, with a short description of each writing piece. Clicking the title of each post will take you to it.


Inauguration Day
A collection of my thoughts on the day Donald Trump became president. It’s interesting to read these and think about where we are now versus where we were about a year ago.

Replaying the Classics
Ok, so this isn’t an individual writing piece, but I’m going to highlight all of Replaying the Classics since it, along with a few others, was one of my flagship writing series for 2017. For those that don’t know, Replaying the Classics are my posts about slightly older games that I replayed.

Milo Yiannopoulos
I had heard of Milo Yiannopolous prior to 2017, but I didn’t really know much about him. After the Berkley riots I set out to investigate and find out for myself who he really was.

E3 2017 Conference Recaps (part 1 and part 2)
I got over the announcements from E3 2017 that stood out in my mind.

Wolfhounds
My grandfather doesn’t talk much about his time in the Korean War, but before leaving for Asia I was able to chat with him and learned some new details about his time in the Army.

Game Changers
Some of the games that changed the way I thought about gaming.

Call of Duty: WWII
My initial thoughts on Call of Duty: WWII after its initial reveal.

Why can’t we have both conversations?
We’re not doing ourselves any favors by pretending there’s no conversation to be had about these two issues.

Sargon of Akkad
Similar to my Milo writing piece, this post was about me learning more about a popular Youtube personality.

Ima Fire Tiger
2017 saw the birth of my latest alter-ego: Ima Fire Tiger. I only dedicated five posts to him this year, but all of them were fun to write.

Random Other Gaming Awards
After announcing my GOTY 2016 I wanted to also hand out a few other awards for memorable gaming experiences in 2016.

Destiny 2 Beta Recap
As a fan of Destiny, I didn’t skip the opportunity to try out Destiny 2’s beta and afterwards I wrote up my thoughts on it.

Regarding that Google memo
After James Damore’s memo on Google’s ideological echo chamber went viral, I decided to read it for myself rather than just believe the headlines.

Top 10 PS4/Xbox One games
Because it’s fun to make lists and I hadn’t gotten around to it, I created my own Top 10 list of PS4 and Xbox One games that I had played so far. For a quick description and explanation of why each game made the list, see Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Asia 2017
Stories from my trip to Japan and Korea.

Do you need to be good at video games to write or talk about them professionally?
My take on the ongoing debate regarding the relationship between a person’s skill in gaming and their ability to speak about it on a professional level.

2017: Political Writings

I never wanted this to be a political blog, and I still don’t want this to be a political blog, but one of the things that became clear to me in 2017 is that there’s no getting away from writing about politics. As much as I don’t like it, I’ve come to accept that I’m now about waist-deep in the pool and I can’t get out easily.

2017: The Tenacity

Without a doubt writing for this website in 2017 was harder to consistently produce than in 2016. Less free time, more job stress, an international trip, and a lot of other things going on in my life came together to pump the brakes on my writing career. In spite of all of that, I’m glad that I can look back at 2017 and say that I kept to my writing commitment, even if at many times of the year it felt like I was just treading water and not really getting anywhere. 2017 was a year of tenacity. Sometimes all a writer can do is just keep fighting in the stubborn belief that one day all the agonizing, typing, and editing will lead to vindication.

2017’s Final Word Count

With 2017 now in the books I want to spend the rest of this week looking back at the preceding year and then next week looking at the year ahead. Today I’m proud to announce the final word count on this website for 2017. The total number of words published here in 2017 was:

78,069

That’s only about half as many words published as last year, but completely within my expectations given the differences in the content being published in 2016 versus what was published in 2017. In 2016 I had a lot more posts with over a thousand words due to series like Late to the Party and the travelogue posts from Europe 2015, as well as a period of unemployment that gave me the time needed to generate longer writing pieces on a regular basis. 2017, by contrast, was marked by long stretches of being busy with life and a trip to Asia during which I didn’t publish often. Replaying the Classics did help bump up the number of longer posts in 2017, but I didn’t have the time to replay and write about as many games as I did when I was working through Late to the Party in 2016.

Regardless of the reason for the number, I believe in celebrating all victories, big and small, and on this website most of you know that I commonly do so with gifs. To commemorate 2017’s final word count, I present something that’s long overdue on this website: a Star Wars-themed gif.

Happy New Year 2018!

It’s not every year that New Year’s Day happens to fall on a Monday, but it feels really fitting whenever it does. Even though the first day of the week is technically Sunday, for me Monday always felt like the start of a new week and beginning a new year on a Monday means a perfect synch between the energy of the calendar year and the energy of the week. The old year and week are behind and brand new ones are now before us.

I don’t know what your thoughts are on the upcoming year, but even though I don’t know how 2018 is going to play out for our country and planet, for some reason I’ve got a hunch that 2018 could be a good one for me personally. What do you say we all commit to making 2018 a great year for us individually? Maybe that’s the key to making 2018 a great year for our nation and world.

Net Neutrality

Like many people, I’m concerned about the FCC’s recent repeal of Net Neutrality rules. That said, I do wonder if maybe people are going a bit overboard in their predictions of how dire our Internet situations are going to be. All the wailing and gnashing of teeth reminds me of what happened when Trump won the presidential election and people were acting like all of America had suddenly transformed into a version of early 1900s Alabama. Yes, bad things could happen from the repeal of Net Neutrality, but I don’t think it will be quite the apocalypse that people are predicting. Our online lives may become harder, but we’ll survive, and if things really do go down the drain maybe we can find a way to get Net Neutrality reinstated.

When you can put up your Christmas decorations

Ok, so this isn't a current event but I felt I needed to publish this sooner rather than later. I love Christmas, but I don’t like how each year it seems like Christmas-related decorating and commercialization are started earlier. If I were some sort of absolute monarch I’d decree that it was illegal to put up Christmas stuffs until 8:00am of the day after Thanksgiving. Christmas stuffs would have to come down by the end of the first full week of January (this rule would exist solely to stop people from being sneaky and being able to have Christmas decorations up prior to Thanksgiving by never taking them down during the prior year). Yes, Christmas is wonderful, but its “season” must have its proper place on the calendar, and that place is not prior to Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving 2017

Today is Thanksgiving here in the United States, and I thought I’d take a break from my random stories about Asia to do something fitting for a day about being thankful. What I’ve got for you today is a mini-sequel to my Pockets Full of Soup writing piece from earlier this year. If you haven’t read that post already I’d suggest not going any further with this writing piece until you’ve done so.

Ok, I’m going to assume that you’re now familiar with the Pockets Full of Soup post. My sequel today is a very brief tribute to another person I’m thankful for in my life. His name is Ed.

I think I first met Ed a few weeks into my Freshman Year of college but it wasn’t until my later college days when we became closer friends. During those days he and some of his friends would hold a weekly game night at his apartment and we bonded over things like gaming and hilarious internet videos. Ed loved to host people in his home. He was also a gifted teacher, passing on a lot of practical wisdom to me such as living frugally and prioritizing what’s really important in life. I can also thank him for nudging me towards my first journey to Europe and the many insights he gave that influenced the way I travel to this very day. Perhaps most importantly, however, Ed held me to account during a particularly egregious moral failing of mine. That was probably the single greatest act of friendship he ever gave me. A true friend doesn’t look the other way or sugarcoat the situation when you’ve messed up real bad.

Happy Thanksgiving to any and all who are reading this. I hope this is a blessed day for you, and I especially hope you’ve got people in your life that you’re thankful for too.

The same age my father was

Last week my friend Ben over at Free Refills published a writing piece about being the same age as his father was when he was born. This got me thinking about my own father’s age when I was born, and it turns out that I’m in the same position as Ben. Right now I am the same age my father was when I came into the world. At the age I am now my father laid eyes upon his third child. I can’t even begin to imagine what it felt like for him, seeing as how my life circumstances are so much different than his were at my age. He was married, on a career path, and already had two children prior to me. I, on the other hand, am single, don’t have a (paying) career, and am childless. Our respective situations at this age were very different, but even so I suspect that we had at least one thing in common. I think that both of us at this age were dreamers looking to make our mark on the world, however big or small that mark turned out to be.

Finding the format

My new website has been registered, but I’m still undecided on exactly how it will look. Though in all likelihood it will bear a fair resemblance to this website, I’m trying to be mindful when I’m online to take note of websites with good formats that might be worth emulating. I’d like the new website to have at least a somewhat professional appearance so that I can confidently point anyone to it to see my work. Granted, a lot of my work these days is short blog posts like this one, but I still want a look for my website that shows I’m serious and dedicated to my craft.

Hat Trick Tomorrow

Tomorrow evening I fly out for an extended weekend in New York City. Tempting as it may be to take the next three days off from writing, I’ve decided instead that what I’m going to do is publish three posts on the same day, thus keeping to my commitment of five published writing pieces per week. It’ll be the writing version of a hat trick from the world of sports. Next week I’ll be back on my normal publishing schedule, but the week after that I’ll need to publish two writing pieces on Thursday, June 1, since I’ll be gone on Friday, June 2.

Writing with ease

On Saturday I finally finished replaying the first game for my Replaying the Classics series of writing pieces. It should have been finished it a week earlier, however my job had me working longer hours than expected that prior weekend. Upon finishing the game I started thinking over how I wanted to write the first edition of Replaying the Classics. I knew I wanted Replaying the Classics to have a different feel from what I had done with Season 1 of Late to the Party, but I wasn’t sure exactly how it would be different. Later that day a simple but profound realization hit me. With Late to the Party I was playing a game for the first time and attempting to create a worthwhile analysis of it by giving my thoughts on both its component parts and my overall enjoyment of the game. In Replaying the Classics I’m playing a game that I’ve completed before and obviously I’m a fan of—hence why I played it again—and I already have at least a fair level of knowledge on the game, so the only way writing about the game will be stressful is if I choose to make it stressful. I finished the game with relative ease, and my writing should reflect the energy of my playthrough. As with Late to the Party, it will likely take several editions of Replaying the Classics for me to find my footing, but I’m hopeful that from the very first entry in this new writing series it will be clear that I’m not trying to repeat what I did with the other writing series. Tomorrow will see the publishing of the very first installment of Replaying the Classics, so you’ll soon be able to judge for yourself if I succeeded.

Juggling

At the moment I’m juggling four different writing-related projects: the “regular” series of shorter posts that appear on this website, a pair of longer writing pieces that have stalled recently, the chapter/episode summaries of the story I’m working on, and making progress on the game I’m playing for the upcoming Replaying the Classics series of posts. I’m in a war on four fronts, and all of them are bloody campaigns of attrition. Were I unemployed the situation would be tenable, but seeing as how my job consumes such a large chunk of my life I’m struggling to keep up this juggling act. The obvious solution to this problem is to just let one or two of these projects get put on the back burner for at least the near future, but somehow that feels like failure. I can’t bring myself to let one of them go, even though I know this sort of multitasking brings only misery. I need a breakthrough on at least one of these writing battlefields. Either that, or I need to force-feed myself some humble pie and let one of the balls fall.

The urge to pad writing

As I was preparing Friday’s post on Destiny, I ran into an issue that I’ve encountered a number of times in my writings. When I was proofreading the final draft I saw that I was very close to hitting 2,000 words, and the thought floated in my mind to add just a little more to my work. Two, maybe three, more sentences and I’d cross that magic threshold into the 2,000-word territory. Yes, what I had at the moment was all well and good and encapsulated everything I wanted to say, but think about how much better it would feel to add another entry to the 2,000-word writing piece catalog. It wouldn’t even be that hard—just insert an extra observation and/or opinion here, and another one there, and just like that I’d have that special 2,000-word satisfaction. I entertained this line of thinking for several minutes until my inner editor put a stop to the fantasy train. Yes, getting past the 2,000-word mark would be nice, but I’d be compromising the writing piece by padding it with material merely for the sake of achieving a particular word count. That extra material did not belong in this writing piece. I came to my senses, finished proofreading, and then moved on to preparing the writing piece for publishing. The urge to pad my writing had been resisted, that time at least.

Daylight Savings Time

Twice a year in America, we adjust our clocks by one hour. Last week we sprung forward an hour into Daylight Savings Time. Later this year we will fall back an hour into Standard Time. Personally, I’d rather we as a country just pick either Daylight Savings Time or Standard Time and stick with it all year long. No more clock adjustment, and no more screwing with sleep schedules.

It exists

Just after the publishing of my 400th post, I set a goal of registering the domain of a new website for my writings before the publishing of my 500th post. In today’s post, which happens to be #496, I am pleased to announced that the goal has been met, and the new website domain exists. At the moment there’s nothing there, but I’m one step closer to migrating off of Blogger and onto something a bit more distinctive and that I can call my own. It will be some time before I’m able to fully construct the new website and transplant all the content from Blogger over to it, but whenever that happens I’ll have a big announcement for you.

Updating Writing Pieces

I hate updating my writing pieces. Maybe it’s laziness, but when I write and publish something I want it to go out into the world and stand the test of time. Sometimes, however, I am compelled to update things I’ve published to this blog due to new information or any number of other reasons. The most recent example of a writing piece that I’m going to have to update is last Friday’s post on Milo Yiannopoulos. I finished writing that post a week ago and published it on Friday, but Milo, ever the glutton for controversy, had to get himself into a whole new world of trouble, so now I need to add a few extra remarks to my writing piece on him. It’s like Milo knew I had written something about him and so he decided to troll me by doing something so outrageous that I would be forced to add some more lines to my work. [Begin Dramatic Music] Curse you Milo! [End Dramatic Music] The update should be live by the end of this coming weekend, and there will be a prominent notice at the top of that writing piece announcing the update.

2017 Preview Finished

Today marks the end of the series of 2017 preview writing pieces. There’s a lot to look forward to in 2017, but now it’s time to stop writing about what will be done, and start actually doing it. On Monday the normal publishing schedule will resume, and I’ve already got a few short writing pieces lined up that have accumulated over the past month. Hope you enjoyed a full month of first looking back and then looking forward.