BRAIN DRAIN

I’ve arrived safe and sound again in New York, which can only mean that it’s time for yet another round of Random Travel Notes!

Personal Space. In Manila, while on my way to the airport, I received a couple of phone calls from my mom, who also saw me off when I left the house. The first time, she rang to ask if I had intentionally left the ATM and credit cards she found lying around the house (I did). The second time, it was to voice her concern that I’d maybe left behind a little too much cash in my room (my “stash” for when I’d return) and to tell me she’d rather deposit it into my account. Naturally, I thanked her for each call and couldn’t help but marvel at yet another display of her maternal concern. After the second call ended, however, a thought occured to me that couldn’t help but make me chuckle: Wait a minute…did my mom just go through my things?!

(In)Security. Whenever I travel alone, I worry that someone might pilfer my things as they go through the x-ray machine while I walk through the metal detector at security checkpoints. On this trip, I was given an additional thing to obsess about: at one such checkpoint, after I’d already loaded my bag onto the conveyor belt and watched it half-disappear inside, I was told to remove my watch, put it on a tray, and have it go through the machine as well. My gut reaction was to look the inspector in the eye and yell “Hell no!”; in fact, I almost did. But rather than make a fuss, I made sure I saw the tray go through the machine before I stepped through the metal detector despite the obvious irritation of the inspector and his assurances that it was safe. I will never trust these people farther than I can throw them, and am certain that next time I’ll tuck my watch away into my bag well beforehand.

Gaming for All Ages (and Genders, Too!). It so happened that my connecting flight in Hong Kong was located at a terminal on the opposite end from the one my first flight landed, which necessitated quite a bit of a walk. On the way, I passed a toy store that had a sizeable video game display, which I didn’t give a much thought to as I repaired to the lounge. Later, while taking a refreshement, I realized I might just be able to find a copy of Ouendan for my Nintendo DS at that store since Hong Kong usually carries such Japanese import titles, and thus decided to walk all the way back on the off chance I might get lucky. I wasn’t (out of stock!), but the saleslady was very quick to try to make a sale nonetheless. “We have plenty of new games,” she said as she motioned to the shiny display, “for boy or girl or for yourself!”. I politely declined and went on my way. But on the walk back to my terminal, I got to thinking bemusedly: there’s a double meaning in that!

Single Serve. On the plane, each time I was asked for my choice beverage to accompany the meal I’d request a Coke Light. I noticed, however, that other passengers who would ask for softdrinks would be offered the entire can, whereas I would only be offered the one glass. I’d observed a similar pattern on a prior trip, and am sure the flight attendants would have been happy to top up my glass if I asked. All the same, policy or not, it’s something my girlfriend can probably sympathize with, as she often points out the irony in my penchant for ordering a large-sized “diet” something or other.

A Tale of Two Seatmates. For the first leg of my trip, I was seated beside a very well-mannered gentleman. When I travel alone I prefer to take the aisle seat and try to be as considerate to the person beside me as possible, which means (among other things) lowering my footrest on my own initiative whenever s/he has to visit the lavatory. Usually they don’t give such gestures a second thought, but this guy did and was very gracious about it. I believe this was the first time I’ve met someone like that. For the second leg, my seatmate was someone who happened to work for Electronic Arts (if his computer and bag were anything to go by). I had half a mind to strike up a conversation with him, gaming geek that I am, but thought the better of it after concluding that the tete-a-tete would go no further than “Oh, you work for EA? You guys make great games! I don’t buy any of them.”

[Prior Random Travel Notes: 0, 1, 2]

Alas, another vacation has come and gone, and I find myself with just a day to go before leaving to resume the pursuit of Higher Education yet again. In all, I think the downtime was well spent:

Globetrotting. Seventeen days, six countries and one principality. ‘Nuff said.

Working. Hard to believe, no?

Watching. Quite a number of movies, reruns of House, Heroes and the animated Justice League series (Geektasticness!).

Playing. Wii Sports (of course), Super Paper Mario, Sonic Rush and over 2,000 online games of Tetris DS (honest!). In addition, there were maybe one or two more games I got to experience vicariously through my brother, but those don’t really count. Oh, and there was also that one round of golf where my score approximated what I would like to think is my IQ.

Reading. A dozen or so books. Mostly recreational material but with healthy doses of more “serious” subjects on the side.

Writing. Both here, elsewhere, and for a variety of different reasons.

All that and I got to spend a lot of quality time with all those who matter the most to me.

‘Twas a great summer. Will be blogging next from across the Pacific very soon as reality comes crashing back down with a vengeance.

It took half a year, but I finally got to see my brother get around to putting Final Fantasy XII to bed. And yes, it was very much worth the delay.

Overall, it is perhaps the best installment in the series to date, managing to do justice to the Final Fantasy legacy in spades. It takes plenty of the old-school elements that made Final Fantasy great and infuses them with enough innovative or “remixed” elements to make for a very compelling gaming experience. Past installments of the franchise have thus far demonstrated that Square-Enix have gotten the console role-playing game genre down to a science, and it shows in FFXII. Its story is the stuff of which grand adventures are made, the graphics and soundtrack are simply topnotoch, and its sophisticated (and some might say complex) battle system make for a thoroughly mesmerizing gameplay experience.

There are a few blemishes, to be sure: the most egregious of these is perhaps the absurd amount of dungeon crawling towards the end. Yet for all that the game remains one of the few good reasons left to still invest in a PS2. For my part, I can’t wait to see what its small-screen sequel has in store, and I’m sure others feel the same way.

Some time ago, I decided to leave my Wii behind in the Philippines rather than take it along again on my return to New York. As much as I’m sure to miss it in the next four months, I think I could use as few distractions as possible in the push to wrap up the last of my coursework. Besides, I can’t help but fret over the wear and tear it inevitably gets subjected to on each such trip, especially since my Wii’s been around the world one and a half times already.

Whatever the reason, it’s shaping up to be a good decision in light of new airline security regulations in the US that’ve made it a bit tougher to go lugging around such things while traveling. Now, passengers with video game consoles in their handcarried baggage have to take these out for security processing, just like laptops.

Obviously this is no big deal for those who pack accordingly or decide to transport their consoles in their checked baggage instead. All the same, it does make travelling that much more of a hassle for console-carrying gamers (and I’m already convinced that the US — rightly or wrongly — is out to make travel as unpleasant as possible, what with all the regulations that have been put into place after 9/11).

Personally, I’ve never been comfortable packing either valuables or electronics in checked baggage. One never knows how carefully these are handled once checked in, notwithstanding the possibility of the same being misplaced. More, coming from the Philippines, I maintain a healthy skepticism towards the integrity airport personnel (especially customs officials), hence my preference for carrying the more important stuff along with me.

So much like everyone else, it looks like I’ll have to think twice in the future about transporting a console should the opportunity ever present itself. Fortunately, the new regulations don’t as yet apply to handhelds such as the Nintendo DS and the PSP. But one can’t help but worry that it’s only a matter of time.

Friday: Unexpected and Inexplicable

I woke up with a surprisingly swollen left eye.

It didn’t hurt — that was the good news — but it was very difficult to keep open, causing me to feel sleepy for practically the entire day. Aware that I had to attend to a few things that day and worried about my appearance, I quickly came to the conclusion that my eyes would only look normal if either I were to keep on squinting (thus walking around practically blind) or go about with a wide-eyed look of surprise (a more viable option, yet unfortunately more difficult to maintain).

So I bit the bullet, swallowed my pride, and decided it didn’t matter as I set out to get some work done. As expected, the people I met couldn’t help but ask the inevitable “Hey what happened to your eye?” To this, I jokingly replied, “Oh, it was my girlfriend: I reminded her I was leaving next week for another four-month spell, and learned she has a very impressive right hook!”

Amusingly, when I actually told her later (to her horror) that that’s what I’d been telling people all day, I very nearly thought I’d be on the receiving end of the real thing.

Saturday: Also Unexpected yet Easily Explained

The next day my eye had gone back to normal, but I suffered from allergies the entire day.

The reason, I surmise, has to do with some work that was being done around the house. I woke up that day to the sound of some sawing and hammering, and later on learned that my mom had a carpenter come over to make some adjustments to some shelves or what not. Inasmuch as the work was confined to an area a reasonable distance away from our living quarters, I think the dust somehow got to me and left me with the sniffles practically the entire day.

Really, this happens more often that I’d like to admit, and days like this I feel like a walking allergy.

Sunday: Entirely Avoidable but Utterly Irresistible

After weathering a swollen eye and a day’s worth of sneezing, there was only a sore shoulder left to contend with.

This one can be filed under the category of “Wii-related injuries”, only it’s not an injury per se but rather another case of too much of a good thing. On Friday night, my brother happened to pop his head into my room as I was killing time with Wii Sports, which prompted me to pass him another Wiimote and have him join in. Four hours later, despite in-game reminders that we should take a break, we were still going at it.

The worst part about this is that as soon as my shoulder feels up to it, I know I’m gonna fire up the Wii and have another go. Sad and pathetic, I know, but I can’t help it: I’m just wired this way.

Lately, I’ve had to edit, write, re-write and ghostwrite a number of things for a variety of audiences that I find myself spent, so much so that I’ve had no success hammering out any one of the four or five missives I’ve in mind to write. All my attempts to do so have amounted to false starts that produce nothing less than drivel.

Suffice it to say that I now have a renewed respect for professional writers, especially those that take on writing gigs on a diverse array of subjects. To paraphrase Murakami, such hired hands may just be shoveling the snow of society, but it does take talent to put on and take off different hats in order to write to one audience or another without losing one’s own voice in the process — not to mention mixing metaphors just to get a point across.

Ah, me.

With his keen wit, Bill Bryson has made a name for himself as very capable writer. As if his very successful travel books and the widely popular A Short History of Nearly Everything weren’t enough to cement his status as an author worth reading, he has found a way to raise the bar even further with The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.

The book is Bryson’s memoir of growing up in middle America between the ’50s and ’60s. In all, it’s a look back at a childhood well enjoyed: every juvenile prank, childish pursuit, and flight of fancy (his “alter-ego” as the Thunderbolt Kid, for instance) recounted in vivid detail and with the occasional amusing hyperbole thrown in (such as his insistence that the old lady down the street was over seven hundred years old). What makes the book stand out, however, is Bryson’s uncanny ability to write with a genuine honesty that manages to impart a sense of wonder for a time when things were simpler and seemingly bathed in a golden hue.

It might be unusual to recommend a book on so narrow and apparently unremarkable a subject; yet the truth of the matter is that The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is great fun, certainly a very welcome escape to more innocent times. Bill Bryson has written a thoroughly personal tale about his childhood with tongue firmly in cheek — if not a wink and a smile — and in so doing sends a subtle reminder that the joys and mischief of childhood are nigh universal, and best remembered with bemused appreciation.

Re-wired

The ongoing saga with my internet service provider came to a head today with the unexpected arrival at our doorstep by a service technician.

Naturally, it was quite a surprise. Apparently, technical support representatives were trying to get in touch with me yesterday via the phone line we had transferred precisely to inform me that they were sending someone over to finally sort things out. Unfortunately, it so happened that the telephone I pilfered from the old house was one whose ringer has ceased to work, so all their calls went unanswered. Thus, our ISP sent someone over all the same, and I had to cut short a meeting I’d just arrived at in order to rush home and talk to the guy, since the laptop I brought with me was the one needed to test whether the connection was already working.

Obviously everything has turned out for the best, proving yet again that good things come to those who wait very impatiently. Or something like that.

Unwired

In the plans for the new house, my parents had the foresight to ask that the rooms be wired for LAN functionality, all in all a good idea considering the limited range of our older wi-fi network. Unfortunately, none of us seem to know how to get the LAN to work as it should.

After an afternoon spent in what feels like a Networking 101 crash course I seem to be back where I started, if not a few steps behind: not only am I thoroughly confused with regard to the router’s configurations, I also have a pair of what are apparently the wrong kind of ethernet cables (I got “straight” ones, and since they don’t work I’m beginning to guess that we need a couple of the “cross” variety to get things going).

I’m all for technology, but there really has to be an easier way to go about all this. Suddenly, the prospect of having to huddle in front of the router like moths to a flame doesn’t seem all that bad. I suddenly remember why we invested in that clunky ol’ thing to begin with.

Wiired

Of course, I have the slight advantage that the router is situated right outside my door, meaning that the signal is actually quite strong everywhere in my room.

That being the case, I figured this would be the perfect time to see whether I’d have any problems accessing the internet via the Wii here in the Philippines. Doing so was always an issue in the old house seeing as the internet service itself became painfully slow (something to do with the grid, I’ve been told) and our wireless network just couldn’t quite reach the Wii, given where it was located. Thankfully, after firing it up and waiting for what seemed like an eternity (yeah, still painfully slow, but more like a throbbing pain rather than anything terminal), it worked as expected, allowing me to perform a system update, see for the first time in months what new Virtual Console games are available, and check out other goodies.

And yes, nothing beats being able to see my blog on my tv (as if I haven’t done that before). But that’s just my vanity talking.

I. Lost in Motion

The family recently transferred to a new house, meaning that all of us have gone through the roller coaster ride that can only accompany such an experience. While the move itself has gone on smoothly for the most part, it appears to have claimed an unintended victim in the Master’s Diploma that I worked hard to obtain since the graduate school adventure began two years ago.

Usually, something like this wouldn’t bother me. For one thing, it’s really just symbolic more than anything else, and for something or another to get misplaced in the process of moving is just par for the course. Yet I can’t help but feel a twinge of sadness at the thought that nobody can recall where it was last, least of all myself.

I remain hopeful that it’ll turn up sooner or later. How can’t I? It’s gonna be a while (if at all) before I get the degree that is to follow.

II. More Technical Support Woes

I have a love-hate relationship with my DSL service here in the Philippines. Really, the “hate” part has everything to do with the technical support and customer service, which are some kind of terrible. This I learned all over again while trying to get our account transferred to the new house.

Of the things that went wrong this time around — and there are many, as practically the only thing that went right was that the line got transferred the day after I made the request — the one that takes the cake was a call to the customer service line that felt like talking to a brick wall. Typically, people in such cases get frustrated when they end up on the line with an automated system that asks them to key in an endless litany of numbers before they can actually speak to a human being. In my case, I was able to immediately get a real person on the other end of the line. Unfortunately, she so happened to be intelligent enough only to give any one of five scripted responses to anything I had to say or ask.

I’d rather not recreate the conversation from memory (I probably could if I tried, but the accompanying increase in my blood pressure isn’t good for my well being). Suffice it to say that this was probably the first time in my life I would have actually preferred to talk to a machine instead.

III. Selective Celphone Paralysis

My celphone appears to have suffered a stroke: the buttons on the right side of the keypad are now occasionally unresponsive.

I first noticed this when I almost sent someone a text chock full of jibberish. See, I use the phone’s predictive text input and am comfortable enough doing so that I tend not to look at the screen while keying in a message. Yet right before sending this particular one, I realized that some of the words didn’t come out right (and weren’t words at all) even if I pressed on the buttons the correct number of times. Apparently, now I have to press on the buttons either longer or harder just to get it to register correctly.

Yet the problem comes and goes. After a wretched weekend spent trying to adjust, my finicky old phone began functioning normally again. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t imagining things, but I’m all too willing to plead temporary insanity: there’s a newer model that I’ve been eyeing these days, with nary an excuse (nor funds) to take the plunge.

IV. The Best Laid Plans

When I first came to grips with the amount of free time on my hands while back home for the summer, I made a grand plan to spend my time wisely. I promised myself I’d spend two days a week working with my dad, another two days reading up for my dissertation, another two for personal matters and the last day of the week for whichever needed an extra day. Suffice it to say that nothing has gone according to plan, yet I’ve loved every minute of it.