Reflections – The Skytreader

Hopefully Not the Same Procedure as 2020

I’m not usually one to make grand new year’s resolutions. The past few years, my resolutions took the form of “read a difficult book this year”. Difficult being defined as (a) lengthy and (b) not my usual fare. With this “system” I’ve managed to read:

(2016) Gödel, Escher, and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter. I’ve wanted to read this since I heard about it in college. It’s an extremely unusual book with lots of eureka moments for me. Maybe Hofstadter’s enthusiasm is really just infectious. This is a book whose pronouncements on artificial intelligence was just way off but I would nonetheless still recommend for introductory insight and intuitive explainers for some pretty abstract math. And more! As Hofstadter will tell you, this isn’t a Math or a Computer Science book. He has a very specific topic in mind—which I think is a fair assessment of his own work—but this book is really just unusual in that it touches on a lot of things.
(2017) A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking. Fun fact: my copy is a volume combining the two books inside a single cover, in glossy color print. I got this from the Manila International Book Fair back in 2012 (yep the same book fair that triggered this post). Sat on my shelf for five years before I worked through it. Shows you the extent of my tsundoku.
(2018-2019) A History of the World in Twelve Maps by Jerry Brotton. I’ve always been fascinated with maps and always been fascinated with looking at history through unusual, maybe even mundane, objects. This book just called out to me. As you see around this time, I’ve failed to keep up with my goal of finishing a difficult book within the calendar year. Not sure what happened, but I could guess. I even brought this book with me to Germany.
(2019-2020) The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. My introduction to The Campbellian Hero’s Journey was from internet discussions about Po the Kung Fu Panda. This book is a dense treatise, and though frequently cited in literary analysis, I’ve found it to be more anthropological than literary. To be honest, I’m not too convinced with Campbell’s thesis here—as a matter of style he’s not as scientific as I’d want him to be; for example, he doesn’t try to address how his theory can be falsified. But I still recommend this not just because it will give you context in a lot of contemporary discussions about literature (including films, TV shows, etc., not just written stories), but also because I think Campbell is actually on to something, despite the lack of rigor on his methodology, and he offers an interesting insight into the human psyche. I finished this book this year while in social distancing mode.

So, I don’t really have a book this year that would qualify, unless maybe I start tackling German texts. And actually, I have! I’ve been reading Das Labyrinth des Fauns, Cornelia Funke’s adaptation of the acclaimed Guillermo del Toro movie. This story is just great, I don’t even notice it’s not in English, in either medium (recall: the del Toro movie was a Spanish production).

Oh, I’ve also made a few more traditional resolutions.

2019, definitely influenced by my plans to leave for Germany, I started journaling. I even wished for a fancy journal notebook from our office exchange gift.
2020, I resolved to be more focused. To be very honest, I didn’t do that well on this resolution. If it’s any consolation, the Wacom tablet kinda helped me make up for it, scored goals in the dying minutes, if you will. The past few days (if not the last few weeks of 2020, when I already had my Wacom) I’ve absolutely nerd sniped myself into digital painting. I’ve figured out that my learning style relies heavily on experimentation. That’s why I’ve so far had a hard time, experimenting with the art lessons I’ve been learning from Youtube (like, color theory, anatomy-grounded figures). Erasing is easy, yes, but not always clean, which sucks if you’re trying to get a lot of things right. Digital painting is still a lot of effort but it’s more convenient. I feel like I’m back in school. I’ve been doing a lot of things that apply the things I learn but I’m not really producing anything remotely portfolio-worthy—exactly how I felt during my Computer Science undergrad.

So what’s it for this year? I should definitely continue to be more focused but that also means I should really stick to a strict sleep cycle regimen, something I find hard to do during the gloriously long days of summer (there’s a lot more to this statement but it’s probably a blog post of its own).

Maybe be more creative, be more fearless in my creative endeavors. If you need to churn out a thousand crappy things to create one good thing, then let’s churn through one thousand crappy things with an indomitable spirit. In fact, I have an art project I’ve been working on lately, also what prompted me that I might need a Wacom tablet for this one. Maybe you can argue this project is a coping strategy for all the 2020 distancing, but also, it’s not surprising if you know me as well as I do. So whatever. I don’t care what people say, let’s just do it!

And oh, it’s new year. This Neil Gaiman quote definitely fits. Calligraphed by yours truly, circa 12/29/2018, Speedball with Higgins ink on Canson watercolor paper.

Battles with Fate, Now with More Uncertainty

Even if you were living under a rock for the past eight to nine months, I’m pretty sure you would’ve heard about the pandemic ravaging the world right now, if only because you no longer need to avoid people; they socially distance themselves from you automatically. And you can treat those who, for some confidently-wrong belief or another, insist to invade your personal space anyway, as crazies. As a modern-day Diogenes you no longer need to invoke your view of the sun to insinuate someone is an idiot. A silver lining, what a relief.

Which makes me wonder if a modern-day Diogenes would read blogs because if not then my whole first paragraph has no audience. But I guess in an age of social media and walled content gardens the personal blog is the barrel in which a philosopher might dwell. Gasp. I was the Diogenes all along.

Anyway, back to the topic. I’m pleased to report that the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t affected me adversely despite living by myself, a stranger in a strange land. Selfishly I might even be thankful to find myself in Hamburg amidst all this. There are only a few ways I can be more comfortable right now.

Not that it hasn’t affected me at all. Whereas so far, thankfully, I’ve managed to stay healthy, the pandemic has got to my thoughts in all sorts of ways. From the usual negative stuff to more positive outcomes like bursts of productivity here and there, and things I wouldn’t have otherwise tried like finally buying a bike.

My key achievement so far is my proposal for a new economic indicator metric: the Toilet Paper Availability Index. It measures citizens’ general confidence in government proclamations at a highly localized level. Fair to say that this has failed spectacularly in many parts of the world during this pandemic, including, unfortunately, in Germany, long-clichéed to be world’s best at just following rules.

I guess, arguably, no formal rule was instituted, Merkel merely implored the German populace to not purchase like hamsters.

That said, it will be disingenous of me to imply that the scarcity I’ve witnessed is any cause for alarm. In fact, for reasons I would not expound in here, my apartment is currently home to an ungodly amount of REWE Double Chocolate American Cookies.

I hear your screams of “Wait, Chad. But. Why?!”. So okay. They are gosh-darned delicious okay? Addicting even. Won’t be surprised if REWE adds meth in these in secret. Okay moving on…

I noticed that my local REWE has stopped stocking these lately. I’m a bit worried as I don’t know why. I’d like to think they grew concerned that I, a loyal customer, will die of Diabetes but it’s probably either (a) they are trying to avoid liability from a loyal customer getting Diabetes or (b) they just stopped stocking it. I would like everyone to know that if I die of Diabetes, I would’ve died happy. But if I die of starvation in my apartment, you have my express permission to call me der Idiot.

(Editor’s Note: I have since discovered that my local REWE still stocks these cookies. They just moved the shelf somewhere else. I have very conflicted emotions regarding this.)

Speaking of worry, I have long since determined that my ultimate frustration is a situation which I can’t do anything about. Having no option but to wait for anything, for something to happen, is my idea of powerlessness. As long as I can struggle for a result, I can find a certain peace of mind.

Which might just be this pandemic’s greatest blow on me. To be honest, moving to Hamburg to work for Goodgame last year is quite a huge personal goal I’ve achieved, the downside of which is a very philosophical/poetic Loss of a Goal. I have, at the start of the year, just resolved to start poking around looking for a new goal. Then, history intervened: The Year In Which The World Changed A Decade. So much change that introverts tired of isolation.

And now I don’t know in the worst possible personal way. I do not want to give the impression that it is such a horrible thing. I just find myself on a plateau, quite a comfortable plateau, but a plateau nonetheless. I’d rather be scaling mountains, trying them just because they are there. The pandemic just made planning that so much harder. I have no idea what to expect when every expectation just goes out of the window more than usual.

I’m used to testing Fate. It’s just that doing that right now comes with so much more uncertainty.

I didn’t want this to end in such a downer so here’s a really pretty photo I took recently.

Dear Autumn,
Though I don’t like you for your tendency to remind me of my own mortality, I can’t deny you can be so pretty.
xoxo Chad

Schildkrötenpanzer

We find our way through the buzzing noise and the familiar darkness rather awkwardly, as if we’re here for the first time. We take a couple of empty seats for ourselves and sit in silence. I’ve never felt at ease in parties like this; it’s never been my element and I’m betting it never will be. I would guess you feel the same even if the years have taught you how to enjoy alcohol—another thing I will never get the hang of—and overall seem better adapted in situations like this.

“So, when are you leaving?” you ask to break the ice. It’s amusing how silence can exist between two people in a place where noise is just everywhere. Even more amusing is how this silence is broken.

We’ve never discussed my impending departure before and this question is the first acknowledgement between us. There was no blame in your voice, no worry, no disappointment; it was the most casual of questions you can ask between friends.

“Not for several months more,” I reply, knowing it’s an open secret now—it’s just as I wished it to be. I want to keep this bit of news strictly on a need-to-know basis and you are among the people I’d definitely want to know anyway.

“Have you said your goodbyes? To the pets?”

“I’ve been telling Embrr but I don’t think he understands what I’m saying. I think Luna does—she seems happy lately. I’ve been telling Newton too but he’s just too old now to care.”

“That’s good enough,” you pause to chuckle at the absurdity of pets understanding human language. “Will you bring your camera with you?”

“The A6000, definitely. And most of my lenses, I guess. But unfortunately I’d have to leave my original A35 here.”

“What about your telescope?”

“Nah, too bulky.”

We have cups of water on our table. Tonight you don’t feel like drinking. We observe the crowd illuminated by nothing but the glow of the neon signs from the bars across the street, flitting through the floor-to-ceiling glass panes of the office windows. I see someone I have, frankly, been avoiding the past few months because, reasons. She makes her way through the crowd, drawing closer to where we are seated.

There was a time when this company was so small we at least knew everyone else’s names and maybe at least a vague idea of their hobbies on top of that. Now, there’s enough of us to play petty office politics like this.

I guess only time will tell whether any given change was for better or worse. I am personally not even so sure if I’m making the right decisions. I do have good reasons to leave but, perhaps of more emphasis in my mind right now, was that I also have good reasons to stay.

Ironically, I knew that these people I count as my reasons to stay will be the ones most disappointed in me if I do so. Despite all that has changed, I am leaving not because I am running away, not because this place has become stranger; I am leaving because I am running towards something.

And I am grateful to you, my friends, that I can even run towards this. We saw each other go from debating board game rules to comparing mortgages. How very grown up of us, are we sure we know what we’re doing? And yet we still amuse ourselves with cats and dogs, kittens and puppies, movies and board games. That’s…not so very grown up isn’t it?

I guess some things change and some things don’t.

And now I have come to accept that you will change further without me and that I will likewise change without you. I find a certain poetic symmetry that among the last lessons reiterated in me before I left is how inability to change is invariably fatal. But it doesn’t matter. Among the things leaving has taught me is how home is what stays with you when you leave; it is not a place you go to but a weight you carry that defines you.

Kind of…like a turtle shell.

To all my friends with whom I am constantly in change with.

A Companion Named Desire

In the space of a few seconds–a handful of heartbeats, a few hundred meters covered, some hundreds of revolutions of an engine–the rumbling gray clouds made good on their promise of heavy rain. Even in that tranqulity induced by driving at cruising speed on spacious roads, the transition is difficult to miss: just roughly half an hour ago I marveled at how my car, just less than six months old, can’t be kept completely cool against an overbearing afternoon sun by its air conditioning. Now a sudden downpour drastically lessens the visibility and makes me turn my aircon down by a notch.

The rain puts me in an odd feeling of being neither here nor there. Earlier that day I was at UP, and I am currently in transit through a heavy downpour with Jason Mraz for a background music. The circumstances remind me strongly of a particular summer spent studying physics and yet…I am so far from being that student anymore. A car now is no longer an element of a kinematics word problem but is something I can name among my earthly possessions. And driving…heh, driving isn’t even something I wanted to learn back then.

The lookback is even more interesting once you consider the blog. I’ve been blogging far earlier than the summer mentioned in the last paragraph and I know I made a couple of posts during the summer concerned; posts about a budding photographer, beginning his observations of light and its drama, attending debut parties with the hefty University Physics for a date. But those posts are, unfortunately, among those I axed when I turned this blog over to WordPress. So I can’t link them.

I have vague recollections of the time I decided which posts stay, and which don’t. Up until then, the blog has been through a couple of (technical, not literary) rewrites where I painstakingly migrated each and every post. The decision to prune was, as far as I remember, based on the fact that the posts axed no longer reflect my views. And also to spare my blushes for my blunder years, where I tried to sound knowledgeable of the world–mostly by using long words like “knowledgeable” where vowels and consonants do not merely alternate–when I was, in fact, writing something worthy of Buzzfeed, minus the GIFs.

If I had to characterize the posts I hid from the public it would be that they are too emotional. “I write,” I would say back then, “to exorcise my demons”, all the while feeling like a tortured genius who has found reprieve and salvation through his muse, through his art. Maybe, a hundred years after my inevitable yet all the same tragic demise, that particular quote would find itself adorning a planner given for free by some book store, after a minimum-value purchase during the holiday season. And that’s if I’m lucky. If I’m really lucky it will even be attributed to me.

Because after all that, I have realized that the hardest part of talking about feelings isn’t about finding the courage to even be open about it. In some ways, that is the easy part. Human. What’s difficult when talking about feelings is in coming out with the maturity to handle them in all their nuance, and to not end up with a piece Buzzfeed would gladly put on their front page.

Or Thought Catalog. No one wants a mopey twenty something. Not even a mopey twenty something.

Which is maybe why projects like PostSecret and The Strangers Project move me so. Whereas tortured-genius Chad would overgeneralize and sweep his adolescent neural firings under a blanket of over optimism and flashes of wordplay, these revelations from people I have no idea who achieve authenticity despite their anonymity1. Raw and unfinished, you would not find them spouting a forced positive angle because sometimes, sometimes, there is just no good ending, at least not yet, and you could just barely keep it together.

Yet sometimes, life is not just good but also beautiful; a good ending would be unfortunate because, no matter how good, it is still the end of something as warm as hope.

(At this point, it all ends rather abruptly, as this has been gathering dust for months inside my drafts. Back when I started this whole rambling, I guess I had a plan, an outline, of how and where this all leads to. But not anymore. It gets published by virtue of the fact that it has, nonetheless, achieved its primary purpose, which is to get things off my chest, regardless of whether or not it ends up read by the intended eyes. I guess, after all that’s said and written, I remain the same, seeing words as some sort of magic to trap demons with. Some things change and some things don’t. Thank you very much for reading through and I hope you have a good one.)

PostSecret founder Frank Warren was once asked whether he worries that the secrets he receives are fabricated. To which he replies that the secret is not necessarily true for the person who wrote it; it is true for the person who reacts to it. [↩]

Oh Witcher 3! Oh Witcher 3!

How lovely are thy (side/main) quests?

And warning: Here Be Spoilers!

At about the 186 hour mark–tracked with Steam–I finished The Witcher 3 including its two main DLCs. I’m a bit disappointed that it did not manage to beat Skyrim‘s 189 hours on record but considering that I started two games in Skyrim with one game getting like 20-30 hours, maybe I shouldn’t be so disappointed after all. Besides, I made a couple savepoints at times where The Witcher 3‘s story diverges so I could check out alternative story lines. We could still beat that record comfortably.

Honestly, I was not very sold into The Witcher 3 when I first started it a year ago. This is my first foray into the world of Geralt and I came there expecting to experience the ultimate male power fantasy but instead the intro gave me a bunch of cinematic cutscenes. What a way to be a wet blanket. It was nice the first few times but it wore its welcome fast. Please, I started thinking, more of those spinning sword sweeps and less talk! But, like many before me, I started to care. I found myself enamored with a faux-medieval world where the Conjunction of the Spheres happened and there are people with various stories all around.

And that on top of the fact that my computer could just barely run The Witcher 3. The experience isn’t horrible but the frame rate leaves much to be desired. Kinda leaves Geralt with a brooding stride especially when there are a lot of objects (wood splinters, people, etc.) to render in a scene. Also leaves most of the cutscenes with the sound going faster than the visuals. Gives it an almost pensive cinematic effect, like sometimes the characters take their time reflecting on what was just said rather than going for a quick retort. And at times when the scene calls for a bit more nonverbal language (like an impassioned movement of the arms during an argument) than a mutated witcher would typically be comfortable with, the delay makes it play out like a flashback, slowed down just enough so you can appreciate the details and featuring voiceless stretches of action. Times like this, the beautiful background music really saves the mood.

That is not to say that the brooding stride, the pensive mood, or the flashback feel is not at home with Geralt’s world. I like to think that this makes my Witcher 3 experience unique in a way.

The software engineer side of me, on the other hand, can’t help but marvel at how CD Projekt Red managed to make this game degrade gracefully. Even with a computer such as mine, the bugs I encountered are few and far between. Oh well there’s Roach…

…but I’d like to think that CDPR left that on purpose as some kind of joke. Also, there’s the fact that Geralt’s hair remains model-worthy despite spending hours on end outdoors, exposed to the sun, with an occasional dose of water hag spit, drowner blood, and all sorts of unsavory things. And have I told you I’m using an AMD GPU so there’s no Nvidia HairWorks to help Geralt’s case?

My co-workers’ endorsement aside, what made me buy The Witcher 3 during a Steam sale is the fact that it is labeled as choices matter, and in how this aspect of the game is told to be a great factor into The Witcher 3‘s emotional impact. Now, something that I haven’t talked about much, if at all, is in how Bioshock Infinite‘s ending left me in such an emotionally-tattered state. This deserves another blog post of its own but, suffice it to say, if what elevates creative output into the hallowed realm of being art is in how it can elicit emotions you would not otherwise feel, then Bioshock Infinite gave me an overwhelming conviction that games can be art.

And, like an addict looking for his next fix, against reason, against logic, I’ve been looking for another game that could trigger the same reaction I had with Bioshock Infinite. And I try to keep my mind open but such is my conviction that games can be art that I am pretty sure only a game, or generally an interactive medium, can achieve the same.

I’ve tried a few, constrained by my free time. Would it bother you to hear that I felt delight when, in the title screen of Life is Strange, there is a link to help you find support groups should you feel you need it so after playing the game? I have, unfortunately, not found another game to rival Bioshock Infinite, The Witcher 3 included. I have begun to fear that Bioshock Infinite is a one-time braingasm you could never feel for a second time.

But that is not to take away anything from The Witcher 3. While it did not give me the mindfuck fix I bought it for, it gave me something else. Against odds, a video game with obviously fictitious characters, made me feel empathy. As the best of fiction should do.

“Do I have to know her to feel sorry for her? Can’t you just help her?”

~ The titular character of Cornelia Funke’s The Thief Lord

I would like to put it here on the record, before I rework through the choices I did not pick in my first playthrough. I got the good ending with Ciri, though I’ve had a few missteps along the way. I went with her to meet the sorceresses, not because I had no confidence in her but because I had no confidence our erstwhile allies against the Wild Hunt would play fair with her. Ciri’s fate had been pretty much sealed in my playthrough when I accidentally learned of my misstep and yet it bothered me. It bothered me that Ciri might think I had no confidence in her, that I did not recognize the strong spirit she undoubtedly has. I did not want her to think that she was just another damsel in distress I had to save. From what I heard, she is far stronger than that. I merely wanted to lend assistance because, by Lebioda, this is the fucking Wild Hunt we are up against. No one has a good chance against them, Elder Blood or no Elder Blood.

Triss, Ciri, Geralt, and Yen. All not smiling. — A family picture I managed to catch. Shame they can’t smile for it.

As Riley MacLeod quotes in his article about his Witcher 3 ending: “It’s bullshit arbitrary video game psychology”. I agree.

And yet…I find myself agreeing with CDPR at how this mechanic in their game actually reflects real life. No matter how contrived it may seem, The Witcher 3 asks you to empathize with its people. Actually treat them like people, not as NPCs that give off experience points. As with real life, it’s not your mere intentions which determine how people feel towards you. You put yourself in their shoes.

Another remarkable instance of this in The Witcher 3 is a very short interaction I had at Novigrad. It was so short, it did not even trigger a quest: So there I was, riding on Roach to complete the myriad of things required by the game’s derided Dandelion arc, when in my minimap I see that exclamation mark that is the game’s way of telling you, it’s Geralt-Jesus time! So I unmount from Roach in a manner just a little more impressive than Orlando Bloom doing Legolas fanservice and what do I find? A bunch of witch hunters harassing an Aen Seidhe woman because they are intolerant pricks. In Geralt’s rough tone, I manage to drive them away without a fight. I turn to the elven woman as a courtesy. It’s all fine now, I drove them away, I don’t like them either, you don’t have to pay me–when she cuts me off and berates me for stepping in uninvited. Tomorrow you won’t be here, she tells me, but they’ll be back, even harsher because of what you did today. I’d rather you didn’t make my problems worse as I can deal with them myself, thank you very much.

Short. Poignant. Powerful. Economy of storytelling right there from CDPR.

All these expressed and I feel I need to remind you that this is my very first foray into the world of Geralt. I had no idea who Ciri is until I got bored by the opening cinematics of The Witcher 3. And yet I cared about her, cared about how my choices affected her. And that elven woman? Game didn’t even give her a name and yet she did a damn good job making me feel sorry about my messiah complex.

I could maybe write a short book about everything I felt while playing The Witcher 3. Maybe in some other blog post I get to tell you about how enraged I was when Priscilla–yet another character I only knew recently–got attacked. So enraged I resolved not to sleep until I got to the bottom of it and solved it the witcher way. Or about the eerie beauty of Iris von Everec’s inner world. Or how I got the bittersweet ending for Blood and Wine because, despite having the hots for Syanna, I gave up on her at the last moment and called her a petty little viper. Or maybe, I like her precisely because she is a petty little viper and that clouded my better judgment.

In contrast, I do not like her sister Anarietta that much. Something about her accent and how she’s an uptight state ruler. And yet…that ending…she did not deserve that. I intend to make amends with the power of savepoints. Just wait for me, duquesa.

At this point, this blogpost has gone longer than I intended it to. It even kinda took the form of the usual review I do here. I just wanted to collect my thoughts (of which there are surprisingly many, and more!) before I wield the power of savepoints. All I want to say now is…

Damn it Witcher 3. Your quests have no business being that deep and good!