Thursday, March 10, 2011

late night realisation

Reading your own blog is like looking at yourself in the mirror: you can do it all you like but the quality of neither your blog nor reflection will ever improve.

I never thought I would say it

But I have run out of witty titles. No, just kidding, that will never happen. Seriously, though, I never thought I would say it, but I really want to go back to school.

It would be easy to say that I miss school, but in all honesty, I don't. School is not fun, no matter how you look at it. Fretting over my grades is not fun. Putting up with the dumb shits in my classes who insist on asking inane questions is not fun. Being handed two sets of calculus homework throughout the course of a single period is certainly not fun.

No, I miss the scant free time that having to go to school afforded me, and the ensuing savouring of these morsels of down time. Between three o'clock and when I might go to bed at ten or eleven, I reveled in merely not being in class, and despite our massive amounts of collective complaining, I'm pretty sure most of my contemporaries would have felt the same way.

But this earthquake here in Christchurch, it has put everything, as they say, out of whack. I now find myself with ample hours to while away, and frankly, I can't find enough stuff to fill them. It's a sad thing to admit, but this is really how I have been feeling. That isn't to say, of course, that I haven't gotten plenty done, and enjoyed most of the time off. Georgia and I spent a couple of days in Nelson with my hilariously upbeat grandparents, and have subsequently been to Halswell Quarry and The Groynes (yeah, great name I know) taking some sweet photos. But knowing that I don't tomorrow have work to go back to, tests to sit, leaves me with a hollow feeling. Not to mention the death and having our house condemned.

More than anything else, life's crappy parts, the working and going to school, highlight the not-so-crappy ones, and this system simply works. People need a job to do, and I don't think there's any two ways about it. Surely even in retirement you would get bored, and the monotony of endless games of golf and glasses of cider would start to become... monotonous.

For me, this is like using the money cheat in that classic game, The Sims. Sure, repeatedly hitting "RosebudAAAAAA!?!?!?!?!?!?!" was great for a while, and the subsequent millions of dollars in my virtual account brought a vague smile to my face, but after constructing a palace featuring an entire floor full of scuba tanks (and then the bastard had the nerve to go and not like it!) what else is left to do? It's the ongoing grind, the battle, that makes the results worthwhile. Money, weekends, without what preceded them are meaningless.

I used to enter all of those Australian maths/english/science competitions back in primary school, and a few days before them, my mother and I would leaf through practice papers. A grind, sure, but I knew they helped. Anyway, one night I felt especially melodramatic, and whined "can't we stop? I've done enough!" Even though it was all  ploy, my mother bought it, and much to my surprise replied, "Sure, if you think so." At eight years old I simply couldn't compute having gotten my way, and hastily backed down, guiltily conceding to do another paper.

And like that, I will gladly return to the unrelenting dullness of school, so happy that sneaking some time on my Xbox means something once more.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

op-shopping and sweat-shopping

Opshopping has never been an activity that compelled me that much. This could be down simply to my not having any real interest in clothes, or maybe because I always used to see it closer to the manner in which the Americans do- as "thrifting". That somehow buying second hand clothes was demeaning, and made me "thrifty" with all its awful connotations and implications. 

My sister, on the other hand, has been at this game for years. She often comes home, laden with skirts and dresses, blouses and jackets, proudly announcing how little she paid for them. And these weren't bad looking pieces by any means; they were just nice, regular clothes, that you or me had passed on to the store, who later passed them on to Georgia for one tenth the original price. Funnily enough, probably one much closer to what the clothing chain would have purchased the clothes off the factories for. 

This leads me on to my next point, about sweat shops. Being in South-east Asia fairly regularly lately, I often had t shirts and pants thrust in my face by local shopkeepers, so desperate for that one sale. I don't even care that much that I am likely paying thrice what the local people do- to me, 30 000 dong makes hardly any difference. It is, after all, only $1:50. Something about "fake" clothes repels tourists like me, but especially where things like Chuck Taylors are concerned, how is "fake" any different really to "real". We all well know that Nike, and their subsidiary, Converse, are notorious for use of sweat shops, and what's more, the poor quality of their shoes, even when "real" means that there's virtually no difference in what I buy on a smelly backstreet in Hanoi, to what I pay twenty times as much for in my local Rebel Sport. 

Georgia and I recently took a séjour up to Nelson, anxious to escape the earthquake-ridden Christchurch. In town, and in the local settlement of Richmond, we went out armed with the goal of doing some successful opshopping in some new opshops. Georgia is well attuned to the entire process, and under her watchful eye, I managed to score a sweet corduroy jacket and a dress shirt for the grand total of $16:60- what a steal (and I mean that without sarcasm, for once).
 
I always imagined myself in my adult life, jet setting around the globe, of course being paid vast sums of money, and among other things, wearing only the finest clothing by Hugo Boss, Dior etc, but maybe I'll now have to revise this. Well, at least I'll surely still own a Breitling for each day of the week, seeing as though the $10 Bell&Ross that I picked up in Hué broke only two days after it was purchased.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Top Spin 4 impressions

2009's Top Spin 3 was, to its own rights, a good tennis game. The genre had been suffering from an outright drought for a couple of years, and what there was (ie Virtua Tennis 3) I felt did an overall poor job of imitating the sport on any level other than an aesthetic one. The Top Spin series had always done a decent job of balancing realism with accessibility, but moreover, tipped the balance in the favour is realism like "a big fat fucking retarded fucking black girl on a see-saw opposite... a dwarf", much to my delight. Yet TS3 was by no means perfect. Overly sluggish movement, bland audio, dismally inaccurate animations (Federer's serve- come on!) left me feeling vaguely cheated, seeing as though I had forked out $120 for a merely "meh" title.

Of course, critics disagreed with me, evening  criticising Top Spin 3 as catering only for diehard fans, yet it didn't fully cater for me. This just reinforced what I already suspected: that I expected far too much from a tennis game, and being a fan of the sport was little more than a handicap when the time came to revel in playing a recreation of it.

When I read that yet another sequel, Top Spin 4 would soon be released, I greeted this news with mixed emotions. On the one hand I was excited to see how the developers would improve on its predecessor, yet at the same time I badly didn't want to set myself up for more disappointment. Furthermore, a new developer, 2K Czech, was taking on this mighty challenge, and this, coupled with screens resembling Top Spin 3 almost perfectly, left me with a resounding foreboding feeling.

I yesterday downloaded the Top Spin 4 demo, and despite its being needlessly large at 1 GB for merely a single tiebreak, I walked away impressed. Rather than redesign the mechanics of its predecessor, as I had hoped, it tweaks the gameplay mechanics, mimicking some of the nuances of tennis much better than 3 did. Serving with the analog sticks works far more smoothly this time around, the press and hold feature of more subtly implemented, allowing for an easy power/control choice, and on "Hard" difficulty, the AI foregoes cheaply ridiculous reach in favour of wily tactics, and provides a fair challenge.

The much lauded "TV style presentation" wasn't quite as smooth as I had expected, and the audiovisual department hasn't seen quite the overhaul I had hoped, but hell, it's gameplay that will keep you coming back to a title, not the other shit that we are immediately struck by. Top Spin 4 may not have implemented the commentary feature that fans like me begged for during its development, but 2K Czech impressed me. The nicest thing I can say is that I am still playing, and occasionally losing at, the demo. The computer even makes faults and unforced errors every once in a while- wow.

I probably won't but this game, seeing as though I'm meant to have quit altogether, but it's nice to know that in my absence, the genre is plodding onwards.

-Thanks for reading.
I take a ridiculous amount of time to brush my teeth these days.

Not only these days, too, but for years now, I will enter the bathroom, and emerge perhaps ten minutes later. What am I actually doing in there that takes so long?

Here's the answer: nothing. Absolutely nothing. I start of fine: toothpaste squeezed out in a small pea-sized ball on my mangy brush. Then: I stick the brush in my mouth- no problems there. And soon after, something happens, something I can't stop from happening. I lose focus inexplicably, and my mind wanders.

I start imagining programming a robot that can navigate a car through traffic, and the legal requirements that would hinder its production, or about what it would be like to be the only survivor in an apocalypse, at the things I could later steal. The only thing I don't actually consider is the activity I am currently engaged in.

As a result, I just stand there aimlessly, or pace around sometimes, brush in my mouth, doing nothing. I like to think that the toothpaste's mere presence in my mouth helps to clean my teeth, and that years of doing this has left them super tough and able to absorb toothpaste unusually well. I mean, they are kinda white...

If I were to think up a genius invention which would revolutionise the modern world, I can almost guarantee it would happen during this time, when I am supposedly cleaning my teeth.

And then I snap back, realising that eleven minutes has passed (I often stroll by my Mac en route), and thankful that nobody has seen this awkwardly comical display.

Friday, March 4, 2011

The day the earth didn't stand still

Yes, I am making this post based partially on having thought up this witty title- actually it was my friend, but whatever, I poach jokes where needed. I imagine Lionel Shriver did the same thing when she dreamed up Double Fault to be the title of her tennis/marriage themed novel, and again when whoever directed Snakes on a Plane thought that one up. How could you not make that movie?

But as well, I believe the appropriate space of time has passed to start blogging about the serious natural disaster that recently took place. I have some stories, but of course there is much worse out there.

It's strange that last time there was an earthquake, I felt so much more panicked and scared. Lying under my table with my mother at 4am, my head till vaguely groggy from the night before's doses of Lindauer, and listening intently to the dull crackle of her Sony walkman, I struggled to grasp what had actually happened. An earthquake. Facts and figures began floating in: 7.1, centered at Darfield, lots of damage. The following morning my friend and I took a walk around our neighborhood and would gasp at each minor crack, confounded at how the earth could just split like that. Pfft, I was an earthquake noob back then.

I heard someone say that having already experienced a quake of reasonable magnitude, the city would have been much better prepared for the 6.3 on Tuesday- I certainly was not. Standing amongst some blocks of classes at school, clinging to the nearest pole for support, I really had no idea what would be happening outside of my little universe. We joked, mouthed things to vague acquaintances like "what the fuck?" and generally reveled in something different; being taken out of the monotony that is school's daily routine. Out on the field, standing uncomfortably in the light rain and cold, I remained more or less unfazed. Only the solemn seriousness of teachers gave any indication that what had happened might be no laughing matter in the grand scheme of things.

I tiptoed away, biked home, and stepped inside. I was promptly greeted by shocking mess, featuring a heap of broken glass and other items, thrown on the floor messily- in other words, exactly what I had not seen in last year's quake. Some sizable cracks lined the walls and ceiling, and in the study my router and external hard drive lay on the floor: oh no! Most worrying of all, though, was the complete absence of my mother, who I had believed to be inside during this time. I pretty much assumed the worst- she had simply fled.  Dark thoughts began to swirl around in my young mind- who would make me magic up my quiches, arrange my freshly ironed clothes neatly in my bedroom, amuse my friend's parents on weekends? She soon popped in the door, though, giving a resounding scream of freight. Mine was of relief.

Later, we all sat outside- those aftershocks coupled with the cracks left the house as a last resort- sipping our respective poisons: champagne for me, gin and tonic for my brother and sister, white wine for my mother. We made earthquake themed small talk, and stared blankly at the mess around us. My point abut not being prepared is that I couldn't comprehend that an aftershock, of which the last few had been tiny and dissipating, could be that bad. Yet it was. Many dead, thousands of buildings condemned- including our own humble abode- and town practically ruined. Now where can I obtain that best Thai fried rice in the city?