actuality.log

There’s a sweater which, whenever I wear it, never fails to get people fawning over me. It’s this chic, patterned item that works well on its own, but yesterday I had it on as part of a more formal ensemble that aimed for something of a “preppy British schoolboy” look.

The sweater struck again last night.

At a quarter-past-three, as the party was finally winding down, she was huddled close to me baring her every insecurity. She was too drunk to make her own way home, and I only wanted to watch over her to make sure she could safely hail a cab. But she had other plans.

Pressed up against me for support, here she was—one of the prettiest, most confident and capable people I’ve known—telling me how insignificant and uncertain of herself she felt. Her low-cut dress was doing little to hide her ample chest, but I hadn’t the urge to gawk. I held her supportively and listened to what she had to say, trying my best to calm her insecurities with my calm voice. Telling her how I honestly felt about her and her accomplishments; reminding her that she was still young, and had plenty of time ahead of her to explore anything she felt passionate about.

There were a few things about my behaviour last evening that leads me to believe I just might be growing up. First, the thought of taking advantage of her drunkenness didn’t cross my mind. Instead, I felt strangely protective of her. Second, I didn’t fall head over heels for her simply because of her closeness, slinky dress or soft scent. I was looking to be a supportive friend; truly wanting to reassure her that her self-doubts were unfounded, and make sure she got home safe. And finally, it was through reassuring her that I realised how secure I am about fundamental aspects of my self. I might not have figured out where in the world I will be next year, or what I will be doing with my life, but I have no underlying fears about how much I know or what my capabilities are. This awareness of self made me feel rather special, and allowed me to be calm and reassuring without thrusting any of my own neuroses to the fore.

The fact that I was able to serenely pull off all of this—with my actions not being motivated by anything ulterior—makes me feel so much more of an adult. An emotionally-mature adult capable of healthy, sincere relationships with the people I care about.

In other words, I’m beginning to think that maybe it wasn’t the sweater people were fawning over. Maybe it was me.

It was around three o-clock in the morning. I was startled as my front door swung open and a dog rushed into my home! It took me a couple of seconds to recover and realise what was going on, and by the time I did, she was gone. It turns out that my neighbour upstairs had mistakenly opened my door after a night out, and her excitable dog that was with her got excited. Two things: 1. I’ve made this mistake before (more than once!), so it’s not a big deal. 2. People should really start locking their doors.

But why was I so startled? What was I even doing up at that hour?

I was violently flailing my arms around like a spastic trying to get my fucking character on screen to follow my directions. After spending over 50 hours over the past few weeks on it, I’d finally reached the main evil baddie of the Zelda game on the Wii (The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess), and I was still having difficulty getting my on-screen avatar, Link, to perform basic tasks; tasks that have been trivial to perform from day one in past Zelda games using “traditional” control schemes.

Perhaps an hour later, I finally finished the damn game so that I could get back to other aspects of my life, but I still can’t get over how vaguely unsatisfying it all was. In the hope that ranting about it will help me get over it, I am going to pinpoint aspects of the experience that especially sucked:

• The last two epic Zelda games that I played (The Wind Waker on the GameCube and Phantom Hourglass on the DS) oozed nothing but polish. Twilight Princess, on the other hand, feels hobbled together.
• While I don’t inherently dislike the art direction (well, maybe I do), I hate the greatly varying quality in the visuals one is presented with over the course of the game. Some levels and characters are absolutely gorgeous, and others, well, are plain blocky and jagged.
• The “fancy Wii control scheme” feels both tacky and tacked on. The controls aren’t as responsive as they should have been, and the camera is awkward to control. This really does feel like a GameCube game with some Wii stuff thrown in after the fact.

• I know you shouldn’t turn to a Zelda game (or a Mario game, or a Metroid game, or any long-standing Nintendo franchise, really) for an epic original storyline. Things usually go something like:

  1. Stupid princess gets abducted yet again by the bad guy.
  2. You drop whatever it is you do and head out to rescue her.
  3. She thanks you, but obviously fails to learn that doors have locks on them for a reason.

  But Twilight Princess was particularly unsatisfying. The game is really linear, so you’re never lost looking for what you should be doing next, but the storyline fails to properly motivate any of it. The game doesn’t even try to develop any of its characters, save for one, so on some level you don’t really care if you live or die, whether the princess gets rescued, whether the bad guy gets defeated, or really, even who the main bad guy is.

• There are very few real exploratory side quests and exploration is rarely rewarded. You see a suspiciously hidden chest far away; you figure out what you need to obtain to scale the mountain to get to the damn chest; only to see it contains a trifle of money, even which you can’t fit in your inventory. This sort of thing sucks the joy out of trying to explore and find things, and somewhere along the way, you stop trying.

I could go on and on like this, but I think I’ve worked the bile out of my system. I just hope the next Zelda game on the Wii is more polished and doesn’t leave a bitter after-taste when done. But however it turns out, I’m quite certain that the next Zelda installment on the DS, Spirit Tracks, will be enjoyable. I can’t wait for it to come out!

I’d always been under the impression that the financial system was in the business of transferring wealth between people. For instance, money could leave your pocket and go into a bank. From there, it could make its way to other places, like the stock market, eventually ending up in the pockets of scam artists. One day you’re the hard-working schmuck, the next you’re the conman, and another you’re the lender of a loan. But whatever the scenario, I thought of the entire system—money, banks, governments, pawn brokers, stock markets and all that sort of thing—as the medium over which wealth changed hands.

That’s what is really going on, isn’t it?

Earlier today, it dawned upon me that from the perspective of an individual (me perhaps, or a company, or even a country!), the financial system only serves one purpose: To time-shift our wealth.

When you have more money on hand now than you possibly need, you move it into the future with the help of the financial system. You do this through your savings accounts, investments and other things of that nature. Likewise, when you’re in need of money that you don’t currently have, you again turn to the financial system (loans, credit cards, etc.) to draw from your future wealth.

I am not sure if this insight I’ve stumbled upon is a well-established notion, but I find it pretty cool. Putting things in the perspective of the individual (me) clarifies to me why trillions of dollars are being spent salvaging financial systems around the world. We don’t just want to give the CEO of Goldman Sachs yet another gold-plated yacht, we are desperate to hold onto our ability to time-shift our wealth; ensuring our decisions aren’t determined entirely by how much money we have in our pockets at any given time.