Made my first ever bid at an art auction yesterday! Too bad the bidding reached my threshold in a few seconds, forcing my quick bow out.
What the deuce?
I’ve been spending these past days discussing art history and poetry, and I am now invited to a couple of art auctions? What the deuce?
A stranger I ran into on the street sounded remarkably similar to someone else I used to know. And I mean ridiculously, remarkably similar. The same mousy demeanour, the same accent, identical vocabulary, everything. So I did something a younger me wouldn’t have even contemplated: I rudely walked up to her and asked her if she knew this other woman.
Turns out she did; they were sisters! What the deuce?
A day or so before I left Oslo, my favourite pair of shoes completely fell apart. And I mean utterly, completely fell apart. The nature of the failure was very strange, but “No worries,” I told myself, and packed a pair of sturdy boots for my trip.
I show up here, and within a couple of days of walking around town, my “sturdy” boots fall apart too. Rubber and leather and metal (how the hell have I ever gotten on a plane with these things?) everywhere.
Has my gait changed so much these past days? What the deuce?
I don’t know what’s gotten into people around, but they keep trying to set me up with this Danish girl. Granted she’s really cute and fun to hang out with, but why are these guys pushing so hard? Is there something about turning older that brings out the inner matchmakers in women? What the deuce?
The instant people hear you speak unblemished English, they assume you’re a polyglot. Little do they know, you can’t speak anything else.
Actual schoolgirls in actual schoolgirl uniforms. Flippin’ sweet.
Nature wasn’t my kindergarten
One of my very first memories is from kindergarten. To this day, I vividly remember the pattern on the gate I was railing against with my tiny palms as I wailed for my mommy to come back and get me. The place wasn’t very far from our home at the time—probably half a block away—but it felt really far away. Being cooped up in there had this really isolating feeling, like there was no escape. And even if you could get away, there was no point in trying.
My next memory from kindergarten is falling for my class-teacher at the time. For the life of me I can’t remember her name, but I can’t forget the sweet smile on her adorable face as I presented to her today’s little trinket. Each day, my tiny hands would painfully fashion for her a necklace or a pendant or some other trifle out of multi-coloured clay, hoping today would be the day I finally won her over.
But that’s a story for another day. For the purposes of today’s tale, I need you to imagine how isolating and unfun my kindergarten experience might have been.
It’s a common sight whenever I am out. Groups of teeny-tiny tots excitedly hobbling around and being prammed about town by their kindergarten teachers. Their cute little faces all smiling and wide-eyed; their brightly coloured clothes easily keeping them in view; their fluorescent name tags having printed on them big, bold contact info, should they still manage to wander off.
Sun or rain or snow, it doesn’t matter. Spend a couple of days in Oslo and this is a sight you’re guaranteed to run into. And it’s not just kiddies from school. The number of people pushing their (freakishly huge) prams around as they go about their days is just astounding. The Scandinavian trait of spending so much of their time outdoors is passed onto their kids when they are really young. And I think this is a very good thing.
Seeing the spring in the step of the tots leads me to believe it would’ve been pretty cool to go to kindergarten here. Spending all my time singing and playing and being carted around town sounds a hell of a lot more fun than wasting my days on those fucking pre-alphabet squiggles. I think I wouldn’t have felt so isolated, and actually realised how many fun and colourful things there were going on outside.
At least, I wouldn’t have been bored out of my mind.
First entry from Cambridge! The trip here was very pleasant, with nothing untoward to report.
The people behind https://launchpad.net/ seem to think that writing many how-to documents is a substitute for good user interface design.
My first impulse when faced with change is always fear. Never excitement.
I just sorted out my papers to travel to the U.K. I believe I’m going to be spending the next months at Cambridge thinking about some stuff.
Growing up
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’s officially nippy. So say my nips.
I think the reason women spend so much time selecting shoes is that they’re wired to check each other out. They fail to see men don’t care.
Twilet-down
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:
- Stupid princess gets abducted yet again by the bad guy.
- You drop whatever it is you do and head out to rescue her.
- 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!
Base access, Python style: _teehee_stop_it_(self, you), __no_really_stop__(self, you), ___im_calling_the_cops___(self)
Is today Sunday or Monday? Why can I not figure this out?