Okay, it's stupid o'clock once again. And I feel a little compelled to write a little drivel here.
It's fine---I've been on leave for the whole of today (well, Friday), and the lunar new year public holidays mean an already extended long weekend that ends on Tuesday (i.e. I return to work on Wednesday).
My birthday collides head on with that of the first day of the lunar new year. As such, this entry is probably all that I will use to talk about it.
After the tumultous three years that passed on by, I finally found back a bit of my mojo, and to my confusion, it was almost as though the past seven years did not occur. There's this unknown source of energy---I know I'm closer to being middle-aged, but I feel closer to being on the wrong side of twenty-five than thirty-five.
I can't really tell why though; there seems to be no good reason why I should be feeling this way. And frankly, as long as it puts me in a generally good mood, I don't see any reason why I should question it and take it all away. Now, if it were something that was causing me distress, then perhaps I ought to do something about it.
All those intrusive thoughts that I had been harbouring on and off for the past two years have receded into the background noise once more; they are still there and occasionally emerge, but for the most part they have been quite silent, which is a good thing.
Again, not sure where all these goodness are coming from, but I'm not going to question it. If it is God's plan for me to experience these now, so be it---His will, not mine.
Work has started a whole new vortex of change, but that is always to be expected anyways. When one works in a field where innovation and change are the name of the game, the associated manner of management has to be non-static just to keep up. That is what I see to be the lessons that I need to learn in this upcoming year.
But back to the collision between my birthday and the first day of the lunar new year. For once I do not need to age ``three times''---just the regular New Year, then the lunar new year, instead of the more usual New Year-birthday-lunar new year trifecta. But there were other slight complications---it also meant that I could not actually do anything remotely fun for my birthday then. It was of little matter as I could just arrange for a nice meal at my favourite sushi place before the lunar new year festivities confuddle things, and it was exactly what I did on Thursday evening.
I honestly am not expecting anyone to remember, let alone send their well-wishes to me---that friend circle was small to begin with, and is getting smaller as the years go by. My church sent me a nice card that was handwritten by the senior pastor, which is nice, and I suppose that's about it for now.
I have no idea what to get for myself for a present this year. It usually ends up being something relating to music making (mostly because I needed a nice way of justifying/rationalising the putting down of Serious Money for these intermediate to high quality instruments), but I have no idea what to go for, considering that I had almost all of the instruments that I thought I wanted to continue playing on by now. Rehearsals at my Chinese Orchestra are slowly restarting, and we are now at the build-up phase, which means that the numbers are lean, and that I am the only dizi player. That solo fort-holding means that I have no reason to be trying to bring in other instruments to expand the timbre, which extends to me not having a reason to find and purchase some new instrument.
And at this stage, the stuff I'm looking at are hitting Really Serious Money levels, with prices estimated to be in the ballpark of 10-grand, not because of any particularly exotic material costs, but that these stuff are considered less mainstream from the rest, and should be taken to be the equivalent of commissioned instruments.
And I still don't know how to justify the costs yet, and so I don't---this is immaterial of whether I am capable of paying it now or after a few more months of saving into a pre-calculated budget.
But let's put those thoughts away for the moment.
------
Recently I have been playing some Borderlands 3. I have resisted playing that for quite a while, mostly because I was put off by the many hijinks that were related to that particular game release. Near the end of last year, Steam had a sale (of course they do) of the game complete with the DLCs for a reasonable-enough price, and I purchased it.
100 GiB of download later, I continued on my journey through the Borderlands world, continuing my tradition of playing a Siren character (Amara). After 70+ hours, I agree with what Kishore told me that time when I asked him about his thoughts about Borderlands 3: the gunplay and the quality of life surrounding the main game loop was quite sound and fun, but the storyline was just meh.
I'm not sure if there was ever a need to spread out the action across multiple planets as opposed to sticking to just Pandora---for such a mechanic, the storyline did seem rather weak and it felt like they were trying too hard to make it more epic than it was. The point of reference here is, of course, against the storyline of Borderlands 2. The new villains were obvious caricatures, but they did not demonstrate any more depth, acting more like Macguffins rather than true characters. The quality of life and gunplay were definitely improvements over Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel for the most part, but I found their requirement of charging of the elemental-heavy Maliwan weapons to do it a disservice. The dual-mode mechanic for some weapons is interesting and it gave me some incentive to make use of the other keys that have been present on my mouse for a long time.
At the pace I am going, I just might complete the main story by the end of this long weekend. I doubt I can complete the VLCs immediately after though.
Okay, I can feel my eyes drooping---I should stop here, take a shower, and turn in for the night.
Till the next update.
Saturday, January 21, 2023
Sunday, January 08, 2023
Quick Summary
So, a quick summary of what I had written in 2022:
That's an average of 0.211 pieces of writing a day, compared to 1.134 last year. 2021 was an anomaly, and so having 2022's rate at whatever it is falls in the ``back to normal'' category more than anything else.
As always, much happened in 2022. The world was still reeling from the whole nonsense that was COVID-19, but the second half of the year in SIN city started to become increasingly lax and almost to the point of returning to something that resembled normal. The only big things that would give things away were the mask mandate for public transport use, and for those who dealt with food and beverages. Those in the hospital were also required to wear masks beyond that of regular medical interventions, but they were less likely to be seen out in public that way anyway.
As for me, I'd been steadily getting back into the groove of working. It was almost as though the years between 2015 and 2021 never really existed. As the year went on, I felt almost as spry as when I returned from my studies in the US for the second time, though inexplicably armed with experience that seemingly came from nowhere.
The sourness from the abrupt end to what I thought was my ``forever'' relationship is at most a passing memory---there have been many days that nothing of that sort passed through my mind.
And almost like what happened back before 2015, my skin had started acting up again. It is a blessing in some ways---with shitty skin that cracked and felt extremely uncomfortable, the last thing I felt was being all sexy and confident in wanting to date and/or settle down with someone. So it helped me deal with the social isolation and other related weirdness in an off-beat sort of way.
In many ways, 2022 was like an extension to the personal break I took in 2021, except this time I was being paid by someone else instead of me. That said, it did not mean that I was grifting my way through---real work with real pain was done to justify getting paid. Unlike some people, I simply cannot just take money without actually doing anything---it feels wrong, and I do not like that.
2023 has already started, and with it comes yet another new season. Let's see what the future holds. I have not abandoned any of my writing, nor have I abandoned my life, but definitely things have gone on a completely different trajectory than what 2015 me would have thought/imagined.
As a parting shot to 2022, fuck you COVID-19, fuck you and the pestilential horse you came on. May the likes of you never return again in my life-time and other life-times to come, and may the lessons that you teach us to simultaneously curb our hubris and to celebrate our incredible good fortune in planting the seeds of your demise through decades of exploratory scientific work resonate throughout the generations as a counterbalance to the absolute shit-show of short-termism as modern-day capitalism demands.
Amen.
- 0 poems posted here
- 76 essays/rants posted here
- 0 prose/stories posted here
- 1 NaNoWriMo winning entry available here
- 0 pieces of compositions/rearrangements posted here
That's an average of 0.211 pieces of writing a day, compared to 1.134 last year. 2021 was an anomaly, and so having 2022's rate at whatever it is falls in the ``back to normal'' category more than anything else.
As always, much happened in 2022. The world was still reeling from the whole nonsense that was COVID-19, but the second half of the year in SIN city started to become increasingly lax and almost to the point of returning to something that resembled normal. The only big things that would give things away were the mask mandate for public transport use, and for those who dealt with food and beverages. Those in the hospital were also required to wear masks beyond that of regular medical interventions, but they were less likely to be seen out in public that way anyway.
As for me, I'd been steadily getting back into the groove of working. It was almost as though the years between 2015 and 2021 never really existed. As the year went on, I felt almost as spry as when I returned from my studies in the US for the second time, though inexplicably armed with experience that seemingly came from nowhere.
The sourness from the abrupt end to what I thought was my ``forever'' relationship is at most a passing memory---there have been many days that nothing of that sort passed through my mind.
And almost like what happened back before 2015, my skin had started acting up again. It is a blessing in some ways---with shitty skin that cracked and felt extremely uncomfortable, the last thing I felt was being all sexy and confident in wanting to date and/or settle down with someone. So it helped me deal with the social isolation and other related weirdness in an off-beat sort of way.
In many ways, 2022 was like an extension to the personal break I took in 2021, except this time I was being paid by someone else instead of me. That said, it did not mean that I was grifting my way through---real work with real pain was done to justify getting paid. Unlike some people, I simply cannot just take money without actually doing anything---it feels wrong, and I do not like that.
2023 has already started, and with it comes yet another new season. Let's see what the future holds. I have not abandoned any of my writing, nor have I abandoned my life, but definitely things have gone on a completely different trajectory than what 2015 me would have thought/imagined.
As a parting shot to 2022, fuck you COVID-19, fuck you and the pestilential horse you came on. May the likes of you never return again in my life-time and other life-times to come, and may the lessons that you teach us to simultaneously curb our hubris and to celebrate our incredible good fortune in planting the seeds of your demise through decades of exploratory scientific work resonate throughout the generations as a counterbalance to the absolute shit-show of short-termism as modern-day capitalism demands.
Amen.
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