Is it possible to feel homesick for a place that was never technically your home?  Is there even such thing as a “home”?  I feel like I’ve spent my whole life searching for a place to call home?  Is it even a place or is it a feeling?  Cathartic.

There’s only one place in the world that I ever truly felt at home.  It’s Melbourne.  I don’t understand it.  I don’t have any family there.  I didn’t grow up there.  I have friends there, but there is more to it than that.  It’s like I feel myself dying when I am away from it.  When I am there, I feel myself living.  It makes me think of a quote from Shawshank Redemption:

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

Why do I feel like I’m getting busy dying?  I hope this feeling goes away soon.  It’s like a dull heartache.  Maybe it’s because I just got finished watching I’m Sorry, I Love You.  It had scenes from Melbourne in it… and it made me really sad.  Can you be in love with a place so much?  If the saying “home is where the heart is” is true, then my home is definitely in Melbourne.  Will I ever be able to find my way back to where I belong?  I miss it… I miss feeling that way.  I would be happier if I never went there at all.

To some people, love is like a piece of gum.  They spit it out after they’ve chewed up all its sweetness.  But some people risk their lives for love.  Consider yourself punished.

~Moo Hyuk to Min-Joo in I’m Sorry I Love You (Episode 9)

It’s so interesting to see different peoples’ views on love.  It makes me wonder whether anyone truly understands it.

I just found out about this manga/anime called Yakitate!  It’s all about cooking and has very interesting character descriptions.  What a great idea.  I’m such a big fan of food related drama.  They even have a few episodes of the anime online:

I don’t know what it is about food/cooking related things that I love so much.  Other movies that are food related that I really enjoyed were: God of Cookery, Shaolin Soccer (the bread scene is hilarious), Tampopo, Like Water for Chocolate.  There’s something so emotional about food for me.  I often find that if I haven’t eaten well in a day, I will be depressed.  If I eat a good meal, then I feel happier.

I think you’re blind to the fact that the hand you hold is the hand that holds you down.

~Everclear, Everything to Everyone

It seems like people in America don’t know the difference between “living” and “working”.  Some of my friends complain every day about how much they hate their work, but then they say that they do it because they like it.  The problem is that they can’t differentiate between their work and their life. They convince themselves that if their work is bad, then their life is bad too… and, feeling helpless to do anything about it, they convince themselves that they like their jobs too.  What bugs me is that this thinking becomes an excuse to not do anything about their situations.  They really want a change, but they are unwilling to do anything about it.

One of my roommates has the same problem.  She comes home every day saying how tired she is because she was working so hard at work.  She also says she likes her job.  Sometimes she even gives me a guilt trip since I go into work relatively late and leave relatively early.  But honestly, she chooses to work like that, so why should she complain about it taking over all her free time and making her be so tired?  As for me, I chose the job I work, I define what hours I work, and I do the things that I enjoy doing.

Which brings me back to the quote above.  I think most people are honestly afraid at their jobs.  Their jobs provide stability and security, and they are scared of what it would be like if they weren’t in the jobs that they are in.  Sometimes they even think that they wouldn’t be able to find another job or that they need more experience before they leave.  These are all excuses.  It seems to me that a lot of Americans in particular, use their jobs like crutches because they are afraid of walking.  Their jobs become “the hand you hold”.  What they don’t realize is that this hand they hold is what is holding them down.  I’ve noticed that this type of thinking is much worse here in the US than it was in Australia.  Am I just crazy for taking the risks that I do in my own life?

I have always been a big fan of the Broken Sword series.  Funny thing is that I actually played them backwards.  I played Broken Sword 3: Sleeping Dragon before I played Broken Sword 1 and 2.  I liked Broken Sword 3 so much (despite the numerous graphical glitches), that I ran out and searched for the other two to play.  The relationship between George and Nico is to die for!

Anyway, I read this article recently about the creator of the Broken Sword series, Charles Cecil.  There are a couple of quotes that really stand out for me:

People talk about the decline of the adventure. Between 1985 and 1995, it declined enormously. But I don’t think it’s declined since 1995. We sold the same for Broken Sword 3 as we did for Broken Sword 2, and Broken Sword 1. The market is still very much there, and it’s not declining; there’s still plenty of room for adventures.

It’s really good to hear that adventure games are still a viable niche market.  Now I just need to find a way into making these niche games. :D  Seems like it’s at least ten times easier to work for a company developing the mainstream games.  Hasn’t anyone heard of The Long Tail?  I’m glad at least Charles Cecil realizes that there is still room for adventure games in this industry.

Cecil makes some other interesting comments about rising budgets and the effect on creativity that these big budgets are having, and he also comments on two games that are near and dear to my heart.  Dreamfall and Indigo Prophecy (or Fahrenheit):

Dreamfall, in particular, was very much an interactive movie, and we’ve taken a different stance.

Fahrenheit was very, very interesting. A really, really good game. I thought the fact that they simplified the interface, they didn’t have an inventory, meant that actually it was extremely simple. There was no way that it could be anything but simple to complete, and while that was great for Fahrenheit, in Broken Sword we still embrace the inventory.

I disagree with Cecil on Dreamfall… there was far more exploration and control of the story than there was in Fahrenheit.  In fact, if any game was an interactive movie, it would be Fahrenheit, not Dreamfall.  I feel bad for Ragnor Tornquist, the creator of Dreamfall.  He deserves so much more credit than that.  Though I think Fahrenheit was a step in the right direction, I think there were definitely things that I didn’t like about it.  The interaction got pretty tedious at the end, and with David Lynch’s idea of “bendable narratives” even though you had choice, it felt like you always ended up in the same place no matter what.  I even tested this out when Tyler Miles has to decide whether to pursue his duty as a cop or return home to his girlfriend.  It ended up the same in the end.  Also, the ending to Fahrenheit really belly-flopped, but anyone who finished it knows that already.

I’m not sure how I feel about the quasi-bastardization of one of my favorite flash games.  If you haven’t tried it already, you should definitely give it a try.  The game is called “La Bella Romanza” and it’s a simulation game where you play an italian woman who needs to deal with all the stresses of everyday life, family, and love over the course of several weeks.  I remember staying up until 5am playing that game!

Anyway, they released the next version of it as “Ciao Bella: The Zoom Zoom Episode“, and it retains pretty much the same feel of the original game except with constant references to the Mazda CX-7 and how great it is.  Honestly, I could do without the blatant advertising, but the game is good.  I’m kinda split about this… on the one hand, I want to play the game… on the other hand I don’t want to strain through having to read about the CX-7 all the time.  It’s kinda painful to see what they did to this game.  It feels like they really sold out.

Well it has been a long time coming, but I just found out today that Microsoft is opening up the Xbox 360 to independent development.  This is exactly what the games industry needs, and I am so happy that someone finally realized it.  Console games with their large budgets and huge technological requirements have all but killed independent development on the consoles.

I think the time is coming near where the industry will really see a paradigm shift.  There is now a real avenue for independent developers to create interesting and creative projects of merit, instead of the cookie cutter mainstream games being made by big developers.  I want to be part of this wave… and I’ll be one of the first to get that Xbox360 XNA Game Studio and give it a run for its money!  These are some exciting times.

Why is it that there are so many things so elegant and beautiful about Japanese culture?  I’m not the only person who’s seen this either.  A lot of my friends are obsessed with Japanese things, ranging from manga and anime to real life dramas.  For me, anime had some influence on my perceptions of Japan early on, but what really made an impact on me was watching the real life dramas and seeing the music videos.

There’s something in Japanese culture, that I don’t get from my current culture.  It’s some missing hole.  Maybe it’s the way that Japanese film their movies and music videos, maybe it’s the muted reservation that makes the feelings and emotions so much more strong.  Maybe it’s because I’m truly moved by songs that I don’t even understand the lyrics to.

I guess this all just came up again because I was browsing a friend’s blog and found that she posted a link to a Japanese music video.  The song was just so beautiful, and the way they filmed it was magical.  It made me remember the time when I watched Long Vacation twice!  Watching these things makes me not feel guilty for feeling emotions.  American society really restricts what emotions are socially acceptable for guys… it makes me really mad sometimes.  I often wonder whether gay guys and girls get more freedom because they are “allowed” to show emotions.

Anyway, here’s a link to the video so you can see for yourself what I mean about Japanese media

I’ve been reading a friend’s blog for about a year now… and I haven’t told her yet.  So here’s the story, I really like this girl, so I decided to do some googling to find out some information about her (I know this borders on stalking, but it was just too tempting).  Anyway, I somehow found her semi-private blog on the internet.  She obviously didn’t want it to be a public blog.

Well, I started reading it, and I realized that there is so much we have in common.  In real life, I never mentioned the blog, but part of the reason that I was so attracted to her in the first place was that we had so much in common, so it’s not that surprising that I like reading her blog too.  In any case, I find her blog really fascinating.  I wish I could tell her that, but honestly, it would be kinda wierd if I actually told her.

Her blog was kind of insipiration for me to start this up… I just needed a place to vent and document how I feel.  On the other hand, part of me thinks that maybe it’s wrong to be reading her blog without her knowing about it.  I really can’t help but be fascinated with what she thinks.  Oh well, I will continue lurking.