I just saw Elizabethtown again, and I still love it.  It really captures a lot of life in it.  I love movies that make you think and Elizabethtown definitely makes you think.  In the movie they really cover the idea of failure and substitute people.  It covers failure because the main character starts out by losing Mercury shoe company $1 billion dollars.  One of the most memorable scenes for me is when Claire is leaving Drew:

Claire: So you failed.
Drew: You don’t get it.
Claire: Alright, you really failed.  You failed, you failed, you failed. You failed, you failed, you failed, you failed, you failed, you… You think I care about that?  I do understand.  You’re an artist man, your job is to break through barriers.  Not accept blame and bow and say: “Thank you I’m a loser, I’ll go away now”
…
Claire: You want to be really great?  Then have the courage to fail big and stick around.  Make them wonder why you’re still smiling.  That’s true greatness to me.

It makes me wonder whether failing big is its own reward.  If you can’t fail big, maybe it’s not worth taking the risk in the first place.  I guess I’m on the edge of a precipice in my life and career.  I want to take some chances and I want to fail big.  Of course I would love to succeed, but if I fail big, I think I’ll be happy too.  I’ve always thought of myself as an artist that draws in interaction instead of paint, and I’ve always thought that I could find a way to break through barriers somehow.

Another topic that really rung a bell with me in Elizabethtown was the idea of substitute people.  Can you be a substitute person for someone?  Am I a substitute person, or a substitue person for someone else?  Sometimes I feel like a substitute person… like I’m not the one that’s really supposed to be there.  Or sometimes, I feel like I need a substitute person… to fill in for the person that I don’t have.

In any case, the ending of Elizabethtown is to die for.  It’s the way I want to go.

I know sometimes the things I write about are pretty random, but something I saw today, and someone I talked to today really made me think.  First I’ll tell you what happened.  It was a very simple thing.  I was getting my lunch at a bagel shop, and a guy and a girl that I had never met before were kissing each other nonstop right in front of the store.  They kept at it for a couple of minutes before they left the table at the front of the coffee shop.  Anyway, it reminded me of this one quote from Chasing Amy where Holden McNeil is playing darts with Alyssa Jones:

Holden: [Looking at two people making out on Banky’s car] Kind of gives you a charge though.  Seeing two people like that in love. And all over Banky’s car, no less.  You know that car’s seeing more action right now than its seen in years.

Alyssa: [Sarcastically in reference to Banky] Bubbly guy like that, it’s hard to figure out why.

Holden: You gotta respect that kind of display of affection.  You know what I mean?  Sure it’s crazy, it’s rude, it’s self absorbed.  But, uh, you know it’s love.

Alyssa: It’s not love.

Holden: Oh says you.

Alyssa: That out there? That’s fleeting.

I think I’m beginning to understand this more and more.  And I think I agree with Alyssa’s viewpoint.  Love is not about convincing the rest of the world that you are in love.  It doesn’t take romance or public displays of affection.  All it takes is a real understanding of each other… a real connection.  There have been very few couples that have convinced me of their love.  Maybe it’s because I’m so cynical now. :(  Or maybe it’s because too many couples base their relationships on fairy tale ideals of romance.  When things are wrong, they feel the need to justify their love not only to themselves but to the world as well by showing it… by showing how happy they really are.  So the couples that I know that are really in love, often don’t show it.

It shows automatically in the fact that they hang out with each other, they have similar tastes and friends, and most importantly, they didn’t change much because they are in the relationship.  That last point especially… I think I know maybe one person that hasn’t changed significantly by being in a relationship.

What exactly is sexiness?  The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as:

1. Arousing or tending to arouse sexual desire or interest.
2. Slang. Highly appealing or interesting; attractive.

I’m not sure I really know what the word means myself… after all, I have only felt “sexy” a few times in my life, and even then I’m not sure that that was “sexiness.”  In any case, if I were to define it, sexiness would be the feeling of being wanted by someone.  It’s the feeling you get when someone desires you.  I imagine that some people mistake sexiness for love, but I believe it is a totally separate thing that has very little to do with actual love.

In any case, I wonder if other people feel “sexy” more often than I do.  I find people interesting and that makes them attractive.  But, sexiness is such a fleeting feeling.  Maybe you would call the good looking girl that you passed on the street sexy, but that feeling lasts for such a short time, it’s almost only worth mentioning in passing.  What bugs me about sexiness and the pursuit of it is that people will go to great extents to be “sexy.”  The neighborhood I live in has a ton of these types of people (which may explain why I don’t fit in at all).  These are people who define themselves based on what other people think.

I’ve gotta believe that a core tenet of sexiness is how other people view you.  Maybe this is why I have rarely felt sexy and why I place so little value on it.  I’ve always lived my life under the philosophy that you can’t let other people define your happiness.  Wish me luck!  I’m alone on this journey!

Every once in a while the question comes to my mind whether I am truly “living the dream” or not.  In fact, the question whether other people are “living the dream” also comes to my mind.  Somehow, I’ve always found that I have a hard time believing that some people are “living the dream” when they are stuck in a job they hate, working for a paycheck, settling in a relationship, and denying themselves the chance to pursue what they always wanted to in life.

Luckily, I’m fortunate that a lot of my friends are making the realization that “living the dream” doesn’t mean hooking up with the hot girl or getting paid tons of money.  One of my friends just told me that she was going to get out of the whole programming field and try her hand at starting up a tea shop.  Another friend is trying to start up his own recording studio.  I think happiness is not a stable state.  In order to maintain happiness, one needs to constantly be reaching and taking chances.  The only constant in life is change, so if someone stays constant for too long, it means that something is wrong.

As for me, I’ve decided that “living the dream” is a very personal matter.  It can’t be satisfied by someone else or by what can be bought with money.  That means, even though I would love to meet a significant other, or have lots of disposable income, it does not define me or my dreams.  I can’t rely on other’s to fulfill my dreams for me.  It would be easier if I could, but it’s just not possible.  Dreams are things that need to be pursued, despite their practicality.  Denying oneself the ability to pursue one’s dreams, is the greatest tragedy of all.  Unfortunately, it’s a tragedy that is perpetrated by many people every day of their lives.

So, in answer to the question “Am I living my dream?”  I think I’ve got to say yes.  Even though I haven’t obtained what I want most in life, I am working towards it.  And like the saying goes: Life’s a journey, not a destination.

I’ve always found it strange that I tend to associate food and places together.  For example, I can remember my favorite Pho and sushi places in the place I grew up.  I can remember the best burrito place in the place I went to university.  I can remember the great pancakes where I went to graduate school.  I can remember the pasta and barbeque places I loved around Seattle.  I can remember the European breakfast, chocolate cafes, and ethnic foods in Melbourne.  This brings me back to San Francisco.  I started trying to go back to all the places I used to love when I was here before.  Pompeii’s clam chowder, the Naan n’ Curry on Irving, the Cheeseboard Pizza in Berkeley, and even chain places like Tony Roma’s ribs, Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, and the Zuppa Toscana soup at Olive Garden.

The reason I bring this up is that I attempted for the first time since coming back to go back to Olive Garden.  Unfortunately due to the ridiculous crowds on Friday night, I failed miserably.  But I did get to go back to Auntie Anne’s.  Those are some good pretzels!  I have to admit, there are things I miss about living in the US.  They still don’t outweigh all of the negatives of living here though.  For example, I was taking a bus back home and the bus couldn’t go on because the police had closed off the street due to a shooting.  I know it’s not that common in San Francisco, but the fact is that it does happen here, and much more often than people would like to admit.

Anyway, food really is such an important part of my life.  It’s sad but true, but wherever I go, there will always be new and interesting food, and it will always be one of the things that I remember the most.

Ragnor Tornquist wrote an article about What Women Want where he said:

Here’s a medium - probably one of the most powerful and influential media the human race will ever come up with - completely dominated by men…on both sides of the screen: creators, stars, and players. If we can’t get women to work in the industry, and if we can’t get women to play our games, why don’t we at least put women - realistic, interesting, powerful, vulnerable, flawed, beautiful, plain women - into our games?

I can’t help but respect Ragnar for his thoughts… there is something that is really amazing about the way he thinks and he is truly one of the few game designers that is actively trying to do something about the lack of females in the gaming industry or gaming at all.  I feel really strongly about this issue.  The games industry has a real problem.  More increasingly it is becoming a marginalized industry.  If it cannot appeal to female gamers on a mass market scale, then games will never be a true entertainment medium.

It is always very hard to take a stance like this… especially given that I’m not female.  Whenever I talk to women about this issue, I always feel like they think I’m just saying it to be nice.  I always feel like I should hide my real interest in the issue.  One reason to have more women into games is that it would be nicer to have more women in the games industry workplace, but that is not the real reason I personally want to see more women into gaming.  The real reason I think it is important to get women into games is a purely selfish one for me.

I happen to be falling further and further away from the mainstream gaming market.  Increasingly, I find that the games being sold don’t interest me anymore.  In fact, most of the games that inspired me are the old point and click adventure games.  I’m not great at skill, twitch, or strategy games.  What made me want to make games has always been to get a good story.  In that sense, the type of games that I like are the types of games that tend to appeal to the stereotypical female gamer: puzzles, story, non-action based, more cooperative or non-competetive.

So, given what I know about what I like, it’s clear to me that making games that can appeal to females will ultimately be the same as making games that would appeal to me.  I know it’s a confuzzled string of logic, but it makes sense to me.