Lockout
I was just wrapping up a very productive day. At the “office,” I’d worked up a Flash video animation from start to finish and sent it off to my boss — all before anyone back home opens their email for the first time on Monday morning. I finished shaving (a once-every-three-days operation that I mostly like to postpone until I can’t stand it anymore), completed a rigorous workout on our in-home exercise machine, ate lunch, cleaned up lunch, took out the trash and watered the potted plants. Apple called at around 5:30 in the afternoon and said she’d be home soon, so we could eat dinner together. Having finished my work, I fired up the Xbox 360, connected to Xbox Live and made sure all of my games were up-to-date with the latest patches.
At length, the doorbell rang. This is Apple’s signal that she’s arrived home, so I can shut down everything here in the room (A/C and lights off, computer on standby, keys and cell phones in my pockets) and come down to open the door for her. This time, I was in the middle of starting a download of Street Fighter II: HD Remix — the free trial version — from Xbox Live Marketplace. If I waited until I finished this task before going down to open the door, Apple would be sitting out there for another couple of minutes. So I stuck my iPhone and the house keys in my pocket, turned off the air conditioner, and decided to run down to open the door and then head back upstairs to get the download going before dinner.
I went down, met Apple and brought the clean laundry into the house. (Each day, thanks to the housekeeper Apple’s family employs, we take dirty laundry to the print shop and we bring a clean load home.) I told her my plan and then dashed back upstairs to put the laundry basket in the bedroom, start downloading the game and then return to the kitchen. But for some reason, as I grabbed and twisted the bedroom doorknob, the door refused to budge.
For a moment, I thought maybe it was stuck. Back when it was raining here every day, the house’s wooden doors soaked up a lot of moisture and expanded, making it hard to open and close them. But it hasn’t rained in days. Further attempts to open the door made it pretty clear that it was, to borrow a phrase from Peter DeLorenzo, notgonnahappen.com.
In my haste to leave the bedroom, I thought, I must have accidentally pushed the locking button on the inside of the doorknob before closing it behind me. So I ran downstairs to tell Apple to ask her brother-in-law A — who had just brought her home — if there was a spare key somewhere to open that door. A had just left the house, though, so Apple called him, got the location of the key and we tried it. But even though we clearly had the correct key, and the knob was clearly unlocked and turning freely, the door was still not opening.
Reloading
I’m sitting in the lounge of Sittara Spa in Hat Yai, Thailand, while Apple enjoys a 50-minute reflexology session (that’s a foot massage to the rest of us). I would have gotten one, too, except that we were walk-ins and there was only enough room for one. Because of the possible benefits of reflexology on total body health, including the reproductive system, the choice of which one of us should get the massage was obvious.
There’s very calming music playing in the lounge. It actually sounds like music you’d hear in a baby’s nursery, akin to the chimes of a music box. It actually reminds me of the music from that part of Fallout 3 when you’re a year old. It’s quite comfortable and relaxing in here, even if I’m not having a massage myself. I could use the quiet, frankly. It’s been a busy week. So far, with the exception of my ability to sleep late this morning, the weekend has been likewise.
My parents know this already, but our first round of fertility treatment has concluded in failure. Everything went as perfectly as one could expect, but when it came time for the forces of nature to do their thing, we just didn’t get lucky. Such is life.
We actually handled this turn of events pretty well, all things considered. Especially Apple, whom I am very proud of for picking herself up, dusting herself off and keeping herself busy with forward-looking activities and plans — and in relatively short order. It will be a couple of months before we can try again, so in the meantime we’re trying additional treatments, both holistic (cue the foot massages) and spiritual (a planned trip to visit a famous monk in northern Thailand who is well-known for assisting couples with fertility issues). And in my case, there’s always work, so I haven’t that much time to dwell on it all. At least I can say that my work is going very well.
Tonight we’re having a big family dinner — a Christmas dinner, I do suppose — at a popular Chinese restaurant. I’ve been there before. It’s always one of the favorite destinations when our family wants to have a big get-together, particularly when there is some occasion to be celebrated. The traditional multi-course Chinese meal usually includes fish maw soup, steamed bass with ginger and vegetables, fruit salad, and lots of other things. Quite a bit different from the western-style turkey and mashed potatoes that I’m used to at the holidays, but certainly no less enjoyable.
At times, particularly after the failure of our first IVF attempt, I was feeling a bit consumed by consternation and despair over our situation. How many more sacrifices would be necessary? As much of a pain as these setbacks may seem, today I had to admit to myself that we could be in much more dire straits. An article on MSNBC’s website about the abject hell that my hometown (Detroit) has slipped into was the galvanizing force behind these feelings. We have almost no debt, no other health problems to speak of, wonderful families on each side of the Earth, a stable and well-paying job, a house of our own in the mostly-pleasant climate of Florida, and yes, plenty of toys. By comparison, I could be unemployed, living in a burnt-out corridor of Detroit with nothing but a rusted-out Toyota Tercel and a GED. Things could be much worse. And it’s this thought that I try to use to motivate myself when things seem bleak.
This coming week will probably be pretty quiet due to some family members heading off on a vacation of their own, so I’ll use this time to recharge myself and collect my thoughts. I probably won’t take any days off for the holiday; maybe one at most. But at least they’ll probably all be fairly calm days. I expect to immerse myself in a lot of reading and writing, especially out on the patio where the cool breezes of Thailand’s mild season are best felt. (Oh yes, there’s another reason to celebrate my present circumstances: No snow to clean up, drive in, or otherwise deal with.)
Apple should be done soon, so I’ll wrap this up. Did I mention the spa has free broadband Internet via wi-fi? I think I will be glad to come back here whenever Apple would like.
Join The Midnight Club
Midnight Club L.A. box art
Among the bevy of Xbox 360 games I picked up shortly after landing here in Thailand is Midnight Club L.A., the latest entry in Rockstar Games’ action driving franchise. You might think of the Midnight Club series as analogous to EA’s Need For Speed series, because they have a lot in common: Arcade-style racing packed with visual realism; action driving with a “gangsta” street racing element; police chases; plenty of destruction; and a host of cars from the import tuner, American muscle and exotic categories.
“Ugh…gangsta street racing again?” I hear you moaning. “It probably has a thuggish rap soundtrack too, right?” (Yeah, but it’s also got genres like rock, electronica, techno and death metal, and you can turn off the crap you don’t want to hear.) Despite how this sort of game seems to have been done to death, particularly under the Need For Speed moniker, Rockstar manages to pull off something just a little different, whose flavor is just new enough that it entertains you in new ways. And if you’re like me, and can never get enough of a good action-oriented racer with some cool cars and lots of property destruction, Midnight Club L.A. becomes that much easier to love.
While I’ve kept up with the aforementioned Need For Speed series, it’s been a long time since I played a Midnight Club game. The last time, in fact, was Midnight Club 2 on the PC, probably back in 2003. That game was fun — I even blogged about it at the time, but the article was on my old domain so I don’t have it handy. However, it did seem more frustrating than Need For Speed, in the sense that you’d always find yourself dodging around a ridiculous amount of traffic while you’re racing, and the game even seemed to deliberately lead you into calamitous crashes that you could never possibly have avoided.
In Need For Speed, if you got into a crash like that, you could pretty much go ahead and restart the event. But Midnight Club is deceiving, because the AI is programmed to let you recover fairly easily from these kinds of mistakes, even making it possible to come back and win if you’ve beat your car to hell. For this reason, Midnight Club always starts off maddeningly frustrating on the surface, but once you realize that it’s okay to screw up, it takes a lot of the edge off and the game becomes more enjoyable. Because after all, who doesn’t like crashing and bashing their video game car all over the screen? The destruction effects may not be as good as other games in this genre, but high-speed wrecks are still plenty satisfying.
In Midnight Club L.A., Rockstar has followed this same formula, which is so recognizable that I was immediately reminded of my vintage adventures in Midnight Club 2. But it adds in a modern style “story” with cutscenes and the like, and unlike the pretentious, self-aggrandizing cutscenes in the Need For Speed games, Midnight Club’s unfolding story seems to almost lampoon itself. At one point, the Japanese girl you’re about to race taunts you by saying, “Good luck! …Actually, no. No luck for you!” To which your character responds in disbelief, “Um…wow, yeah, great trash talking, there.” There’s this current of self-deprecating humor about the whole thing that I found deliciously amusing.
When the game begins, you find yourself dropped into the virtual shoes of your player character: An un-named, vaguely ethnic dude with a buzz cut who’s just arrived in Los Angeles from somewhere out east. You want to get into L.A.’s street racing scene, and your first contact is an egomaniac named Booke who hooks you up with your first car. Hilariously, the cars you can choose from at the start are all beaters, with mismatched body panels and lousy paint. Booke talks all gangsta, and what’s funny is that your character reacts to him like he’s got to be some kind of clown, which is great because that’s the reaction I always have in real-life to these overblown racing game characters. It seems Rockstar is having a giggle at Need For Speed’s over-the-top “balla” personalities. It’s a giggle that’s richly deserved.
As the so-called “career mode” of the game rolls on, you run street races against the local L.A. hotshots, upgrade your car, buy new cars, and do it all over again. There’s a few different race types: ordered races, which are checkpoint-based sprints from one location to another along an ordered path; circuit races, which have you following a series of checkpoints for multiple laps; and landmark races, where the game gives you a start point and an end point, and you have to make your own way there. The sandbox-style game world is like that of Grand Theft Auto, in that you’re dropped into a living, breathing virtual city and are allowed to explore at will. The game world isn’t as vibrant or as humorous as GTA’s, but it’s still plenty real.
Progress
When I first had the bright idea to prefix my entry titles with “Travelogue” while we’re overseas, I didn’t really stop to consider the result: that every post I make for the whole rest of this trip would start with that word. That’s an awful lot of posts. As you can see, I gave up.
It’s Saturday afternoon, and I’m just finishing my work. For the uninitiated, many Thai people work six days a week, Monday through Saturday, including my wife’s family. Since everyone else is working, I figure I might as well, too. Sometimes I use this as an excuse to put in a few extra hours and make some more money. Other times — like this week — I use it as an excuse to piss away half of Friday playing games during business hours, and then finishing the other half of my day’s work on Saturday. 
The little gaming setup I put together for myself here is paying for itself over and over again. It’s great to have a little slice of home here in Thailand to help recharge my batteries. I still thought I’d miss driving, but so far I don’t. Perhaps because I’ve been playing a lot of driving games!
In relatively short order, we’ve fallen into our usual routine here. Each morning, Apple’s brother and his wife and daughter leave the new house at 7:30 so they can travel back to the family business, known to me as the “print shop.” (Which is exactly what it is: a printing business, old-fashioned mechanical presses and all.) I stay at the new place with my computer stuff and do my own work for the day. Around 11:00, a tuk tuk arrives with my lunch, a specially-prepared “miniature version” of the family meal at the print shop (we’re reimbursing Apple’s family for the cost). Usually Apple goes over to hang out with her family by mid-afternoon, and returns in the evening with dinner.
On Saturdays, it’s a bit different. We’ll get up early and go to the print shop with my brother-in-law at 7:30. Getting up early this one day is not usually a big problem, but it was particularly difficult this morning for some reason. Perhaps in part because we got up early yesterday as well, because we had an appointment at the hospital for the next milestone in our fertility treatments. And I must have slept weird, because my neck is all sore. Anyway, I’m ready to go back to bed, the earlier the better. Tomorrow’s Sunday, so we don’t have to get up too early, but the housekeeper is coming to clean the new house so we’ll have to get out of the way at some point.
Through all of this, we’ve been making progress in our fertility procedures. Despite being the last woman to enter this month’s treatment regimen (her doctor only accepts a small number of IVF patients every month or two), Apple was the first to produce a set of healthy eggs for retrieval. After the eggs and a sperm sample were collected, they were brought together in a lab — and now, five of those eggs have been fertilized and are showing good progress. Soon, we’ll be ready to transfer some of those eggs back, and then all we can do is wait and see what happens. I know my fingers are crossed!
A Thai Thanksgiving
First off, to my American-based audience, which I suspect is the entirety of it: Happy Thanksgiving!
Obviously, there’s no Thanksgiving holiday in Thailand — that’s a uniquely American (and, OK, Canadian) tradition. Nevertheless, being an American in Thailand, and one who often cited Thanksgiving as one of his favorite occasions thanks to my love of turkey and mashed potatoes, the holiday is certainly on my mind. It was oddly surreal, an hour or so ago, as I watched the local CBS morning news broadcast on my Slingbox while I wrapped up the day’s work. There was all manner of talk about traveling weather, airport delays, how to avoid eating yourself into a coma, and so on. Even special turkey graphics on the five-day forecast.
Naturally, since there’s no Thanksgiving here, I figured I might as well work; it’s not like I have much else to do. Actually, I had originally planned to spend part of the day playing games on my new Xbox 360. That was always one of my private little Thanksgiving traditions, one that even my parents may not be aware of. I’d secretly relish getting up a little early in the morning on my day off from school, and indulge in playing my favorite computer games — Comanche, Wolfenstein 3-D, Doom or The Legacy: Realm of Terror — while my grandmother bustled busily about in the kitchen, and the delicious smells of roasting turkey and stuffing began to fill our home.
There’s not much roasting turkey around these parts; even Apple remarked thoughtfully that there’s no such thing as turkey in Thailand, as far as she knows. But there are plenty of family gatherings, smells of food cooking, and celebrations of other occasions. And there are also games, courtesy of my Xbox. As it turned out, though, I was unable to replicate that part of my personal Thanksgiving tradition, because this day got off to a particularly poor start and I spent most of the morning and afternoon trying to catch up.
It’s been an interesting couple of nights. I’ve been sleeping pretty well on this trip so far, thanks to the excellent accommodations here at the new house. Two nights ago, however, I had a particularly lousy sleep. I chalk it up to the wild and unsettling dreams, although from practically the instant I awoke in a cold sweat, I couldn’t remember anything about them. After that disjointed slumber, I hoped that the next (Wednesday night) would be an improvement, but it was even worse.
Last night, around 4:00 or 5:00 a.m., I awoke to the fundamentally disturbing sound of a near-indescribable humming, whining…thing. It’s hard to describe exactly what it sounded like, so about the best I can do is to say that it reminded me of a tornado siren running on two almost-depleted AA batteries. It mostly held its pitch, but occasionally modulated a half-note up or down like some kind of diseased…thing. Really, it was quite unsettling at four o’clock in the morning.
Travelogue: Settling In
As my workday comes to a close, and my efforts gladly wind down, I think that what I’m most looking forward to this evening is going to bed.
Rainclouds obscuring the mountain range
It started pouring rain last night and continued, off-and-on, into most of today. I had the house to myself, my office room enveloped by the view of the mountain vista outside, enshrouded in cotton-like filaments of rain-soaked fog and mist. The picturesque landscape actually reminded me of the sky texture from Doom episode one, which I guess is appropriate, because that texture was taken from a photo of a Chinese mountain range.
Last night I was up quite late, feeling suddenly wired (probably a jet lag reaction) and deciding that I may as well direct my pent-up energy toward getting some work done. And oh, was there plenty of work to be done.
I knew in advance that yesterday, my first full workday in Thailand, was going to be a doozy. As it turned out — and this always happens to me when I book a vacation or other travel date — my company planned to release a monumental new product on that very day. Every time a new product lands, it’s my job to update the downloadable files for our free trials and licensed copies, add the product to our website, write and deploy the press release, do all the ancillary marketing, and lots more.
This time, though, the development team decided not only to release the new product as planned, but they also launched major revisions to two of our other products, so the work was multiplied even more so than usual. Add to this the fact that I also needed to write the company’s monthly email newsletter, bearing announcements about the release, and get it sent out within 48 hours. Saying that I had my hands full yesterday would scarcely do justice to the reality of the situation.
I wasn’t helped by the Internet connection here at the house. It’s an ADSL system provided by TT&T MaxNet. It was up and running just fine when we got here, but as I started working, it became clear that we were going to need to upgrade from the “Indy” package to the “Premier” package. “Indy” is meant for casual users; tons of ports are blocked (no Slingbox, torrents, or even instant messaging with my work contacts) and connections between here and the western hemisphere are de-prioritized.
Apple and her brother A called in to get the package upgraded. Then MaxNet did something dumb: They disconnected our existing line, even though it was going to be a full day before they could get the new line up and running. So my connection went down in the heat of this crazy workday battle and stayed down for about five hours. After a flurry of calls and complaints we finally got MaxNet to turn the “Indy” connection back on until they could get the “Premier” one ready.
I didn’t have connectivity again until evening, so I went back to work. Eventually I stayed up late enough to run into the U.S.-based crowd as they came to work for the day, and we started exchanging emails, and the next thing I knew, it was three in the morning. But I finally wrapped up everything that I needed to, and got to put a whopping 15 hours on my time sheet for the day.
Travelogue: So Far, So Good
Greetings from Southeast Asia! It’s our second and last day in Bangkok, Thailand, before we head to our final destination in the nation’s south. So far, our travels from the U.S. have gone swimmingly — no significant delays, a handful of pleasant flights and experiences, and no problems of which to speak. In fact, I think this may have been one of the most pleasant journeys to Thailand that I’ve yet taken.
We departed from Florida on schedule this past Friday morning, after my parents graciously shuttled us to the airport in Apple’s Mazda (and then put the car away with its tank full of fuel stabilizer). Our first flight took us by way of Atlanta — doesn’t every Delta flight? — where we had a light breakfast and then proceeded on to Seoul, South Korea. We seem to try a new airline each time we travel, and this particular 15-hour flight was our first on Korean Airlines.
Atlanta’s international terminal, known fondly as “Concourse E,” is much more nicely-appointed and much less harried than its domestic terminals. We hit a streak of good luck almost right away, when the gate agent told us that “it was pretty quiet today” and offered to relocate us to a seat at the front of the plane, without us even asking. We ended up with two bulkhead seats in row 28, the very first row of the economy cabin. Although the armrests don’t raise and the seats are a little narrower, I’ve come to like these bulkhead seats because of the abundance of legroom. Perhaps most importantly, my knees aren’t constantly embedded in the back of the seat in front of me, and this helped a great deal.
In fact, the first third of the 15-hour flight disappeared almost without trace as I essentially slept through the whole thing in one- or two-hour segments. This is unprecedented for me. The food was quite good, and between my iPhone and an actual printed book in my pocket, I was kept occupied the entire time. I tell you, the eReader application I wrote about earlier is a godsend. And I’m glad I bought a couple more eBooks before we left, because if I hadn’t, I’d be just about out of reading material by now!
Although we were almost an hour late in taking off from Atlanta, we still had plenty of time in Seoul with which to grab a bite to eat and explore around a little. Admittedly, this was probably the low point of the trip, as we were both feeling tired and a bit grouchy and sore from being seated so long. Also, Incheon International Airport isn’t as impressive as we’d hoped. I think Apple was hoping to buy some Korean cosmetics there, but there weren’t any to be found. There was also an extreme dearth of food to eat, as the food court was undergoing renovation and was completely closed. We eventually found a little restaurant and had a meal, but it wasn’t anything special.
Our final flight — a nearly 6-hour jaunt — was also on Korean Airlines, and took us directly to Bangkok. Again, we asked if there were any better seats available and were “upgraded” to an exit row, where we had just two seats next to each other and a huge amount of legroom. I thought this was an excellent location, the only problem being that we were right next to the galley and thus often had to endure a crowd of flight attendants as they scurried about.
I dozed off again for a couple hours, but the last three hours of the flight dragged on and on for both Apple and I. At that point, we could think of little else besides getting to our hotel room, stretching out and sleeping for twelve hours. Finally the plane landed in Bangkok, we picked up our luggage (all of which made it there intact), and met Apple’s brother M, who was there to escort us to our hotel by taxi.
Gearing Up
Our travel date nears, and so, as you might expect, preparations for said trip have just about reached fever pitch around here. Not that I’m spending 24/7 packing — I usually plan things far too elaborately to get caught in a flurry of last-minute prep work. Rather, a little bit of planning has been going into every day, woven inexorably into the fabric of the day’s events. A phone call here, a purchase there, a list made today and a schedule made tomorrow.
So far, everything is on track.
I’ve had a lot of things I’ve wanted to post about, but every time I’ve thought about sitting down to craft an entry about one of them, I decided that I would much rather leave the room instead. Absurdly, some days, temperature is one of the biggest deciding factors. After spending 8 or 10 hours working in this room, the combined heat of body temperature, dual-core computer, three widescreen monitors and related equipment is enough to send me scurrying for the relative cool of the opposite end of the house. (It’s no accident that said opposite end is home to my 57″ TV and bevy of game consoles.)
Speaking of games, we are almost upon the video game publisher’s favorite time of year: the Christmas season. After an almost completely dry year, in which I purchased only one video game (Grand Theft Auto IV, back in June), the fourth quarter has started to become home to a whole gaggle of extremely hot releases. To name but a few from my wish list:
Mirror's Edge: Faith overlooks the flow of the city
- Mirror’s Edge
- Gears of War 2
- Fallout 3
- Silent Hill: Homecoming
- Left 4 Dead
- Tomb Raider: Underworld
- Rock Band 2
- Midnight Club: Los Angeles
- Need For Speed Undercover
- Resistance 2 (PS3)
- CUBE! (Kidding.)
Mirror’s Edge is perhaps my personal favorite of the bunch. It’s an action game played from the first-person perspective, but takes the genre to a completely different place. Rather than playing the role of a muscle-bound guy with an over-the-top arsenal battling aliens or zombies, your character is Faith — a spry young woman whose proportions are actually realistic — ahem — and whose job it is to deliver covert information by hand. She’s called a “Runner.”
In the futuristic city setting of Mirror’s Edge, “Big Brother” government has come to fruition. All communications channels are monitored by the State. Faith and the other Runners exist as a human conduit of information, transporting hardcopied packets of data from one interested party to another via rooftops, tunnels and other roads less traveled. The game combines parkour, the French-originated extreme sport of free running, with urban exploration and political intrigue. And it does it all with a refreshingly bright and colorful style that takes the place of a typical game’s dark and gritty presentation.
Having played the “teaser” demo of Mirror’s Edge just this week, I can confidently say that this game has catapulted to the top of my “must-have” list for the year.
Oh, but I’m not done yet…not hardly. Klicken Sie hier:
Metal Gear Mania
OK, so the PlayStation 3′s raison d’être — Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots — has finally been released, bringing the legendary Metal Gear franchise to a close. As I started to read the reviews of the latest installment, I remembered way back in 1998 when I bought Metal Gear Solid at the Orlando Fashion Square Mall, completely on a whim. It was one of my most memorable PSone gaming adventures — I spent hours playing it.
While Metal Gear Solid 2 was a disappointment to me (and to many others, apparently), and I never touched the third game in the series, I am starting to become interested in the final installment. The reviews are through the roof, and the gameplay videos look captivating. The problem is, I would have a hard time appreciating most of the story in MGS4 because I’ve only played a small fraction of the games that came before it, and the storyline is of utmost importance in this series.
Deciding to remedy this, last night I dug through boxes in my closet until I found my original PSone copy of Metal Gear Solid, the same one I bought ten years ago, and threw it into my PS3. It looked pretty dated, but I was surprised at how much of an improvement the PS3′s “smoothing” feature made on the picture. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find my copy of MGS2 — I think I probably traded it away for something a long time ago.
Today, though, I discovered that Konami has released a Metal Gear Solid: Essential Collection, which, for a mere $30, gives you Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance and Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence in one box. The perfect primer for Metal Gear Solid 4.
Now I’m seriously thinking about buying this.
