looks like I am not the only one living vicariously in Stormreach.
I lurve Get Fuzzy. How cool is it that I might have run by the artist before in the virtual world? Gonna check out every dude swinging a two-handed axe now. ha!
as a rude gamer t-shirt I saw online declare "Sleep is for the WEAK!"
LOL.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Why I Won't Watch Da Vinci Code
1) Tom Hanks' mullet
2) Tom Hanks' mullet
3) Tom Hanks' mullet
4) Tom Hanks' mullet
5) Tom Hanks' mullet
Ye gads! Hair-style Liberals beware!
I am an anti-mullet facist-conservative-extremist-fundamentalist!
nyeah nyeah ni boo boo
His hair offends my belief system.
Quelle horreur!
hee.
2) Tom Hanks' mullet
3) Tom Hanks' mullet
4) Tom Hanks' mullet
5) Tom Hanks' mullet
Ye gads! Hair-style Liberals beware!
I am an anti-mullet facist-conservative-extremist-fundamentalist!
nyeah nyeah ni boo boo
His hair offends my belief system.
Quelle horreur!
hee.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Thoughts on TissueAunty's birthday
It was TissueAunty's birthday today - I broke my promise to celebrate it with her over dinner(she insisted on treating) as I was in a meeting and prioritised that as more "important". I am kinda grateful that I got a second chance on my way home. Apparently after her birthday dinner, she went straight back to the little Bugis island, selling her tissue paper. She insisted on treating me to a drink and I sat with her for a while to make up for missing her birthday. Teasing her about her new haircut, I asked her what she wanted as a present. In an embarrassed whisper, she requested for a Singtel Hi Card and perhaps a little pushcart trolley to ferry her multiple bags of tissuepaper, knickknacks and all that she peddled. She also asked for prayer for her and her family.
I thought it was sweet of her to actually want to buy me birthday dinner. And sweeter still that her requests were so simple and asked for with so little bile or greed. She has so little and yet she wants to cheerfully share her wealth still. Since meeting her and being challenged by God on a personal level to be more participative in the life of the needy, I must say she has taught me some things about faith and perseverance in terrible circumstances. She has also shown me that God truly looks after the weakest and neediest in profound ways when we people neglect them. (Update: She found a flat that costs significantly less to rent and an easier-going $1200/month job manning a toilet at Bugis Village! Her son also secured a jib pushing a drink cart near Rochor. That's amazing considering her circumstances when we first met)
_________________
This made me muse a bit about something. On my DISC profile, with my high S and I, I am classified as a Counsellor/Adviser. It seems to tally with my experiences with random strangers. I am an uncanny magnet for strangers with the oddest hard luck stories on the streets. I think I send out a broadband signal - "easy target. will listen. likes oddballs. please approach. will find it hard to say no to request for conversation."
Everytime I meet a stranger with a hardluck story, I am challenged to put my beliefs about helping the poor to the test. I am fairly absolute in my statements to my students about the need to challenge the status quo and bridging the rich/ poor divide at an individual level as well as societal and international level. With each strange 'kook', I meet I am forced to readdress my values, "Are you gonna help or are you gonna walk away?"
It's really really tough and I can feel how easy it is to walk away. It is a temptation to help out in as fast, simple, "in and out" way as possible. Far tougher to make the decision to commit long-term to helping another person. It already is tough to dig out the wallet and dispense out the cash to a needy person. It is far far far tougher to go an extra mile and say you are willing to be involved beyond the chance encounter.
I know all the routine arguments because heaven knows, I have made them before in my lifetime ---- Yes, it is impossible to be involved personally with every single poor person that we meet, yes we can never insure that the money we give does not go to ciggies-drugs-alcohol, yes we are too culturally different to be of real use to them, Yes, I know we can just buy them food because that's what they need most.....so far the nagging feeling that will not leave my mind anytime I hear these arguments is - are those answers tripping just a little too quickly and conveniently off my tongue? Do my clever words disguise mere excuses? Do I want to buy food because I dont want to commit to giving real money and time to find out where exactly the person needs help in?
$5 for a pack of chicken rice is a cheap price to pay for assuaging guilty naggy feelings of "you ought to help the poor" and gaining the high of"wow,i am a generous person." We buy the drink and food for the homeless, feel warm inside with the chance to play benefactor and walk away from them for the rest of our life. We go back to our riches, they go back to an everyday reality of poverty. I just don't buy short-term charity. Real charitable work is a life-time commitment- a hard core decision to invest one's life in another's life. Cursory donations are useful but just don't cut it in terms of long-term solutions.
It's a challenge - and one that I am still wondering how I will fare in in my maiden effort/experiment with TissueAunty. Its tough...there have been so many encounters that I had where I was not sure how to go on further.
One time after working late at school, I was accousted by a drugged out looking chinese man asking for ten bucks. Not wanting to antagonise him, I listened politely to his ravings for a good thirty minutes - the conversation went from how his family betrayed him, to how he jumped off a building once and hurt his 'lum-par' (he gestured at his crotch violently to emphasise his point) but not one of his family looked after him, While talking to me, he would creepily talk at a space behind me, as if there was someone behind me. The nuttiest part was when he declared he had gone to prison before and was angry all the time and wanted to kill people. He stressed that sometimes he wondered if people walking on the street knew that he wanted to kill them. (At this point, I said, 'Oh no, I don't think they do and you should not kill people') He agreed and mentioned that in prison he met a Malay man who was always patient even though he insulted Malay guy's mom ('I call her C-B also he never angry!') From then, he wanted to be just like the guy. I nodded very very approvingly ('ya its good, learn to be like him'), gave him money and walked off as soon as it seemed like he was content he got stuff off his chest and was not gonna kill me.
Then there was the Eurasian man with one of those annoying survey forms who approached me in Raffles MRT, asking me questions about whether I liked my job and whether I was keen on switching careers to the sales company he was surveying for. I was trying to explain to him how I loved teaching and would never consider a career switch - he could not understand at all why anyone would not even try to find out how to get extra income. Conversation became a philosophical one about the nature of work and money with him trying to convince me about his stance - anyhow, turned out he was a slightly mentally unhinged unemployed man, sacked from his management post, and not taking it too well. He was a philosophy major and repeatedly made sure I understood that. Conversation lasted an hour. Anyhow, a few months later, I meet the same guy, doing the same survey at Bugis MRT. When he approaches me, I tell him straight away that he asked me before and we had a really long talk about why I was not keen. He goes on to reveal to me that he is angry the PAP wont subsidise his brain surgery and the government should watch out for how all the unemployed - "the walking dead" he called them - would rise up and overthrow it. He also names for me all the nasty civil servants he met at the CDC distributing social welfare. He also reiterates for me that he is not stupid, he came from a prestigious school and it was not his fault he was like that. (He spoke quite poshily actually, good enunciation)
And the most recent encounter: A woman with long greying hair, watery eyes and a mouth full of the smelliest, broken up , blackened teeth I had ever seen came up to me and claimed she had been praying for God to send her someone to help her pay her rent. The smell from her mouth was the foulest thing ever - she kept covering her mouth and apologising, saying she had cancer. She explains to me how her husband had died, and she was broke, and several times in conversation, she breaks off to pray one-liners to God. During entire conversation, she keeps reaching out to touch me on my hand and my stomach/waist when she wanted to emphasise "I am not a cheat. I got cheated before by a friend, I know what it is to be cheated. Please dont think I am one." We arranged to meet at City Hall the next day so I could give her some cash. She kept asking me to pray for her and how important it was because she had more vital spiritual needs than the material ones.
________
I wondered in every one of those cases, how could I offer long term commitment to help? When do I hand over the responsibilities to other people? It's a really tough call to follow. Need so much grace for it to happen! Still exploring....:)
I thought it was sweet of her to actually want to buy me birthday dinner. And sweeter still that her requests were so simple and asked for with so little bile or greed. She has so little and yet she wants to cheerfully share her wealth still. Since meeting her and being challenged by God on a personal level to be more participative in the life of the needy, I must say she has taught me some things about faith and perseverance in terrible circumstances. She has also shown me that God truly looks after the weakest and neediest in profound ways when we people neglect them. (Update: She found a flat that costs significantly less to rent and an easier-going $1200/month job manning a toilet at Bugis Village! Her son also secured a jib pushing a drink cart near Rochor. That's amazing considering her circumstances when we first met)
_________________
This made me muse a bit about something. On my DISC profile, with my high S and I, I am classified as a Counsellor/Adviser. It seems to tally with my experiences with random strangers. I am an uncanny magnet for strangers with the oddest hard luck stories on the streets. I think I send out a broadband signal - "easy target. will listen. likes oddballs. please approach. will find it hard to say no to request for conversation."
Everytime I meet a stranger with a hardluck story, I am challenged to put my beliefs about helping the poor to the test. I am fairly absolute in my statements to my students about the need to challenge the status quo and bridging the rich/ poor divide at an individual level as well as societal and international level. With each strange 'kook', I meet I am forced to readdress my values, "Are you gonna help or are you gonna walk away?"
It's really really tough and I can feel how easy it is to walk away. It is a temptation to help out in as fast, simple, "in and out" way as possible. Far tougher to make the decision to commit long-term to helping another person. It already is tough to dig out the wallet and dispense out the cash to a needy person. It is far far far tougher to go an extra mile and say you are willing to be involved beyond the chance encounter.
I know all the routine arguments because heaven knows, I have made them before in my lifetime ---- Yes, it is impossible to be involved personally with every single poor person that we meet, yes we can never insure that the money we give does not go to ciggies-drugs-alcohol, yes we are too culturally different to be of real use to them, Yes, I know we can just buy them food because that's what they need most.....so far the nagging feeling that will not leave my mind anytime I hear these arguments is - are those answers tripping just a little too quickly and conveniently off my tongue? Do my clever words disguise mere excuses? Do I want to buy food because I dont want to commit to giving real money and time to find out where exactly the person needs help in?
$5 for a pack of chicken rice is a cheap price to pay for assuaging guilty naggy feelings of "you ought to help the poor" and gaining the high of"wow,i am a generous person." We buy the drink and food for the homeless, feel warm inside with the chance to play benefactor and walk away from them for the rest of our life. We go back to our riches, they go back to an everyday reality of poverty. I just don't buy short-term charity. Real charitable work is a life-time commitment- a hard core decision to invest one's life in another's life. Cursory donations are useful but just don't cut it in terms of long-term solutions.
It's a challenge - and one that I am still wondering how I will fare in in my maiden effort/experiment with TissueAunty. Its tough...there have been so many encounters that I had where I was not sure how to go on further.
One time after working late at school, I was accousted by a drugged out looking chinese man asking for ten bucks. Not wanting to antagonise him, I listened politely to his ravings for a good thirty minutes - the conversation went from how his family betrayed him, to how he jumped off a building once and hurt his 'lum-par' (he gestured at his crotch violently to emphasise his point) but not one of his family looked after him, While talking to me, he would creepily talk at a space behind me, as if there was someone behind me. The nuttiest part was when he declared he had gone to prison before and was angry all the time and wanted to kill people. He stressed that sometimes he wondered if people walking on the street knew that he wanted to kill them. (At this point, I said, 'Oh no, I don't think they do and you should not kill people') He agreed and mentioned that in prison he met a Malay man who was always patient even though he insulted Malay guy's mom ('I call her C-B also he never angry!') From then, he wanted to be just like the guy. I nodded very very approvingly ('ya its good, learn to be like him'), gave him money and walked off as soon as it seemed like he was content he got stuff off his chest and was not gonna kill me.
Then there was the Eurasian man with one of those annoying survey forms who approached me in Raffles MRT, asking me questions about whether I liked my job and whether I was keen on switching careers to the sales company he was surveying for. I was trying to explain to him how I loved teaching and would never consider a career switch - he could not understand at all why anyone would not even try to find out how to get extra income. Conversation became a philosophical one about the nature of work and money with him trying to convince me about his stance - anyhow, turned out he was a slightly mentally unhinged unemployed man, sacked from his management post, and not taking it too well. He was a philosophy major and repeatedly made sure I understood that. Conversation lasted an hour. Anyhow, a few months later, I meet the same guy, doing the same survey at Bugis MRT. When he approaches me, I tell him straight away that he asked me before and we had a really long talk about why I was not keen. He goes on to reveal to me that he is angry the PAP wont subsidise his brain surgery and the government should watch out for how all the unemployed - "the walking dead" he called them - would rise up and overthrow it. He also names for me all the nasty civil servants he met at the CDC distributing social welfare. He also reiterates for me that he is not stupid, he came from a prestigious school and it was not his fault he was like that. (He spoke quite poshily actually, good enunciation)
And the most recent encounter: A woman with long greying hair, watery eyes and a mouth full of the smelliest, broken up , blackened teeth I had ever seen came up to me and claimed she had been praying for God to send her someone to help her pay her rent. The smell from her mouth was the foulest thing ever - she kept covering her mouth and apologising, saying she had cancer. She explains to me how her husband had died, and she was broke, and several times in conversation, she breaks off to pray one-liners to God. During entire conversation, she keeps reaching out to touch me on my hand and my stomach/waist when she wanted to emphasise "I am not a cheat. I got cheated before by a friend, I know what it is to be cheated. Please dont think I am one." We arranged to meet at City Hall the next day so I could give her some cash. She kept asking me to pray for her and how important it was because she had more vital spiritual needs than the material ones.
________
I wondered in every one of those cases, how could I offer long term commitment to help? When do I hand over the responsibilities to other people? It's a really tough call to follow. Need so much grace for it to happen! Still exploring....:)
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Snipers
According to the DISC personality test, because I am a super "S" type - I have learnt to cope with my environment by learning to be more objective and rational over people. I swear - that is a big challenge in the face of sniper-type personalities - you know, the kind who cannot resist giving you all their snipey little barbed, bullets of the day. Never fails to bring a good mood down to earth.
Is it a uniquely Singaporean social greeting to make comments about one's appearance? Like "You look very tired/haggard/fat/wierd etc." Whatever happened to just courteously asking after someone's general well-being or family?
The response that always runs in my head is - Oh gee, thanks for pointing it out! I wouldn't have been able to guess. I mean hello, if the person looks tired, he probably knows that he looks it and does not need you to unceremoniously point out how big his eyebags are, or how paunchy he is looking etc.
Of course, the silly part is, I know I have done that to people myself. Its like this horrible mechanism that pops into play - before you know it, you have said the dreaded words, "Oh wow....you look (Fill in the uncomplimentary blank)" ARGH. You have crossed over to the dark side before you know it.
Ok, must repent from planks of primary forest in my eye.
Must consciously say in head, whenever feel tempted to make 'evil comments' about someone's appearance, must replace with 'more encouraging comment' or better yet, just not comment at all.
The tongue! It is such a little monster!
Is it a uniquely Singaporean social greeting to make comments about one's appearance? Like "You look very tired/haggard/fat/wierd etc." Whatever happened to just courteously asking after someone's general well-being or family?
The response that always runs in my head is - Oh gee, thanks for pointing it out! I wouldn't have been able to guess. I mean hello, if the person looks tired, he probably knows that he looks it and does not need you to unceremoniously point out how big his eyebags are, or how paunchy he is looking etc.
Of course, the silly part is, I know I have done that to people myself. Its like this horrible mechanism that pops into play - before you know it, you have said the dreaded words, "Oh wow....you look (Fill in the uncomplimentary blank)" ARGH. You have crossed over to the dark side before you know it.
Ok, must repent from planks of primary forest in my eye.
Must consciously say in head, whenever feel tempted to make 'evil comments' about someone's appearance, must replace with 'more encouraging comment' or better yet, just not comment at all.
The tongue! It is such a little monster!
Thursday, May 11, 2006
The Measure of a Man
Have been preparing for the Prejudice & Discrimination lecture this weekend by watching this PBS documentary - "Ghosts of Rwanda". Its a stunning piece of work - full of astoundingly frank interviews with witnesses from all levels of the 1994 genocide and their reflections on what they did to help or harm. From the big movers and shakers who basically waffled and did too little too late - like Kofi Annan, Madeline Albright, Clinton - to the NGO workers, reporters,UN soldiers and victims on the ground who were face to face with monstrosity. There was even an interview with one of the Tutsi extremist murderers who had eventually converted and repented of his actions.
There were several parts of the documentary that made me so incredibly angry. We can be such stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid evil creatures.
Watching the clip of the then-Hutu extremist leader Bagassora proclaiming with absolute righteousness that every Tutsi deserved to be destroyed made me so damnably frustrated that I actually hit the table with my fist. I just wanted to punch the *#$@!. It was a stupid, meaningless act but the only one I was capable of as a distant viewer, watching atrocities in the haven of a ridiculously privileged little Asian nation, through the pixels of a TV screen, immortalised in the shiny rainbow surface of a pretty shrink-wrapped DVD.
And then there were all those amazing unsung heroes who rejected the chance to flee for sanctuary, stood their ground and refused to turn away from mass murder: Un-named,unarmed UN officers who had nothing but wooden chairs, staunch moral conviction and bare hands to push away murderers who wanted to enter a church to kill the 1000s of Tutsis hiding within; Carl, the lone church worker - the only American expatriate to chose to stay in Rwanda when the whole expat community fled - who managed to save more people than his ENTIRE GOVERNMENT could by confronting Bagassora himself in a chance meeting. Mbaye, the Senegalese UN captain who ignored instructions to stay neutral and herded 1000 Tutsis to safe zones on his own initiative.
An Irish BBC reporter is shown in the documentary walking past 5000 bleached, shrunken corpses lain out in a church courtyard, piled there by their murderers. There is no mistaking the pain in his voice as he remembers seeing a pristine white statue of Jesus Christ with arms extended in welcome while below him, draped on the steps of the church is a rotting corpse, with arms similarly spread out. He said,"I was raised an Irish Catholic but I had drifted far far away from my religion. But that day, I looked at Jesus and I prayed for His Kingdom Come."
When I watched the political giants stumble over their words, shift their eyes away and twitch the corners of their mouths as they tried to explain how they could have turned away from such Evil, I realised one thing more powerfully than ever.
The measure of a man is not his earthly power - his riches, his power suit, his military might, his political position, his number of MBAs and glittering portfolio of experiences. All those countless stupid ads for luxury watches and diamonds that proclaim otherwise can bite me - not one of those silly trinkets defines who I truly am.
The measure of a man is the moral choice he makes in the face of Injustice and Evil.
When everybody else flees and everything turns mad, what kind of person you are behind all the gloss then becomes starkly apparent.
The documentary made me really realise:
I have no love for cowards and hand-twisting naysayers.
I have no love for smarmy, empty political rhetoric.
I hate too clever-by-half, snotty little soundbite answers for terrible problems.
I hate complacency and the excuse, "It's not my problem." or "I did not know".
The anger that came out of me while watching the documentary makes me seriously wonder what kind of person I will be in any ethical storm - as large as a national genocide or as small as a classroom decision.
Will I take my stand and take heart, seek refuge in the fact that I did what God demands? To save the wretched, the helpless, the child, the widow?
Or will I flee and seek refuge in nice-sounding euphemistic explanations? And worse, bleat God's name in vain to justify my inaction and complacency?
The measure of a man surely is in whether he chooses the narrow RIGHT WAY that is less trodden or whether he chooses the wide, crowded SAFE WAY to destruction.
When my kids watch the clip this Saturday, I hope and pray that something sensible will sit inside them and help them see that.
As for me and my bile against the murderous thugs of this world - I jsut hope I will remember "But for the grace of God, there go I!"
There were several parts of the documentary that made me so incredibly angry. We can be such stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid evil creatures.
Watching the clip of the then-Hutu extremist leader Bagassora proclaiming with absolute righteousness that every Tutsi deserved to be destroyed made me so damnably frustrated that I actually hit the table with my fist. I just wanted to punch the *#$@!. It was a stupid, meaningless act but the only one I was capable of as a distant viewer, watching atrocities in the haven of a ridiculously privileged little Asian nation, through the pixels of a TV screen, immortalised in the shiny rainbow surface of a pretty shrink-wrapped DVD.
And then there were all those amazing unsung heroes who rejected the chance to flee for sanctuary, stood their ground and refused to turn away from mass murder: Un-named,unarmed UN officers who had nothing but wooden chairs, staunch moral conviction and bare hands to push away murderers who wanted to enter a church to kill the 1000s of Tutsis hiding within; Carl, the lone church worker - the only American expatriate to chose to stay in Rwanda when the whole expat community fled - who managed to save more people than his ENTIRE GOVERNMENT could by confronting Bagassora himself in a chance meeting. Mbaye, the Senegalese UN captain who ignored instructions to stay neutral and herded 1000 Tutsis to safe zones on his own initiative.
An Irish BBC reporter is shown in the documentary walking past 5000 bleached, shrunken corpses lain out in a church courtyard, piled there by their murderers. There is no mistaking the pain in his voice as he remembers seeing a pristine white statue of Jesus Christ with arms extended in welcome while below him, draped on the steps of the church is a rotting corpse, with arms similarly spread out. He said,"I was raised an Irish Catholic but I had drifted far far away from my religion. But that day, I looked at Jesus and I prayed for His Kingdom Come."
When I watched the political giants stumble over their words, shift their eyes away and twitch the corners of their mouths as they tried to explain how they could have turned away from such Evil, I realised one thing more powerfully than ever.
The measure of a man is not his earthly power - his riches, his power suit, his military might, his political position, his number of MBAs and glittering portfolio of experiences. All those countless stupid ads for luxury watches and diamonds that proclaim otherwise can bite me - not one of those silly trinkets defines who I truly am.
The measure of a man is the moral choice he makes in the face of Injustice and Evil.
When everybody else flees and everything turns mad, what kind of person you are behind all the gloss then becomes starkly apparent.
The documentary made me really realise:
I have no love for cowards and hand-twisting naysayers.
I have no love for smarmy, empty political rhetoric.
I hate too clever-by-half, snotty little soundbite answers for terrible problems.
I hate complacency and the excuse, "It's not my problem." or "I did not know".
The anger that came out of me while watching the documentary makes me seriously wonder what kind of person I will be in any ethical storm - as large as a national genocide or as small as a classroom decision.
Will I take my stand and take heart, seek refuge in the fact that I did what God demands? To save the wretched, the helpless, the child, the widow?
Or will I flee and seek refuge in nice-sounding euphemistic explanations? And worse, bleat God's name in vain to justify my inaction and complacency?
The measure of a man surely is in whether he chooses the narrow RIGHT WAY that is less trodden or whether he chooses the wide, crowded SAFE WAY to destruction.
When my kids watch the clip this Saturday, I hope and pray that something sensible will sit inside them and help them see that.
As for me and my bile against the murderous thugs of this world - I jsut hope I will remember "But for the grace of God, there go I!"
Monday, May 01, 2006
Confessions of Ashara Stormborn, 4th level Cleric of Stormreach
Over the weekend, I was reminded that I had not been updating my blog for the longest time. Its kinda flattering to know people are reading your scribblings, so easily flattered goof that I am, I shall be suckered into trying to update again.
Anyhow: The reason why I have been offline on Blogger is pretty prosaic - I have been disgustingly obsessively playing Dungeons and Dragons Online, which launched in in April. It's my very first MMPORG - Massive Multi-player Online Role-playing Game. Within 30 days, I have racked up a shameful amount of gameplay into the wee hours of morning. But hey, anything to pry that +1 Flameburst Morningstar from the cold virtual hands of the evil Minotaur Priest right?
So in a short bunch of weeks, I have become one of the subculture of gaming nerds that sit in the LAN gaming centres at 3am, yelling, "RUN! THE SPIDER IS BEHIND!! WAH LAUUUUUUUUUUU." I have become well-acquainted with the bursts of virtual gunfire from Counterstrike ("Lock and Lode!" "Terrorists Win!") as well as the grunts of hard-working orcs from World of Warcraft ("workwork").
Apart from fulfilling my persistent need for gaming, it's a really fascinating phenomenon to dissect psychologically and sociologically. Ok, ok - so it sounds like yaya papaya justification for an insidiously time-consuming teenage-boy hobby but REALLY, I think the applications of MMPORG technology and thinking in other fields would be interesting to explore.
Darling Wikipedia informs us:
"MMORPGs have existed since the early 1990s. However, they have a history that extends back into the late 1970s. Over 25 years ago, players would connect to an entirely text-based world (no graphics) called a MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) which was usually hosted at a University, sometimes without the knowledge of the system's administrators. The gameplay and community of these games was similar to the MMORPGs of today. MMORPGs have begun to attract significant academic attention, notably in the fields of economics and psychology that study relationships between real world economies and societies vs. synthetic economies and societies...."
What I think is interesting is how we take our real life personalities and ethics into the virtual world as well. Gaming - like sports - presents insights into people's motivations and character. I read somewhere that the cleric class tends to attract certain types of people - either the person wants to be really independent and self sufficient (able to fight and heal himself at the same time) or he does not mind using his own resources to help other people (spending spell points on healing other people instead of conserving for himself) Sounds more or less like why I keep playing the class.
Now based on that little tidbit of human psychology, we tested it out in real gameplay. My friend played a wizard and she got herself cursed and blinded - essentially useless to the party. I was too low level a cleric to have the spell Remove Curse/Blindness. So we sent her to a tavern in the game where other players from all over the world hang out and had her send a virtual shout-out, "Alms for the blind? Help the blind and needy". In-game, when you are cursed it is obvious to everybody as there is a gigantic ugly red and black light above your head. Sure enough, a total stranger helped out.
She, being Christian, could not resist sending out another virtual shout-out, "I was blind but now I see! Thnx."
Heh. Ok, Shall go find more serious topics to write about soon.
Meanwhile, I am officially a geek.
But you know....even The Geek shall inherit. haha
Anyhow: The reason why I have been offline on Blogger is pretty prosaic - I have been disgustingly obsessively playing Dungeons and Dragons Online, which launched in in April. It's my very first MMPORG - Massive Multi-player Online Role-playing Game. Within 30 days, I have racked up a shameful amount of gameplay into the wee hours of morning. But hey, anything to pry that +1 Flameburst Morningstar from the cold virtual hands of the evil Minotaur Priest right?
So in a short bunch of weeks, I have become one of the subculture of gaming nerds that sit in the LAN gaming centres at 3am, yelling, "RUN! THE SPIDER IS BEHIND!! WAH LAUUUUUUUUUUU." I have become well-acquainted with the bursts of virtual gunfire from Counterstrike ("Lock and Lode!" "Terrorists Win!") as well as the grunts of hard-working orcs from World of Warcraft ("workwork").
Apart from fulfilling my persistent need for gaming, it's a really fascinating phenomenon to dissect psychologically and sociologically. Ok, ok - so it sounds like yaya papaya justification for an insidiously time-consuming teenage-boy hobby but REALLY, I think the applications of MMPORG technology and thinking in other fields would be interesting to explore.
Darling Wikipedia informs us:
"MMORPGs have existed since the early 1990s. However, they have a history that extends back into the late 1970s. Over 25 years ago, players would connect to an entirely text-based world (no graphics) called a MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) which was usually hosted at a University, sometimes without the knowledge of the system's administrators. The gameplay and community of these games was similar to the MMORPGs of today. MMORPGs have begun to attract significant academic attention, notably in the fields of economics and psychology that study relationships between real world economies and societies vs. synthetic economies and societies...."
What I think is interesting is how we take our real life personalities and ethics into the virtual world as well. Gaming - like sports - presents insights into people's motivations and character. I read somewhere that the cleric class tends to attract certain types of people - either the person wants to be really independent and self sufficient (able to fight and heal himself at the same time) or he does not mind using his own resources to help other people (spending spell points on healing other people instead of conserving for himself) Sounds more or less like why I keep playing the class.
Now based on that little tidbit of human psychology, we tested it out in real gameplay. My friend played a wizard and she got herself cursed and blinded - essentially useless to the party. I was too low level a cleric to have the spell Remove Curse/Blindness. So we sent her to a tavern in the game where other players from all over the world hang out and had her send a virtual shout-out, "Alms for the blind? Help the blind and needy". In-game, when you are cursed it is obvious to everybody as there is a gigantic ugly red and black light above your head. Sure enough, a total stranger helped out.
She, being Christian, could not resist sending out another virtual shout-out, "I was blind but now I see! Thnx."
Heh. Ok, Shall go find more serious topics to write about soon.
Meanwhile, I am officially a geek.
But you know....even The Geek shall inherit. haha
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