Experiences
As the nights grow longer stay exactly the same, I’ve had a bit of a downtime week, that I would say has been characterized by inhaling content. To that end, I have decided to just talk a bit about all the stuff I’ve been reading and experiencing this week.
On Monday, I enjoyed a relaxing session of listening to Doctor Who audios with Pim. We listened to Master! Nemesis Express, from the worlds of Doctor Who. A horrible evil villain haunts the time vortex (time dimension in Doctor Who), and he has manifested himself in a train traversing the dimension for faster travel speeds. It is up to a plucky bounty hunter and her alien accomplice to stop him, before he regains a permanent body! It’s exactly as cheesy as it sounds, which it leans into, making it very entertaining; the taste is like an over the top scifi shooter.
On Tuesday, I roused myself for a small adventure, as I joined Martin and his girlfriend Bernice for the first of the Dollars trilogy, a Fistful of Dollars. I’ve seen these movies a few times before, but they’re truly classics. Notably, the soundtrack is also amazing, and I found myself whistling it for the rest of the evening. I recommend them to anyone. The next one will be watched next Sunday.
We watched the movies at the Capitol Theatre, which is quite excellent:
After the movie, me and Martin took a bus back, and we talked about books that we read. In the end, I recommended him the Empire of the Wolf trilogy, by Richard Swan, which I read last year (during my thesis writing days somewhere) and greatly enjoyed.
On Wednesday, I was not reading anything in particular. I went to Tayyiba Biryani with Yusuf, which was quite nice. After this, I went home, and me and Pim listened to the last episode of Nemesis Express (we hadn’t gotten to it on Monday). Having been re-interested in reading due to my conversation with Martin on Tuesday, I then did some arranging of my ebooks. After some hesitating I eventually (on Thursday) got myself the Earthsea series as depicted on the right as an ebook; I read a few chapters and I already love the calm narrative style. It put me in mind of the Merlin Trilogy by Mary Stewart, which I greatly enjoyed; I bet I’m gonna love Earthsea too.
On Thursday, I read Board & Conquest, by Maxime Durand. I have read a lot of this author’s work. He writes a lot of books in which a protagonist needs to game some RPG-like system, and the author is skilled enough in plot and atmosphere that reading his work can be considered one of my comfort-reads. The plot is never boring and the atmosphere is often well thought out, but you can also guess enough of what is going to happen that the experience does not become taxing. My favourite of this author is still Vainqueur the Dragon, which is one of his sillier works.
Sadly, I hadn’t noticed that Board & Conquest is a part 1, so now I have to wait for the next part.
On Friday I did not have much time for reading or listening: work had intruded, and the time I did have was spent finishing Board & Conquest. Luckily for me, I got a new desk this Friday, which I like much more than my old Desk. Unluckily for me, I had been developing a headache for a part of the week, which came to a head (mine, in fact) on Friday. I therefore took it somewhat easy, and continued my journey through Logical Foundations, by Pierce et al.
I therefore went home relatively early, but I then met up with Ferry and Bob. We have been working on the side on AuDaLa. It was an exciting meeting, which got me talkative; Bob only had an hour, but me and Ferry were busy for about 2-3 hours. After the meeting ended, my headache had grown terrible, and I went to bed.
On Saturday, I did the smart thing and ate somewhat early, unlike a few past weekends where I skipped meals on Saturday (which I felt the consequences of). I then met up with Niels, to play Guild Wars 2. I still had a bit of a headache, and Niels also was not particularly inclined to play Guild Wars, so we discussed multiplayer games and eventually played Clank!, which is an excellent boardgame. It currently has a kickstarter going for its 10th anniversary, but sadly I will have to skip on it for now; the version I would like is exceedingly expensive, and I do not currently have enough people in Singapore I play boardgames with to justify this expense.
There is a boardgame night on the 25th which I am going to, so who knows, but for now the answer is no. I also decided that I would not have a picture of Clank here, as the pictures I could find were boring. I therefore added a picture of the Order of the Stick, which I also read on Friday and Saturday. I got the pdf version of Volume 01, as I wanted to read it on my kobo, but the link is to the site, where the whole series can be read online.
Then, on Sunday, some food did not agree with me, so I stayed in my room for most of the day. I finished the game Dishonored, including DLC’s; the Knife of Dunwall was fine, but the Brigmore Witches was excellent, especially the last mission. As with many things. This means that I will be playing a new game from now; Dishonored 2 right after Dishonored may be a bit much. I think it will be the Witcher 3, which I never finished. I also continued with the Logical Foundations; my Rocq-skills are getting there!
Funnily enough, Brigmore witches contains something I also wanted to do in my DnD campaign, which I found out after planning it in the DnD campaign. This is not the first time this happens to me, nor will it be the last. I would like to say that great minds think alike, but I suppose this is more a case of there not being any original ideas anymore. At any rate, I found it amusing.
After my last blog went a bit more in depth on my feelings on work, you may ask how that ended up going? Well, in general I tried to make the work office spot a bit less an office spot and a bit more my spot, where I can feel comfortable. This was more a mindset change than anything else, and it was successful enough, so the beginning of the week I enjoyed going to work quite a lot. The second half of the week was a bit more turbulent, especially Thursday. Due to this and due to my increasing headache, Friday was a bit of an off-day for me. but I have a better office spot now (literally and mentally), so if I keep at it I think it’ll be fine in the end. Tomorrow I should focus on setting a goal for the week, something that can push my current projects further.
I have even found some lovely music albums which I listened to during work. I especially liked Days of Future Passed by the Moody Blues, which I expect some others will also appreciate, if they do not already do so. I especially think Nander will enjoy this:
I have also looked into the possibility of working from home, which is frankly never going to work with my current “desk”. I am therefore making plans to get a new desk, a decent chair, and a drawing tablet with a screen so that I have somewhere else to sit and be productive during the weekend. The drawing tablet is not strictly necessary for that, of course, but I do like digital drawing, and I am at the stage of my DnD prep where having a decent digital drawing desk would be nice.
And that’s it for this week. I currently feel like Poekie on the picture below, so I think I’ll call it a day.
Tom out.
It feels weird not ending with a recommendation, so I suppose I can do another recommendation. I’ve been relistening Avantasia at work too, so I’ll recommend the albums Moonglow and A Paranormal Evening with the Moonflower Society, which has some similarities to the tones of the Brigmore Witches and the Witcher, and maybe a bit of Earthsea, though I cannot really say yet.