Saturday, February 29, 2020

2/2020

Feb 27
I'm trying to do 4 blog posts a month, at least until I'm employed again.

Anyway, after God-knows-how-many applications, my dad finally began to question why I wasn't even getting to the interview stage. Personally I believe I was aiming too high, picking roles at major companies with 2-3 years' experience rather than 0-2 (which are much fewer in quantity). But he decided to take a look at my resume, and concluded that it was hot garbage (my words, not his).

Funny. Most of my friends remember me tidying up my resume around December and venting because I was asking him for help and just getting a sort of "do it yourself." Like I appreciate he's trying to push me to be more independent, but this is really something I could use experienced guidance on?? Hello???

Oh well. He spent an evening giving me a bunch of advice and now I'm over here trying to revamp the thing. Better late than never.

I'd have made much better progress by yesterday, too, had Mom not been yelling her ass off at the maid for the whole bloody day, resulting in a lasting headache. One thing that's better about my household - eight, nine years ago my parents would have just told me to stop being a sissy and finish the work even while sick. They're a lot more considerate now. (No doubt some of it is because of the current COVID-19 epidemic too.) Doesn't change the fact it's loud as fuck, though, or that they were at it again this morning.

Feb 29
Hey, leap year day.
So I'm on the verge of finally tidying up my resume. It's good timing because I don't have much to play at the moment. Monster Hunter World added a new quest and Azur Lane has an event, but that's about it. I've even been so bored that I went and bought myself a copy of the old classic Diablo II to replay. (When I played it as a kid it was on a pirated copy as I had no money back then, so this is due payment for the fun I had).

Yet as I say this:
  • Grim Dawn updated today
  • Guild Wars 2 updated yesterday
  • Path of Exile announced its next update, eta 2 weeks
  • Warfame has even announced its sweetest update in years - after leaking players like I predicted, they finally decided to listen and make the changes I (and many other players) have been asking for (for years, mind you).
So there's a lot to do. After I finish my resume I have to go back to revising my SAP course. I've done all the lessons but I need to revise so I can pass the online exam.

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Honestly when I look back on my childhood, I was a kind of a huge asshole. As a kid I stole, I bullied, I lied, I fought with other kids. I don't really know why I did all the things I did, either. I remember I stole because I was jealous (and then I returned the items later, after regretting it.) But the rest? I have no idea.

And then at some point I changed, but I don't know when. I remember going to church at 13 and learning more about Christ - I attended a Christian primary school but I didn't really understand the religion until I came to this church. Outside church, I also remember my deeds came back to bite me in middle/high school, as everyone split into cliques, while I was alone: unpopular, occasionally bullied, and constantly lonely. I was miserable, but I think it was the combination of this faith and suffering from my teenage years that tempered me into a better person.

Yet for years afterwards, the loneliness continued to overshadow my life, even when I had no reason to feel so. I stopped being bullied but I had developed a very asocial aura and people avoided me. For years I believed I was unpopular because I had no personality, so I was driven to compensate with achievements so I could be recognized and respected. I was a particularly artsy fellow: English, creative art, and music were my top areas and I worked relentlessly at them, often forgoing the success of my other subjects (except math, which I also loved). Then I went on to military service: not only did I become a respected musician but I also spent my free time going to the gym and poring over books on learning how to socialize, even reading stuff like PUA (although I concluded most of their ideas were too illogical for me to make use of). I even began to pour my time into video games like League of Legends as I was just so hungry for any sort of achievement.

And it paid off, didn't it? Somehow, I did find friends in all of these stages - in the final year of high school, in military service. And then in college I achieved my end goal, the answer to my loneliness: a girlfriend.

Yet now I realize this was a poor objective. My lifelong pursuit of companionship netted me a fair few fake friends in high school. The semester my parents forced me to quit music (in the hopes I would study harder on the other core subjects), I lost the 'respect' and 'friendship' of many of them, amplifying my problems. Later in college, it netted me a girlfriend who didn't have the security or emotional maturity to maintain a romantic relationship. Maybe I saw a little of myself in her.

When I dumped my college ex and my depression hit for a second time, it wasn't just because I was heartbroken. It was because I understood, at least inwardly, that I needed to search for a better purpose in life. And honestly, I don't really know still. But in the three years since, I've become significantly more content as I have narrowed my life purpose search down to three main possibilities.
  • Improving job conditions. I am not so idealistic to think employees and employers can come together in an idyllic kum-ba-ya and find an arrangement that makes everyone happy. But I do believe there are things companies can do to make work somewhat less of a suffering experience that also doesn't cut into profits (and in fact can bolster them, more often than not). The problem is I don’t know how lucrative of a career this is, especially in Singapore where HR is not perceived as a particularly valuable service by locals and local companies.
  • Making people smile with creative design. It's the area I've always been good in, so why not? My claim to greatness is I have always been good at all three areas of creative art: visual, audio, and literary. I've also become interested in making video games as art; I'm not the best gamer but unlike a lot of game designers I am backed by a solid math foundation, enabling me to analyze systems at a deeper level. The problem is I think this is an even less lucrative career than HRM, given how saturated the art/games market is and how much they struggle with copyright and legality.
  • Improving sustainable development in Singapore. I'm still looking into this one, as I just thought of it last year, it's a rather new area, and I'm not a science-y guy. But I'm guessing that saving the environment could also be aided by efficient management and finances, not just a question of the science.

Monday, February 3, 2020

Meh

Finally finished the core story of Monster Hunter World: Iceborne. Then had a long chat with one of my gamer friends.

The game really shows you how shit the industry is. Because honestly, Iceborne isn't super amazing. Yes there are great fights, but also a large minority of essential fights (Shrieking Legiana, Velkhana, and the final boss Shara Ishvalda, to name a few) are frankly terrible. You just run around trying to hit a monster that can't be hit half the time, then you get smacked by a random tail whip or dragon breath out of nowhere and then you just…die. Even after you learn the hunt and it becomes easy, it still feels like a massive "ugh, why?"

Yet this is Steam's top seller for January 2020. And it's well-deserved. Because frankly, what other games suck less than Monster Hunter World? For all its unfun elements the game remains a relative masterpiece.

Anyway, I finally fell asleep at like 4 AM, and got up at 3 PM and saw the piling unfinished job apps over the past few days. Oops. I also need to get back to the gym. My soul hurts.

In lieu of this mess, I've decided to edit my game design goal a bit, make it a somewhat lower life priority. Instead of writing the story/lore/whatever, my goal this month is to complete designing all "skills". (What are skills? That's a topic for another day.) I estimate there will be at least 125 entries, so my goal is to finish 80-ish this month and 45-ish next month. In April/May I want to design the enemies in my game, with hope for at least 30 variants. (I will also begin drawing them a lot more; been a while since I drew anything though, so that will take practice.) And finally, I'll go back to writing, with the hope of still hitting a grand total of 28,000 words by Dec 31.