Sense of Urgency

Safety nets are quite dangerous.

It's true; they save your life when you fall down from great heights, but unless you've tasted high-altitude air, a safety net is all you will ever know. Nets are meant to catch you, but they have a nasty tendency of getting you all tangled up. The twine digs into your skin, wraps around you, traps your body, and never lets go.

Try not to get too complacent.

Only danger can get us to move. Perhaps the only way we can get higher is to invite a little of bit danger into our lives. So try not to get to comfortable.

Who knows how long that net will hold?

Discovery

I would like to preface this post with the declaration that L&L's Hawaiian Barbeque sucks. It was probably because of a bad menu order, but first impressions stick. Screw informed opinions, a first bad experience is one too many. It will be the last time I ever go there for lunch.

For my first real day on the job, I got the chance to explore my charge's home. Houses can tell you a lot about the person who lives there. This was how I figured out that my charge, Noah, is an Axis child -- German father and Japanese mother. No wonder he looked slightly Asian.

Speaking of Asian, I visited a game shop in the area aptly named "Game Shop." The place was a total dive, a real rinky-dink operation if I've ever seen one. Such places could often be a treasure trove for used games, and lo and behold, I found a copy of Onimusha 2. I brought it to the front, but the Thai storekeeper was unable to find the disc. As he turned around to looked through a box of CDs, I was victim to the view of his asscrack.

Seriously, pull your damn pants up.

It wasn't too great of a day, I could've done without the bad food, missing games, and unwanted imagery.

Office Politics

This is purely an issue of politics -- office politics.

This kind of nonsense wasn't part of the job description. Now I find myself asked to navigate some fairly treacherous terrain, land laden with hidden mines where things may just blow up at any moment. I am, and will always be, an impartial observer. My inclination is always to see things from both sides, but for this case, I lean towards minority opinion. The ability of the minority to invite such an overwhelming majority to the contrary displays a skewed ratio of cause and effect. From one small ripple, a tsunami arises, and in that giant wave of water, all sense is washed away.

It is Week 4, and problems seem to spring forth from every crack in this organization. At our Tuesday meeting, after a jolly ol' round of office updates, the president revealed a troubling organizational issue. It has come up before, in a previous meeting, the issue of Club Outreach and Communication. This issue almost reduced the president to tears. The problem is either personal or logistical in nature, but when you're frustrated, it might be hard to tell the two apart. Because I know that I don't have all sides of this story, I'm not backing any horse just yet. I don't like to speculate on the particulars of things I know not about, so I will never declare anything I say as the absolute truth. I can only talk about the things that I have seen and heard for myself. Unlike most people, who spend inordinate amounts of time yapping, I never say anything. The problem with talking is that you don't listen while you flap your lips. The only thing you hear is the sound of your own voice.

So what is the problem here? I'm still not sure that I completely understand, but I'm picking up pieces here and there. Apparently, there's some interoffice feuding. The President's Office and Student Services aren't properly communicating with each other. The veracity of this statement is up for debate, and perhaps owing to my unfamiliarity with most of the people in the office (this is my first year), I can't sense it. I've heard stories to the contrary, but I wonder whether or not such stories are being painted with prejudice. There are many explanations for a rude or curt response from a comrade, and it does no one any favors to assume why without putting in the effort to actually find out why.

The fundamental attribution error describes the phenomenon in which we ignore any possible external factors and simply blame the person's behavior as a part of their personality. After being brushed off by someone, we could either assume "he's a jerk," or "he must be having a bad day." We can never know for sure unless we ask.

Any evidence that supports interoffice feuding is entirely secondhand to me. I heard of the case in which one commissioner went to Ben with an idea that was curtly rejected. It could be erroneous to attribute that curtness to the conflict of Club Outreach and Communication. It could simply be a case of personality, rather than any lingering side effect of Student Services vs. Office of the President. I can't comment on curtness, possible rudeness, back talk, or bristling in the presence of the "enemy." Another piece of this interoffice feuding was a story relayed by the president herself, to all the commissions, that "half of Student Services hates me." I haven't heard any such talk (then again, I don't hang out with the Student Services interns) around the office. I'm not saying it didn't happen, I'm just saying I haven't experienced it for myself. Joy and Mareesha also told me that they had experienced some frigidity at Starbucks, where they greeted some Student Services people but were then promptly ignored. Borna, who said he was friends with all the Student Services people, also sees tension.

Even with all these people claiming that there was tension, all of them came from the President's Office. I haven't spoken with anyone from Student Services, but my biggest question is, did they feel the tension too? Does tension exist if only one side feels it? Perhaps I'm being too short-sighted here. Perhaps my peers were able to understand that any seed of tension will quickly grow and escalate into full-blown war, and that they had to take dramatic measures to stem such an event from happening. That would explain why a curt demeanor could suddenly transform into outright hatred, but a leap of logic is required to reach that conclusion.

From the office of the President's side, it sounds like conflict over Club Outreach translated into organizational discord, a sort poisoning of the well. Frustrated and angry, the executives said nasty things about the other office to their subordinates. These nasty things create fictional ulterior motives. Now the Office of the President wants an athletics commission, they want to take over Student Service's job of Club Outreach, and now rumors have spread, and these rumors have changed the interaction between the two offices. I wonder now, who is truly victimized?

If the Student Services people altered their behavior towards members of the President's office because of rumors, then certainly the onus would be on them. Alternatively, the president's story to the commission convinced all of us that Student Services is talking behind our backs, and this news altered our behavior. The question is, who is ignoring who?

This is just my hypothesis, but if I spoke with any of the Student Services people, I predict I will receive stories similar to the those I heard from my co-commissioners. In another scenario, they might not have noticed any tension at all, and it was all imagined on our end.

This is a real-life case of Rashomon, a story fraught with multiple perspectives and contradictions. Is there an objective truth in this web of deception?

Too bad I'll never find out.

Prey

The announcement of Prey 2 spurred me on to beat the original, an intriguing sci-fi shooter with portals before Portal made portals cool.

You play as Tommy, a Native-American who gets sucked up in a giant spaceship called the Sphere. The entire adventure revolves around his quest to save his girlfriend while navigating the Sphere's treacherous interior, filled with portals and gravity-defying catwalks. In the process, Tommy unlocks his heritage and gains access to his spirit form, which is necessary to solve basic navigation puzzles.

The game looks great with a dark, twisted, and fleshy interior. The lighting is moody and the monster design nightmarish. Unfortunately, the game ascribes to the template of corridor shooter, where the best tactic is classical strafe and fire. Enemy AI and level design aren't sophisticated enough to support the flanking style of gameplay Halo is known for. It boils down to point and shoot.

On the bright side, the game's armory is unique enough to make the task of shooting aliens fun. Pistols with secondary sniper function, bug bombs, and leech blasters are just some of the fantastic alien weaponry you'll get to wield.

The real star of Prey is the level design. The use of portals, perspective shifts, and reverse gravity makes the game unpredictable. Combined with the spirit form gameplay, simply walking through the ship is like solving one giant puzzle.

Prey's journey is fairly lengthy, easily running over ten hours, but the narrative is gripping enough to urge you on when times are tough. The game is a throwback to classic fps with a modern twist; a true bridge between old and new school.

Feel So Free

I'm a man of simple taste.

My needs are few and my wants even fewer. I am easily satisfied; so when I am asked about my long-term goals, it only follows that I give a simple answer:

Financial freedom.

What do I mean by this? I want the ability to do as I damn well please with my money without worrying about survival, without stress over loans, mortgages, or credit bills. All I want is gravy, no debt and pure profit.

It's nice to want things, but its a different story when it comes to actually achieving them.

How does one start a quest for financial freedom?

As with any quest, the first step is preparation. You have to stock up on inventory, armor up, and train before setting foot in the real world. The most important tool in this quest is money. It boggles my mind why people would take their most important tool and hide it, allowing it to languish in low-yield savings, or even worse -- doing nothing in a checking account. An offense even greater than inefficient utilization is the abuse of credit. You're taking your money and hammering it against objects you can't afford until your most important tool whittles away into nothingness.

Too much of our money's potential is squandered between debt and apathy. Granted, one cannot avoid operational costs since we need a place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear, and transportation to get us places, but one has to differentiate between needs and wants. The ability to do so will build up personal capital.

In the guide of sound financial advice, you will hear two things: cut back and save. It's a simple strategy that eludes too many of us, but it provides a steady path towards our goal of financial freedom.

I was never one for the tortoise.

I prefer to leap over obstacles to land in great positions without years of sweat and toil. It's a risky method of living, but the rewards are too great to ignore. If I'm going to go into debt, it will not be because of foolish purchasing habits, but because of risky investment behavior.

I have observed that nobody in my family has really dealt with investment opportunities either in the form of bonds or stocks. Maybe a CD here or there, but nothing that screams "Wall Street!" My brother-in-law is enamored with the prospect of real estate and believes that land is the key to wealth. I won't argue about the worth of homes and the gains from renting property, but I feel that land is still too much of a slow burner. Land requires development, development requires a lot of start-up and operational costs, and it could be decades before profit is realized.

An intellectual such as myself prefers to deal with the realm of ideas. Intellectual assets, not physical, are the real money makers this generation. Social networking, mobile devices, inter-connectivity, advances in communication technology is where the real action is at. Nothing will replace standard industry such as automobiles or basic home-keeping products, but their steady returns are dwarfed by emerging industries that never even existed years ago.

We can be tortoises or we can be hares. You can bet on the veteran and make a tidy sum, or you can put it all on the newcomer and win big.

Whichever path you take, your quest starts now.

Outliers

Everyone of us knows an outlier.

A special kind of person who seems to have everything in the world coming to them. A person who, through some exceptional means -- whether it be true talent, amazing luck, an affable personality, or a great support system -- enjoys life to the fullest. By the mere act of walking, all obstacles fold in awe of them as they waltz through the thicket of life. Friends nip at their heels, the only time you hear from them are when they post photos from foreign countries, and they shout status updates about car chases, shootouts, and explosions. They possess a worldly palate, having tasted delicacies from Africa to Asia, they have actually seen National Geographic scenery in real life, and they know how to find a good place to take a dump in five different languages.

All the while we sit in our homes and spectate their spectacular lives from afar. We ask ourselves:

"How do they do it?"

"What do they have that I don't?"

"Why are they off living the dream while I'm still stuck here dreaming?"

We can't even console ourselves with the thought that we may one day pass them because deep down inside, we know they'll always be above us, and we will be trying to catch up for as long as they live. Despite our envy and resentment, the moment we meet them, we are reminded of why this person is so much better than us.

So what do we do?

Be happy for these outliers?

Ignore them to maintain the integrity of averages?

Acknowledge their skewed life?

I can't speak for anybody else, but I can only take solace in the old adage that one man's garbage is another man's treasure.

Battlefield Bad Company 2: Vietnam

Considering my heritage, I could've welcomed this addition to Bad Company 2, but I've held out on getting it for the longest time. Now that I've played it, my decision was justified.

It's not that Vietnam is particularly bad, it's just awkwardly skewed in a few different places. The maps are suspiciously flat, which reduces the role of Recons a great deal (my de facto class). Certain maps seem to favor one team over the other, leading to an imbalanced game. The terrain just isn't very interesting to navigate and there aren't enough guns. The limited weapon selection reduces encounter variety and makes everything repetitious.

Pass over this expansion, it's not worth it.