My Gaming Philosophy

A week into complete boredom at home with not much to do...the weather
is so hot that I am only going out to resupply food...staying home and
doing laundry, sweeping the floor (believe me, I hate cleaning...there
are dust bunnies everywhere...thats why I prefer carpets to
floors...the dirtiness shows easily on floors), and watering flowers
(plants, to be exact)...Went to the hospital a couple of times cuz my
left ear was plugged...now that my left ear is cleaned out (first time
in years...probably more than a decade), I am just amazed by the
amount of noise I can hear on the street...and how my right ear (which
just got a partial cleaning) feels stuffed and weak on hearing when
compared to my left....I do regret not cleaning both ears at the same
time when I had the chance...

Ok, besides these boring daily happenings, I am really having not much
to do...yesterday was designated a disaster day here in China to
commemorate the victims of gigantic mudslide in Gansu Province (it was
gigantic, a town of more than ten thousand people got mostly washed
away and nearly two thousand died), so EVERY SINGLE TV station had to
halt all entertainment programs and broadcast the twenty-four hour
news service provided by CCTV (the two English channels had their own
news-a-thon in English, thanks to CCTV English news...the only station
spared were the few finance channels...well, the stock market wasn't
resting, I suppose).

While amazed by how the government actually do something like that
(both hijack ALL stations and politicize a man-made "natural"
disaster...yeah, it was kind of discovered that an upstream damming
project intensified the effects and volume of the mudslide...probably
why the government barred all foreign media from entering the disaster
area), I, obviously, was completely bored (probably like anyone else)
with TV for the day...with no good movies left in my father's pirated
DVD collection, I returned to look for the online games that I have
been searching for days...

For a country with the biggest broadband coverage and population, the
broadband speed here needs quite a bit of improvement. Not to mention
that wireless is so slow that downloading anything beyond a few MBs
becomes an affair lasting more than an hour, even the wired version is
limited to about 100kB/sec in download, meaning that something around
100 MB will take around half an hour when it should only take about 10
minutes tops (given good connection). Yet, with the government
cracking down on pirated gaming softwares (used to be able to find my
people at night pushing around little carts selling homemade
copies...not anymore, I have been walking around at night for days in
residential neighborhoods away from security guys), downloads seem to
be the only way.

But, even the downloads are becoming unstable (well, they are
technically illegal too given that none of those sites actually pay
licensing fees), with the cyber-police taking down download links
frequently while fighting an ongoing guerrilla warfare with
enthusiastic and determined gamers across China. In the vast
cyberspace, finding download links are still possible, but getting
quite difficult and tedious, not to mention the fact that many
downloaded softwares contain viruses and spywares, making Internet
cafes (with actually do pay licensing fees...I think) the only
reliable places to play games.

With that overview, here comes my personal gaming experience. I have
never been much of a gamer, never buying gaming software (not because
I can download online, I don't download often either...I just don't
play) and only thinking of games when I have absolutely nothing else
to do. I hate the idea of not being productive and considers gaming
for extended amount of time the least productive thing possible.
Thats perhaps the reason why I played probably less than 200 hours of
games in my whole life (especially since I didn't play much at all
during high school, a time in anyone's life when gaming is most
important)

But, like I said before, now, without a passport, friends in the city,
or any work to be done, productivity is not really on my mind here as
I continue to lounge around at home. Usually when I play a certain
game for a period of time (around 8-10 hours), I just tell myself,
"ok, my craving for games just got satisfied, lets go do something
else)...the problem is that now, my craving is satisfied, but I have
nothing else to do (for now). So I just have to keep playing until I
totally hate the game (usually that means that I can't get past a
certain level, so I give up)...but even then, for my current
situation, does that mean I have to go out and find another game? I
mean, I already established how hard it is to find and download games
around here, so why bother?

Delaying that normal period of disinterest and hate...wow, I think I
am really getting bored here at home...I am not physically suited to
play games....unlike the guys who sit around for two, three days in
Internet cafes, I feel dizzy and want to throw up after around four
hours, no matter how lacking in intensity the game I am playing
is...To force myself mentally to keep playing "because there is
nothing else to do" is just I torturing my own body...I wonder where
did my self-control go...as I go back to playing games, I just have to
say that I really want my work in Japan to start now, right now....