2013 Reflections

Reflections, reflections. The year will be over soon and reflections for the year must be done before the new one comes. はいそれじゃ今年のまとめ：

去年の話だけど代表としてＫＡＣＡに参加しました。　そのお陰で音ゲーがどれほど世の中の人を繋げるのがよく分かった。　台湾も韓国も日本も音ゲーでつな げるなんて凄いなぁ。　ＫＡＣＡの後は皆とつなぐためにツイッタはじめました＠ＲＢＲｉｅｚｚ。　大体音ゲーツイットしかしてないけどまぁそれでもいいん じゃない。

Lost my favourite music game and had to fly overseas just to play it but it's being replaced for now and SDVX is pretty fun. Can't beat RB for me and I don't really bother as much with scores but it's good enough I guess. Don't really know whether I can convince anyone to bring it back but I guess I can try at least.

Also I might be slow but it seems I'm a little more well known in the arcade community than I thought I was. >_> Oh well. I've been holed up at Cityvibe much more this year compared to last but I'm still thankful for all the friends and rivals I've made from SDVX, RB, and IIDX. It's nice to see that the music game community is still pretty awesome irl even if the JB FB group has kind of gone to hell and back, and it's really heartening to see that competitions, as rare as they are, are as lively and active as ever. Hopefully next year is a better year with regards to music games as this one - still hoping someone will change their mind and bring RB and Pop'n back into Singapore at least ~_~.

Got randomly dropped into a great project group and a great OG - probably the luckiest thing to happen to me this year as far as NUS is concerned. Wonderful people, and I honestly have no clue how my ISE life would be like without these guys. Kind of a scary prospect in hindsight. Damn. Really glad that you guys are there, and I'm looking forward to hanging out and working with you guys again next sem.

小さなバンドに入りました。　あまり練習時間がないけど大切にしています。 十年以上やった聖歌隊を止めた後歌うチャンス全然なかったからなぁ。　久しぶりの歌える場所があることは「運が良い」としか考えられない；これだけを心か ら感謝してる。　これからもっと皆と仲良くなりたいけどちょっと難しいだね。　まぁもうバンドのページいっぱい書いたからここまででいいかな。
　
Realized once again how great my friends are, over the various meetups to catch up, random crashing of people's houses (and vice versa), and all the conversations on FB/WA (across timezones or not), regardless of whether they lasted minutes or hours. Thanks for being with me through the good and bad times, the boring and stressful periods, and the joyful and painful days. バカな時でも支えてくれて本当にありがとうございます。 親友達はどれほど大切なんてもう一度分かってくれました。 シンガポールにいてもいなくても僕にとって皆は大事な宝なんです。

All in all the year's had its ups and downs but it's been mostly great everywhere. Life's been good to me even though I don't think I've done that much, and hopefully it stays that way next year - but I guess I'll be putting in more effort into keeping things good, be it friends, colleagues, work or life.
来年もよろしくお願いします。

The Power of Words

You said that talking to people online is but a distant form of communication and relationship - that it would be near impossible to really know a person just by talking online. Perhaps there is more truth to be found in real contact - mannerisms, appearances, the little subconscious signals the human makes that he or she will never notice but will never escape your gleaming eyes. The online, I suppose, is but a farce; a makeup of the soul and brain.

You don't realize that sometimes, talking is all we have. And online is all we have. Not everyone has the luxury of physical contact, the knowledge of when your friends will be available to meetup, let alone the choice to meet them tomorrow to catch up over a cup of coffee. The doctor-to-be in Australia came back for a week in December - the previous time was July, and the one before over a year back. He's freer next year because it's his research year, but what after? Back to the rural hospitals with minimal access to the outside world? The looming thought of marriage to his highly conservative girlfriend? The realization that the only time I will ever get to meet him again is with a $800 air ticket and a prayer for him to have good fortune not to encounter too many of the dying?

For some, even contact is a privilege an honour we are undeserving of. But I digress.

There are those who get close and then start talking to each other online very often. I'm the opposite in cause and effect. As far back as I can remember every single friendship I've forged across the past decade that has lasted the test of time has started from talking online; it is the cause, not the effect. There are those who can't bother with farces, illusions, the makeup of the self and soul, who speak their mind without hindrance, who bare their self without fear. I trust them to take it, and they trust me to receive likewise. Of course trusting in a person and being trusted by a person are completely different matters - no doubt I fall completely guilty of mistaking this - but it works.

What difference is it, after all? The difference between talking with a person through a monitor and talking to a monitor is merely the trust that the person on the other side is truly a person - no robot, no fake, no pretending. When you don't bother with these things communication might get complicated - misinterpretations, misunderstandings. But you adjust and learn, and trust that this is the person behind the words, the person in the personality. Nothing clears up a misunderstanding faster than frankness and questions.

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I'm at the stage where I can only write incoherent writing without proper linking between everything and conclusions. I blame 3am writing without the alcohol. 

リーズの旅

久しぶりに人に気になることになったけどどんな言葉が今の状況に相応しいかな

"まあいいやｗｗｗ" ってわけがないんだよボケｗｗ

まあいいやｗｗｗｗ

Ironies

There's that inherent conflict in saying 'Rest in Peace' to a man who committed suicide. The knowledge that you say it with full awareness that peace was the last thing to ever hit his mind and the last thing that he ever found on Earth and can only find it in rest. The fact that by its very definition no one can ever empathize with him, and whatever sympathy present is more pity than understanding of the pain experienced.

I only wish what you can find peace where you've moved on to.

More thoughts on music games

I realized after a while that how good you are at a game really changes your perception of what is 'fun' regarding the game. While I can only speak in terms of music games, I'm pretty sure this is applicable to any genre (and in fact any discipline or hobby). At the risk of alienating every reader of this, I'll stick to the genre I know.

For one, you realize a lot more thought went into certain things you overlooked before and how other things actually have much less thought to them. It's the difference between why Lindwurm, Valanga and Vairocana are awesome charts in Reflec Beat and HAERETICUS is anything but - the difficulty is literally thrown in for difficulty's sake because you cannot figure out why this person out there decided that this should be a chain, that should be a hold and this should be a double. If the rationale fits, the notechart becomes an extension of the song very naturally; you can understand the notechart as quickly as you understand the song.

Another example I can think of is how all the relatively noob people at IIDX all go "wow Beastie Starter on IIDX is an 11 this is easy, this is boring stuff" and I see the KACA 2012 IIDX representative comment that it's a really good chart and I tend to agree. Another example is Just Awake on Jubeat and how I can remember Jovian immediately calling it out as a lazily done song and being shot down because it was apparently "fun" - in the sense that you had to press lots of buttons.

For most people in music games they look at one thing first - difficulty. Anything that doesn't fulfill this requirement is a terrible song. You can see the examples everywhere in music games - everyone rushing for Evans on jubeat just to score a C, some kid proudly declaring that he's 'youngest in SG to AAA deadlock' and every other person around looking forward to spam lvl 10+ songs, and people thinking of every song in IIDX as a 12 ("is it me or is this easy?" when you're barely passing 11s on Easy Clear? seriously?)

Once you start clearing all the actually hard songs, however, you start to understand the subtleties of the difficulty and the creativity behind it. All the hardest songs in IIDX are hard for very different reasons - Mei for the legendary slow-to-fast scratchspam, Plan 8 for that highly note-intensive scratch ending, Nageki for its doublescale near the ending, p†p for the hold notes and sudden trills at the ending, DIAVOLO for the ultra fast staircases, Himiko for the entire slow ending. All these have a lot of thought into them to make them difficulty but NOT insanely awkward, where the player can understand how s/he's being challenged by the chart creator in a manner that isn't "I want you to P1 scratch with your right hand" or something equivalently stupid.

Then there're somewhat iffy things like Timepiece Phase II CN Ver where there's a random measure with a hold note on 4 and a 3-5 jack if I remember correctly. It basically screams "I want you to random this because I know it's stupidly hard to hold the middle note and have jacks on the two notes just beside". If you can understand how a chart is supposed to work AND STILL disagree with the creator on why it's bad, the chart is irrevocably bad. Of course this understanding can't be superficial like "fast streams are bad" or other forms of arguments derived more from one's lack of skill than from one's capability. Once again, to rage at HAERETICUS again, it's the difference between the hold notes in Valanga and the hold notes in HAERETICUS - you cannot imagine Valanga without the hold notes because sufficient thought went into it that you imagine the holds as integral to the notechart. HAERETICUS not so.

Ultimately though being good at the game changes your perspective of difficulties and fun - you start to understand the motives and mindset behind certain charts. You can start to see how certain things fit in together naturally (this may be circular logic but nvm) and other things are sloppily thrown together. It may seem somewhat like a case snobby connoisseur-ism, but I do stand by the idea that you should be good at the game before you start criticizing whether something is good or bad, especially against someone else much better who expresses his/her opinion about it.