Travel Time!

I'm going to Europe again very soon. Won't be in the same city for more than four days at a time. Except one place where I don't know where I'm sleeping, but I will be there for over a week. There will be cold and perhaps it will snow. And trains, planes, buses, ferries . . . mmm.

I'll be in Italy for a bit of it, which is why I've been taking Italian this quarter. I have a final exam in Italian tomorrow, and then I fly off . . .

But in the meantime, I'd like to talk about video games. A friend of mine has recently acquired a PlayStation, and with it a game called Uncharted 2. It's kind of like Indiana Jones. You run around shooting people and you climb things like a monkey. It's kinda ridiculous. The dude hangs onto tiny ledges by his fingertips, and he can just chill out like that for as long as you like. And then, hanging like that, he can jump to another tiny ledge 10 feet away! C-- and I played this for something like 4 hours yesterday. We have the division of labor all worked out. He shoots the bad guys and I climb around. My main complaint is that the bad guys are Russian. I mean, c'mon! Cold war was over 20 years ago!

Video games are weird things. Even after you stop playing them, you feel like you're still in a game. After playing one day, I was reaching in the cupboard for a bag of raisins, and it was like, I bet these raisins can totally jump on the peanuts and then make it to the cashews! (Then they can hang off the edge of the cupboard and swing into my mouth?)

Also, the game relates to traveling, I swear. It takes you to Southeast Asia, and they really took their time rendering the scenes. There are some parts where you can chill out on top of tall buildings, and look around. The scenery is really pretty.

Wow. That was meandery. But so it life right now, what with tying up a billion things here, preparing for my (also meandery) trip to Europe, maybe planning things to do next quarter . . .

Next post from Europe!!