Hello everyone. Despite spending much of the weekend madly writing notes and doing readings that have accumulated over the past three weeks (already?) of school, I’ve finally had the first chance since the year began to breathe. Things have been terribly busy - as usual - and I’ve learnt a lot in these few weeks, in school and out of it.

A lot has been going through my mind, worries and thoughts of the future. About the direction my life should be taking, professionally and otherwise. This very evening, something reminded me of a… sentiment that went through my head over the New Year.

Usually, on particularly poignant days (birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, etc) I make a special prayer asking for protection and peace for my family and friends. This year, more than ever, I felt the need to extend that prayer to include the entire world.

I haven’t lived long, but yet I feel that our future has never felt so uncertain as it does today. I’m not saying it’s bleak - rather, I believe that the next decade or so will be a pivotal point for the world, for better or for worse, to take a new direction.

And so, I hope and pray that we have the strength and courage to meet the challenges of the future, and see past our differences and overcome our racial shortsightedness that has been the hallmark of every mistake we have ever made. I have full faith that humanity can do what we need to do; at the same time, I know fully well how capable we are of majestically screwing everything up.

So, for what it is worth, I pray that everyone out there has a successful and safe year; that we all find it in ourselves to value and cherish our loved ones, and protect them and be there for them; that we see past the propagandist vomit that’s woven into the media and never forget that we’re all brothers and sisters; that we never forget what Jesus or Buddha or Mohammad (or otherwise) has taught us, and live our lives in their example; and finally, that we stay true to ourselves.

Amen.

“2008 is 2 weeks old, and my recent busy-ness (today is the first time I was in school not wearing business formal / casual) has ironically got me all introspective…”

…was what I was typing before I chanced upon this clip, courtesy of my brother.

It’s ABSOLUTELY brilliant. The guy who plays Solid Snake does a really good job mimicking Snake’s actions; he moves exactly like Snake would. Brought a tear to my eye.

Anyone who knows me well enough knows that I am a rabid Metal Gear fanatic. I could rant on for hour after hour about how perfect every single Metal Gear game is; but beyond all that, the underlying message behind every Metal Gear game truly touches you deep inside, in the same way the Matrix movies do. The Matrix movies and Metal Gear, pioneers of bullet-time special effects and the stealth video game genre, respectively, are too often only remembered as such; look deeper and you’ll find deep, mind-shattering messages that slap you in the face hard and make you rethink the very meaning of life itself.

It is for that reason why Metal Gear II, arguably the worst game of the series, has probably the most special emotional connection with me, because of one special line, uttered by Otacon dealing with tragedy: “You can’t wait to be loved. You have to go out and find it… You can’t just wish for a happy family - you have to go out and make it happen.”

I played this game when I was in my early days of serving National Service, at a lonely and rather desolate point in my life. That quote gave me strength, and allowed me to find my place and grow as a soldier and a friend to those around me.

Until someone goes out to make a Metal Gear movie, however, the non-gaming world won’t get a chance to appreciate the unbelievable story and the great educational message that Metal Gear has for its fans, which is a huge pity. I read that a movie is in the works, but if they massacre the movie the way they did to Hitman, it would be a tragic waste.

The new year is six days old, and school starts anew tomorrow. My iBook G4 laptop has been out of commission since early December, which has made things tremendously troublesome, but I had since gotten kinda used to working on a plain, old-fashioned, but significantly faster PC. Comatose iBook and exams partially explain my MIA status from this blog, but my affliction with inertia, recent propensity to write ridiculously long posts (which end up half-written and unedited), among other things, have kept me from it.

Thanks to much help from The Dad, I was able to dismantle my once immaculately white, now greying with age iBook G4 (warranty’s over anyway) and take a look inside. Not easy. Lots of screws and even taking it apart requires some degree of dexterity which I obviously lack. At least that’s done, and my iBook screen hasn’t gone out of commission yet for the past half hour since we fiddled with the inverter cables n stuff.

Anyway, I went to Montreal with my girlfriend over the December holidays. It was awesome. Montreal is a really pretty city, and having been to Paris when I was younger, I was reminded a lot of it, particularly in the architecture of the place. The Montreal subway system is excellent, and in my opinion rivals the best subway systems in Asia - trains move fast, there were few delays, and even when there was a 15-minute delay during the weekday rush hour in downtown Montreal, everyone in the large crowd was somehow able to get onto the rather narrow train carriage. C’est magnifique, says Joel.

There’s this really cool thing called the Biodome in Montreal which is kind of like an indoor domed zoo thing, it doesn’t have a HUGE variety of animals, but the various flora and fauna in there seem to be extremely well taken care of. The Biodome recreated a number of environments, from a tropical jungle to a huge underwater mini-ocean… pictures should follow if time permits.

All right. I’ve got quite a few things to do before school starts, and I want to get them done so I can have a good (final?) rest tonight before the grind begins anew.

To whoever reads this, have a safe and enriching year ahead.