Rice and Ramen

I learned a few things on Monday: first, don’t go climbing off the trail on a mountain; second, always bring somebody with me to tell me not to do stupid things while climbing a mountain; third, despite my fear of heights, I will do stupid things to take a pretty picture.

I learned these things in what could have easily turned out to be ‘the hard way’. Maybe, had I watched 127 Hours I would have already known at least one of those. Learning these things doesn’t mean I’ll change my behavior, it just makes me aware of the fact that I’m a bit of an idiot. But, I guess you might be wondering how I learned them. The story goes something like this…

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Woah, slow down a second. This isn’t a proclamation, declaration, or any other kind of -ation about me and marriage. A lot of people I know have been getting married or engaged lately, and a lot more people I know have been attending the weddings of people whom I don’t know. So, I just wanted to put this into writing somewhere where it will hopefully still be around when (if) the whole marriage thing does happen.

I don’t want to be married until I’m at least 29. I feel like that’s an appropriate amount of time for me to figure out where I’m going with my life, hopefully find steady and satisfying employment, and have any potential debts (figurative and dollar figures) paid off.

Now onto the part that little girls dream about and little boys make farting noises about. The wedding itself. My wedding will be cheap. Partly because I’m cheap and partly because well, what’s the point of spending tons of money on something that will be nothing more than a fleeting memory and one night potentially filled with worry and apprehension? So here’s how I see it going down:

1) Send out humorous RSVP cards to whomever we (I’m going to pretend to include my potential and still imaginary spouse from now on) think may want to come.

2) Tell everyone to either bring money or a wonderfully written card about how much they love us (or both!) for a gift. By the time I’m getting married, I’ll have too much junk stuff of my own to want people to buy us even more apartment cluttering items.

3) Spend 1/2 the budget hiring a kickass photographer and renting a photobooth so people can take their own funny/fun pictures. I’ll probably have lost most of my memory by the time I’m 40, so I’ll need good pictures to use as my replacement memory.

4) Potluck reception; I know my family and friends have some pretty delicious recipes and this option would no doubt be much cheaper (and more tasty!) than hiring some silly caterers.

5) Spike Jenna’s drinks with alcohol to make sure she gets crazy drunk.

6) Hug everyone goodbye and drive to the airport (in all our finery) to fly somewhere cool. Maybe Disneyland?

So, I’ll see you all there in 7 years right?

Everything has an anatomy. How it’s made, how it’s structured, put together. A lot of times the best way to figure out how something is put together is to take it apart. Unfortunately with some things, there’s no ‘prime example’ that can be deconstructed and to figure out exactly how it ticks, what makes it perfect. 

Games are like that. There’s often that imperceptible something that just makes it click. People try ad infinitum to recapture that feeling when they make the sequel, or when they make a cloned game but it rarely seems to work. The Super Smash Brothers series has managed it, I just don’t know if the PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royal team can capture it too. I sure hope they can. (But that name… Ugh.)

Cover letters don’t seem to have a perfect anatomy either. Their perfection changes depending on who is examining it, and what it’s purpose it. I’m applying for jobs in the game industry, jobs I’m passionate about and would love to do. Not jobs so I can get rich. I don’t really care about getting rich, I just want to enjoy my job and the people I work with. So what do I write in my cover letters? 

The hiring manager at Bank of America probably just wants to know I am competent, so I should tell him that yes, the skills on my resume are legitimate, and here are examples of me doing great things with them. I doubt they’d care, or even believe, that the reason I applied there was that I thought their loan structures were fascinating and that I wanted to be a part of a company that did such a good job monetizing people’s high risk loans.

But game companies are different, or at least I want them to be. They have products that people can in fact be passionate about, that often times millions of people are passionate about. But how much does that count for? Does the fact that I’ve played games for 80% of my life count for anything? I can espouse my passion and desire to work on games in my cover letter, and hope that the snippets in my resume show my competence, but does a hiring manager at EA even like games or care if their PR people do?

I’m sure smaller companies care, but who does Activision-Blizzard or EA hire in their HR department? Who’s my audience? It would be nice to know who the doctor is that will be dissecting my specimen. 

What is a blog about really? Am I supposed to update my wonderful readers (i.e. my family) on the ins and outs of my boring life looking for work? Or do I turn it into a bit of an editorial and share my thoughts on things that interest me? I think a little mix of both will suffice in answer to this internet-age-old philosophical query.

Anyway, there’s been a lot of brooha about this thing called Kickstarter and what one hyper-successful project means for game developers everywhere who are looking to put food on the table. It’s been a while since it all started, and things have had a chance to shake out. I haven’t yet seen any other hugely successful runs, and I doubt we’ll ever see a blockbuster title funded in a similar way in the next few years, but it seems like a fair number of game projects are at least getting enough money into their pockets to keep them working for a few months. People are willing to spend money on things that are sometimes quite literally just concept art and years away.

I personally haven’t ‘backed’ any projects on Kickstarter to date. This is a mix of not seeing any projects that I’m really interested in and my dislike of filling in a boxes to create a new account on a new website that I then sends me more new e-mails that I don’t want. Plus I’d have to fill in my payment info to back anything which means that many more boxes to fill. I don’t like boxes. I guess you could say I like to live my life outside of the box.

But, I’m actually going to sign up for an account after I post this. Because, you know what? - Spending $15 or $20 to help somebody make a dream a reality or create an interesting film feels a lot different from spending $15 on some do-nothing item from the store or a bag of chicken. I like that feeling.

Interesting Gaming Note: Saying that you’re ‘backing’ in MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) games like League of Legends means you’re returning to base. :) Kinda like retreating but with less… fear.

The room was bright, really bright. The front spotlights pulsed in a rhythm; dull red, brighter orange, blue, blazing white and back to bearable red. The crowd was calm but anticipation clung to the light. In the whole room there were 2 girls and maybe 45 guys. I saw another girl in the lobby, but she was working, not there to watch the show.

We sat down, things were about to start. I held a skinny can of Mountain Dew, the first I’d had in a while. My uncle drinks more Mountain Dew than that before breakfast. He’s always drank a lot of Mountain Dew, even after there were ‘reports’ that it would shrink testicles. He loves the stuff. He’s also the reason I got into games. If he wasn’t on the other side of the world, I’m sure he would have loved the show, and possibly the free Burger King they handed out. I’m not sure about his views on fast food.

As the camera panned the crowd I shrunk a little bit, I’m not really big on being in the spotlight in random situations. My boss lit up a little. He told us we can get a banner or flag for a team if we cheer for them. He was going to cheer; he was going to cheer wildly. I could tell just by looking at him. He wanted that flag. Or maybe he realized that I’m slightly camera shy, and that he was sitting next to me, so if he cheered then I’d be on camera. Who knows? Regardless, he got the flag, and I got to be the white guy on the screen smiling awkwardly.

In my giddiness I kind of forgot the announcing would be in Korean. I don’t understand much Korean, much less than than now, actually. I understood StarCraft though, so I didn’t really mind the flow of what amounted to basically gibberish running through my ears while I stared at the screen and stole random glances at the players’ lightening fingers. It was my first live StarCraft II match and it was awesome.

I went back six months later. This time my mom, sister, and brother came along. Funny thing about video games, my mom and sister don’t really play them - especially StarCraft. They also don’t speak Korean. While Jarad and I sat there like fat, happy little kids, my mother and sister sipped instant coffee and waited for the strange light show, men in boxes on computers, and little critters running around blowing each other up on the screen to be over.  

Sorry mom and Jenna, next time we’ll watch a Barbie show, I promise.

To there, and all the places in between are places that I’m going, and places that I’ve seen, but there always seems to be a time in which I don’t know where I am.

Okay, back to seriousness. It’s time for an update on my life. Fair warning: this will not be an interesting blog about video games, world events, or the latest celeb gossip. It’s also going to be kinda, sorta long.

I haven’t been very forthcoming with the people who read this (that is to say, the anonymous people reading this who I don’t talk to privately very often).

I am unemployed.

Boom, there it is. It’s kind of scary for me to read, let alone type. And oddly enough, it’s less scary to read from Korea than it would be for me to read from Michigan. I feel a bit like a failure, and yes, I know, I’ve been told often enough that I’m not. But I still feel it. It’s not that I thought I’d never be ‘between jobs’ or that I actually lost my job through any fault of my own (well, I suppose I could have learned Korean faster), and I’ve only technically been unemployed for something like three weeks, but I feel like a failure. I’m just glad I’m not currently a failure in my parents’ basement.

And don’t worry mom and dad! I won’t be, I promise! :) 

For anyone wondering about why I am jobless and living in a room that is actually smaller than most bathrooms back in Michigan, here’s a quick summary of the last eight months.

August-Sept: Work in Korea, have fun, edit stuff.

Sept-Jan: Work in Manila, have somewhat less fun, sweat much more.

Mid-Dec: Told I will be moving back to Korea in Jan and signing a ‘probationary’ contract with Nexon.

Jan 17: Moved back to Korea, waited for that there contract to land on my desk.

Jan 20something: Hear a ‘rumor’ that the project I’m getting hired for is getting dropped, still no contract.

Jan 30 or so: ‘Rumor’ pretty much confirmed.

Feb-March: Continue on at Nexon editing PR materials, vetting a few community event plans, and playing basketball and soccer. Also, playing games, reading articles, enjoying Korea.

March: Accept last paycheck and wait for family to show up for their visit.

That pretty much brings us up to the point where my family visited me in Korea and drained my bank account (yes mom, I know you have paid/are paying me back, I just like to pretend I got to bankroll your vacation for once). And that’s the end of my sob (or at least frown!) story.

I’ve been told by a few people in Korea that Nexon should have hired me anyway. After all, they had made a promise, flown me all around and really gotten my hopes up. Honestly, I wasn’t too crushed by the news. I understood the business I was getting into, it’s video games - projects die all the time and people go with them. I also had figured that the ‘probationary’ contract probably wouldn’t have been renewed after I finished localizing the project I was hired for; I can’t speak Korean, what am I going to do in a Korean company? So really, being unemployed at this juncture isn’t too much of a shock, it was just kind of in my lower/worst case scenario box. I had planned to be transferred to work at Nexon US, or Europe, but we all know what they say about plans. 

End pity-party.

Now what am I doing? Well, hopefully it’s not too overboard, but I’m creating a Microsoft Access database of potential job opportunities and applying for them this week before heading to Japan. Oh, that’s right, I’m also taking a trip to Japan to visit a friend since I’m in the area and haven’t seen him in six years or so. I hear he’s lost some weight.

After Japan I’m going to do some traveling around the southern bits of South Korea and then, assuming I have a job lined up to start soon, possibly a little backpacking in Europe. If it’s still no dice on the job front, then I think I may head back to Michigan to crash with my brother or somebody else for a bit, just no parent’s basement… hopefully. I make fun plans, execution… we’ll see.

So, I lost my job, but I get to travel, find a better paying job, AND I don’t have to feel guilty or use vacation time for any of it! Silver lining right?

From now on I will no longer make promises about what my next blog post will be about. I promise.

Today, I slept in until 12:45pm after answering a phone call at 8:30am, getting on my computer and making 2 phone calls. Also, my stomach hurts. Goodbye morning.

My family left a couple days ago. They are now all presumably safe, warm, and comfortable back in Michigan. My dad and grandfather can now have food made by my wonderful cook of a mother instead of the rather dubious concoctions that end up on a plate when my dad is in charge of nutrition. I think I know where I get my cooking prowess from; he makes scrambled eggs with french vanilla creamer, I make ramen noodles with instant coffee mix.

It was nice seeing (part) of the family again. Being a tour guide for 10 days in a country that you speak about 0.04% of the language turns out to be a rather taxing task. I can’t complain though, I learned that my sister will likely be in more debt when she graduates than my brother was, my brother will possibly be making more money each year than I will make in 3 years soon, and my mom didn’t hate the place I found for them to stay in. Win, win, win. 

It’s interesting that I can say with relative certainty that my family has now seen more culturally or historically significant places (not including the inside of bars) in and near Seoul than most of it’s inhabitants. I read somewhere that less than 10% of people will ever leave their birth country, I wonder how many of those 90% even visit ‘important’ areas or sights within their own country. I’m guessing relatively few.