A E I O U

It sure has been quite a bit, hasn't it? So I guess just stay a while and listen.

I wanted to broach the topic of words today. It's been on my mind the last couple of days, because it's a strange thing, isn't it? That humans decided on what to use as words, just a series of sounds strung together. But that they still mean so much, that they can make you feel so much.

Words can make you happy, sad, upset, or anything else, really. It's a very strange thing to think about if you look at it like that. People always say actions speak louder than words, but I believe that words can have more power than actions often of times. That they can have a longer lasting effect, be that positive or negative.

And then there's even the subject of the lack of words. When a person doesn't talk to you, it suddenly hurts. Why is that? We know words can make us feel things, but how come the absence of words can make us feel just as much? We value words very highly, but there's plenty of situations where words aren't necessary to get the message across, or to explain your actions.

Holding your lover in your arms as they cry is a good example for a situation where you don't need to use any words. Giving a smile of appreciation, a nod to a stranger you see on the street, these are all non-verbal ways for us to communicate and where words don't need to be said. And is that because we make up the words in our own head when it happens or is it simply because we understand the actions and intent behind it all?

To change gears a bit, even now, as you're reading this (well, I hope someone at least is!) my words are making you think about things, maybe even making you feel certain emotions as you think back of those scenarios and possible memories and remember how things made you feel.

Words have a very strong impact on people. And the worst of all? You can never take back what you said.

Telling of tales

I've been mulling over this post for quite a while now. I feel like it's a little bit out of the norm of what I usually write about, which makes it quite tricky to put it into words while also still trying to respect privacy and keeping some distance between the internet and life itself.

With that said, however, I want to go ahead and make an attempt to do so.

As I've mentioned in several posts in the past, I've been struggling financially and living in poverty for quite the longest time now. I would like to open up a bit about that and give some more insight into my situation. But don't worry, things finally seem to be over and are in the upswing again.

Anyhow, to not dance around the subject any longer, it all started back on July 28th of 2012, so that's quite a while ago. My mom called me up from Serbia, where her and my dad live, and she told me quite some terrible news: my old man was in prison.

For my American audience the crime might seem more harsh than what it would be for, say, Dutch people. But to sum it up: he got caught with 2 KG (that's 4.4 lbs for you US folks) of weed. To put that into perspective of how much laws differ country to country; in the Netherlands you would get a slap on the wrist and you would be forced to some community work.

But Serbia looks at it completely differently. Over there, the minimum jail sentence is 3 years and it can go as high as 12. So as you can imagine, for someone who lives in the Netherlands, this all sounds quite absurd. Because it meant best case it would mean he'd be locked up for 3 years.

At the end of it all, he got 3 years, 3 months and 3 days. Luckily, due to laws and some more complicated stuff, he's getting out on March 6th 2014.

So, the reason poverty started after that is due to the fact that the old man's income got cut off along with all the extra money he funneled back here. I don't want to go into details as to how I stayed afloat for so long or how terrible the times were, because this is not a sob story. It really isn't. Promise. But let's just say that it was very rough and I ended up losing 23 KG (50 lbs) due to simply not having a lot to eat.

With that in mind as well, I would also like to thank all my friends who have helped me out during this time. I hope I expressed it enough to them in person, but if not, then let it be publicly known that each and every one of you are literal life savers.

But I digress--things were manageable during the early months of his sentence, mostly talking about the first 8 months or so. But then more bad news came my way, which was even more unexpected than the phone call I got from my mom back in July. Due to a chain of random coincidences, on April 6th 2013 I ended up discovering than my now-ex had been having an affair behind my back for 3 months.

Again, I don't want to go into details because this post does not exist to shame or call people out in a bad way. The circumstances don't really matter, the bottom line is that I was devastated and fell into quite a deep depression. I picked up smoking, sleep turned into a weekly thing and taking care of oneself was never on the agenda.

Once more, I want to regurgitate that I have amazing friends who were there for me whenever I needed them, no matter what day or time it was, who helped me through a lot of it.

Quite honestly, the next couple of months were a bit of a blur and I don't remember much of it, just that things kept getting worse and worse, financially and health-wise. But this brings me to the meat of the post, ironically, all the way towards the end of it; July 4th 2013, almost a year after my dad had been locked up, I ended up going on Omegle out of sheer boredom.

I can't really answer why I went there, let alone why I stuck around disconnect after disconnect just for being male. But really, did I have anything better to do? No, I didn't. So I kept going from person to person, not really getting past the any kind of introduction before people scurried off in search for the other sex.

But, good things come to those who wait. At least, that's what I'd say if it didn't sound so cheesy. But I finally found someone to talk to, and against all odds, it turned out to be a girl. Now, of course, I wouldn't be typing this if it just ended there. So you guessed it, we ended up adding each other on Skype afterwards and have kept contact ever since.

And for those with an even keener eye, who have been reading between the lines (or I guess, blog posts in this case) can now connect some dots of certain posts. And for those who can't or have simply forgotten my older posts, it simply comes down to me falling head over heels for her.

Now, I won't go on about how amazing or great I think she is, because this post is getting awfully long already, so I'll skip the gushing and fawning. But rest assured, she's brilliant. You're just going to have to trust me on that.

Of course, as mentioned earlier, this story actually has a happy ending. For her and I have been serious for quite some time now, and I can genuinely say that I'm a much happier person since I've had the pleasure of meeting her. Now, no one knows what the future holds, but as the Magic 8 Ball would say: "Outlook good."

So, to the special lady out there: Thank you.

The Hunger Games - Catching Fire - Reviewed

Whoo, more reviews! As always, spoilers!

Catching Fire

As with many of the movies I watch, I haven't read the books. So I apologize if I come off as ignorant to certain things.

Let me immediately get out of the way that I vastly preferred the first movie to this one. This one builds waaaaay more plot than the first one, sure. But at the same time, that cliff-hanger at the end is quite bad if you know that you'll get to see the rest 2 years or so from now. It's great for the fans of the book, but not if people haven't read it.

So, again, it's great for the plot, but as a "stand-alone" movie it's a bad thing. Admittingly, this'll stop being a problem once the third one is out and you can just watch it right after, but for now, it gets points deducted for it.

The acting, like last time, was great. All the roles were very believable, and it's a nice spin to make actors act in a movie, because when they do it right (which they did) it makes it even more believable and relatable.

The things I didn't like about the movie were not that big of a deal. I didn't like how the movie skipped ahead one year and nothing really had happened in that one year. Katniss and Gale were still so-so about each other and their relationship seemed to develop most (or rather, mostly crash and burn, really) during the small time frame of the movie. Other than that, they both got a decent house but that's about it.


Don't get me wrong, I get why the skipped ahead a year, otherwise it would've been a dull period of waiting for the games to start. But I think they could've done with a time-skip or two of several months as well, if only to explain the changes happening in their lives, the rioting and the districts. I mean, isn't it weird that their victory-tour happens almost an entire year later?

Anyway, I digress. The other dislike I have is how mediocre the actual games were this time around. I mean, I get it, they were planning a rebellion and all that, but half of the candidates weren't in on it. And that aside, if you have access to all the weapons/supplies, and have a ranged marksman on your side. Why would you EVER leave the island in the middle?

Oh, and finally, poison should not be curable by water. Period. Either don't make it poison or make a sponsor send antidotes. Anything other than water would've been fine.

The music was good and appropriate. Not much else to say about it, really.

This probably happened in the book, so it would make sense to translate it over to the movie, but I liked how they changed the arena and the training-station in general. At the very least, it shows they're not lazy and just looking to save on budget.

All in all, it's a movie more focussed on plot. It falls short in some aspects, but overal it's worth watching if you liked the first movie. I would give it a 7.5 out of 10. The score might've been higher had it not been for the cliff-hanger at the end.

Ender's Game - Reviewed

It's been a while since I've done one of these. So let's give it another go, shall we? Just like the last two, spoilers are probably ahead!

Ender's Game

Let me start by saying I'm just an average movie go-er and I haven't read the book at all, so keep that in mind if I complain or mention something that has been explained in the books.

Ender's Game was a great movie. I feel a bit conflicted about the child actors, because while they were good, they weren't great. So if I were to compare them to adults, they were alright, but I think the movie would have been better if we had adults; because let's face it, there weren't many child-specific moments in the scene that could not have been done by adults.

I only have a couple of gripes with the movie, really. To get a small one out of the way first, I hated how right before the final showdown in the tournament of the games, one of the recruits on Ender's team twisted his ankle and had to be conviniently replaced (which turned out to be permanent, apparently) by Petra. You don't need to use your ankle to walk in zero-G, damn it.

As for the second one, I disliked how time was irrelevant in the movie. At one point you hear Bonzo mention "At this rate, I'll make it to command school in 6 months." but I got the impression that Ender was advancing in mere weeks, not years or months as it's made out to be.

And finally, just the overal shoe-horned relationship with his sister/family, it felt out of place. It also felt out of place how the enemy tried to communicate with him through his dreams and the video game. Plus it begs the question: How the hell did no one find that egg while building the place. IT'S RIGHT OUTSIDE.

As for the good things, I enjoyed how Ender was portrayed. That with being smart/whatnot usually means you're an outcast when it comes to children, because they're often run by emotion and can't see the bigger picture of how meaningless that is when you're being trained for war.

The soundtrack fit the movie well, no score really stands out to me in memory, but that's how I usually am with movies.

And I have to give very big props to the ending; I remember thinking very clearly with 40 minutes or so left "How are they going to finish this simulation training, fight the war, win, and do a victory scene? Please don't tell me they'll just squeeze the war in a 5-10 minute battle and be done with it." So I was very pleasantly surprised when I found out the simulations were the actual war rather than, you know, simulations.

I don't know if that's how it was in the book, but if not, that's a great way to deal with a rushed ending in a movie, if you ask me.

All in all, I would rate the movie a 8 out of 10. It would've bumped a bit higher hadn't it been for those couple of pet peeves and adult actors. But definitely a great movie, would recommend watching it greatly.

Swelling with...

You know the feeling you sometimes get about someone else? The one that starts from within you, making you swell, and when it does happen, you can't help but let the other person know? Being proud of someone is a very interesting feeling.

What? Did you think I was talking about something else? Pervert.

Anyway, the reason as to why I think it's interesting is because why does it really happen? Usually it comes up in a situation where the other person stepped out of the comfort zone, and did something they usually wouldn't do, right? But why does that makes us feel good? When we feel pride in something we do, it's usually related to an accomplishment or something you feel good about making/doing.

So why, generally speaking, isn't the same applied when feeling proud of other people? It's not an on-going thing, usually. It happens once in the moment when they do it, and generally after that it becomes "normal" for them to do it again. Why is this?

But, to take a step back with this, where does pride come from? Do we feel proud about other's accomplishments because we didn't expect them they could do it, but wanted them to be able to? Is it because we imagine us in their shoes, thus feeling good about ourselves and them? But if it's the former, isn't that technically a bad thing? Because you're expecting them to not be able to do something--shouldn't you always have a positive attitude in regards to what your loved ones can accomplish?

Either way, just another ramble coming from me, I had no idea where I was really going with this. I think I just wanted to make the initial joke with this post.

Looking back

As another year rolls by, it reminded me of how it is to look back on things in life. And not just a year or anything like that, but over a long period of time.

Sometimes, while you're in the moment of something in your life, it feels great. Maybe even shortly after that it can still feel great. We've all experienced this, we all know this too well.

But is that really how things were? Were they really as great as you remember them to be, or is that you just tricking yourself because you don't want to remember things being bad? After all, if you remember things being bad, wouldn't you have sort-of just wasted your time with them? Of course, this mostly applies to things such as school, work, relationships, etc.

I've been personally mulling things over lately, and I've drawn that conclusion. Things weren't as great as they seemed at the time, and it took me a lot of perspective and a fresh breath on things to actually realize that. Now, by no means does this mean nothing was ever good, far from it. It just means that at the end of the day, you want to be happy. And you'll jump through hoops to convince yourself that you are happy, rather than accept facts sometimes.

Or maybe it's that things were never bad? Maybe, just maybe, you move on to a better point in your life and things just seem bad in comparison, because you're used to so much better. A good example of this would be an abusive relationship, or finding a job that you actually love.

Either way, whatever the case may be, cherish the good moments you have but don't hide the bad ones by lying to yourself.

Happy New Year everyone, here's to a better 2013 2014!

Gamebites

Short post!

Gamesbites is a Dutch (very important part, this!) blog/website that does podcasts alongside Youtube videos (let's plays) about video games and video game related news.

Check it out, they're awesome!

Gamebites