Interlocking Squares: Ching Juan (7)
Friday 20 January 2006
Some things creep up on you. I remember when I was small – there were nights when I'd try to pinpoint the exact moment I fell asleep. Not that I ever managed to, of course. Sometimes it just shades from one thing to another without a clear demarcating line.
Anyway, what I was trying to get at (and not succeeding very well) was this: dinner with Vincent on Thursdays. It seems to have evolved into some kind of routine. Selina was bugging me about it right up until just now when I triggered a rockfall right on top of her character. And when she finally clawed her way out (with about 6 HP left, mind you), there was a bunch of ogres waiting for her. She was mad, of course, but hey, it was totally logical – they were alerted by the noise. She just escaped by the skin of her teeth, good thing Alex had one more Teleport scroll left.
Mwahahahahaha. I love being GM.
But back to where I was... Thursday. Dinner. Vincent. Right. The first thing he did was to apologise, rather incoherently, about David. About David getting his hands on Collector in the first place, then emailing me about it. The way he was going on about it, you'd think David had been sending me threatening stalker-type emails.
'I don't mind, really,' I told him, wondering why he was making such a big deal out of it.
He seemed to find it weird that I found it weird that he was making such a big deal out of it. 'Really? Oh. Well. I thought you might.'
I decided not to tell him about that other email I'd got from David on Wednesday. He complained – sort of – that towards the later levels, the story fragments degenerated into generic, one-liner summaries. Well, it's not easy thinking up a couple of hundred of those all in one go. I'm still making up bits of stories to insert into v2 of the game. Told the guy so, too. Told him if he thought he could do better, he was welcome to try.
Vincent also told me how David had managed to access his email. Either David knows him really well, or his password was really easy to guess, or both. So I asked him what his password was. Yes, yes, I know, it was nosy, but still.
He sort of fidgeted around and mumbled something I couldn't catch. All right, I got it, he wasn't exactly keen on telling me. I still don't know what made me say what I said next – something about the way he was shifting around uneasily just screamed 'Bug me!' – but I pressed on even more nosily, 'Girlfriend's name?'
As it turns out, he doesn't have a girlfriend at the moment, nor at any other moment in his life so far. Well, it seems he thought he had one once, but that lasted for all of six minutes back in his Form 2 days when the girl he sent a dedication gift to thought it was from Win Senn, a guy from another class – who, I gather, was cooler than Vincent, though that's not difficult. No, I'm not being mean. I've just never seen the point in wanting to be cool – that kind of cool anyway – or aiming at being cool. It's like being a geek, or liking orange juice, or really loud metal music, or preferring RTSes to FPSes. It's just something you are.
I was both not surprised and kind of surprised at the same time. Granted, I can't in a million years imagine him being all suave and smooth and going all out after a girl, and he's hardly the sort to trigger multiple crushes everywhere he goes. But then again, I wouldn't put it past some girl with an eye on the long-term to have snagged him as insurance for the future. After all, Vincent's the sort of guy every mother would like as a potential son-in-law. I can just see him in five to ten years' time, beavering dutifully away at a dull-but-stable nine-to-five accounting job, getting Employee of the Month awards on a regular basis, and generally bringing home the bacon and being a conscientious citizen and family man.
And on the heels of that, for no apparent reason, he told me, 'David's got a lot of girlfriends, though.' Then he started getting a little confused and mixed-up, trying to explain. Apparently it's not a case of David having a basketload of steady girlfriends, or having had so many steady girlfriends serially they could fill a basket – he just knows a lot of girls whom he goes out with on an on-off basis. Something Vincent obviously disapproves of.
'He sometimes sends the exact same mp3s with the exact same email message to two or three different girls,' I remember him telling me. 'It's not right. I mean, it's not even like he makes an effort.' He sounded rather upset about it all, and I don't think it was entirely down to righteous moral indignation either. Nope, that was definitely a note of envy I heard there, lurking not that far away from the surface. Hm, I wonder if Vincent even knows. He'd probably be shocked at himself if he found out.
Some things creep up on you. I remember when I was small – there were nights when I'd try to pinpoint the exact moment I fell asleep. Not that I ever managed to, of course. Sometimes it just shades from one thing to another without a clear demarcating line.
Anyway, what I was trying to get at (and not succeeding very well) was this: dinner with Vincent on Thursdays. It seems to have evolved into some kind of routine. Selina was bugging me about it right up until just now when I triggered a rockfall right on top of her character. And when she finally clawed her way out (with about 6 HP left, mind you), there was a bunch of ogres waiting for her. She was mad, of course, but hey, it was totally logical – they were alerted by the noise. She just escaped by the skin of her teeth, good thing Alex had one more Teleport scroll left.
Mwahahahahaha. I love being GM.
But back to where I was... Thursday. Dinner. Vincent. Right. The first thing he did was to apologise, rather incoherently, about David. About David getting his hands on Collector in the first place, then emailing me about it. The way he was going on about it, you'd think David had been sending me threatening stalker-type emails.
'I don't mind, really,' I told him, wondering why he was making such a big deal out of it.
He seemed to find it weird that I found it weird that he was making such a big deal out of it. 'Really? Oh. Well. I thought you might.'
I decided not to tell him about that other email I'd got from David on Wednesday. He complained – sort of – that towards the later levels, the story fragments degenerated into generic, one-liner summaries. Well, it's not easy thinking up a couple of hundred of those all in one go. I'm still making up bits of stories to insert into v2 of the game. Told the guy so, too. Told him if he thought he could do better, he was welcome to try.
Vincent also told me how David had managed to access his email. Either David knows him really well, or his password was really easy to guess, or both. So I asked him what his password was. Yes, yes, I know, it was nosy, but still.
He sort of fidgeted around and mumbled something I couldn't catch. All right, I got it, he wasn't exactly keen on telling me. I still don't know what made me say what I said next – something about the way he was shifting around uneasily just screamed 'Bug me!' – but I pressed on even more nosily, 'Girlfriend's name?'
As it turns out, he doesn't have a girlfriend at the moment, nor at any other moment in his life so far. Well, it seems he thought he had one once, but that lasted for all of six minutes back in his Form 2 days when the girl he sent a dedication gift to thought it was from Win Senn, a guy from another class – who, I gather, was cooler than Vincent, though that's not difficult. No, I'm not being mean. I've just never seen the point in wanting to be cool – that kind of cool anyway – or aiming at being cool. It's like being a geek, or liking orange juice, or really loud metal music, or preferring RTSes to FPSes. It's just something you are.
I was both not surprised and kind of surprised at the same time. Granted, I can't in a million years imagine him being all suave and smooth and going all out after a girl, and he's hardly the sort to trigger multiple crushes everywhere he goes. But then again, I wouldn't put it past some girl with an eye on the long-term to have snagged him as insurance for the future. After all, Vincent's the sort of guy every mother would like as a potential son-in-law. I can just see him in five to ten years' time, beavering dutifully away at a dull-but-stable nine-to-five accounting job, getting Employee of the Month awards on a regular basis, and generally bringing home the bacon and being a conscientious citizen and family man.
And on the heels of that, for no apparent reason, he told me, 'David's got a lot of girlfriends, though.' Then he started getting a little confused and mixed-up, trying to explain. Apparently it's not a case of David having a basketload of steady girlfriends, or having had so many steady girlfriends serially they could fill a basket – he just knows a lot of girls whom he goes out with on an on-off basis. Something Vincent obviously disapproves of.
'He sometimes sends the exact same mp3s with the exact same email message to two or three different girls,' I remember him telling me. 'It's not right. I mean, it's not even like he makes an effort.' He sounded rather upset about it all, and I don't think it was entirely down to righteous moral indignation either. Nope, that was definitely a note of envy I heard there, lurking not that far away from the surface. Hm, I wonder if Vincent even knows. He'd probably be shocked at himself if he found out.
10:32 PM, May 23, 2006
this one is seriously nice...i really like the bit about sending the same mp3 to 2 or 3 different girls with the same soppy message...
well, the story is about to enter into new and exciting territory...:)
and i m so looking forward to it. top
10:50 PM, May 26, 2006
Inspired by none other than your brother (although I've never met him...)
Vincent's trying to warn Ching Juan off David, not that she's picking it up. Or maybe she's deliberately not picking it up. I love messing with fictional characters' minds.
Mwahahahaha. (I've been doing the EO laugh far too often these days) top
11:18 PM, May 27, 2006
story writing does that to a person sometimes, the whole EO thing because muahahahaha... YOU ARE IN CONTROL. top