Rainy day

Thanks to the wooziness induced by the late night last night, I was able to get off from work way early today. If this can keep up with my schedule I might as well sleep late every day. It's good to be outside and free when the sun is shining, except that it's not quite the case right now.

After days of half-formed rainstorms that only lasted an hour or two, damning the whole of the city into the pre-rainstorm humidity and heat that would make Tokyo proud, it's finally pouring down. I don't know whether to feel happy or sad about this. Certainly I've been waiting for a decent rainstorm for a while now, with thunder and lightning. But why does it have to be the day I could have taken my laptop out to the park to get some personal workspace? The world works in really strange ways.

With the rain, and with my brain still a little soggy from lack of sleep and rest, I just came back home right away instead of hanging around the city to do whatever. I could have spent some much needed (and decidedly cooler) time in bookstores in the area, but I didn't feel up to it. Maybe it's the weather.

So now I'm sitting in the sofa in my room, looking out the window being riddled with raindrops, wondering what to do with this unexpected freetime. I've already read most of the books in my personal library a few times. There might be movies in hard drives that I could be watching but I don't like being so passive when I'm feeling tired and under the weather. Yes, I'd rather act opposite of my mood and condition. Otherwise there's no end to the depths I might fall to.

Maybe I can try playing some games? I've already burned through my collection of Deus Ex mods couple of times before, so that's rather out of the question. I don't feel like exploring synthetic biology right now, since while I'm looking for something involved, I don't want to wreck my brain over other stuff, just not right now. Maybe I can look into some mmorpg options? Like one of those free to play games that are all the rage these days.

Online games are one of those interesting things in life that has just so much potential to be awesome, but never is. It's like looking at a seed that continuously ends up dying instead of blooming into the amazing flower we were all promised. Take a look at the .hack// franchise on the playstation consoles for example (actually now that I think about it they only came out for PS2, with final one being promised for PSP). Now THAT's how the mmorpg games should be. Except that .hack// games aren't mmorpgs. It's what they call a simulated mmorpg with simulations of real people populating a virtual server that exists within the game. The game even has a virtual operating system with virtual web browser and virtual email client, with unreal people sending you email during your virtual off-time. The premises sound weird, but it works well in practice, and the franchise continued for close to a decade with one awesome anime series acting as prequel to the game (the game spanning 4 DVDs, with sequel of 3DVD lengths) with not-so awesome other things populating the marketplace (actually, one of the light novels based off the franchise is quite good. AI BUSTER 1 and 2, I personally prefer the second one). Maybe the whole faux-mmorpg setup only works precisely because none of the stuff is real. They are all made-up, make belief people living in make-belief world (oh wait, did I just describe the heart of 'real' mmorpgs as well?).

As Bernard Shaw himself have said before, hell is other people's company. This game can probably better explain the Japanese fixation with androids than any number of academic thesis out there.

Well, I think I'll stop writing for a moment and seek out some interesting mmorpg to waste time on.