Now: Stormy weekend here in Manila. Supposedly the “strongest storm of 2020” so far, typhoon Rolly made landfall earlier today and is currently battering many of the provinces south of Metro Manila. Storm signals are as high as number 5. As of this writing, weather is currently cold and nippy but not particularly rainy where I am. We expect stronger winds and rain to hit us as evening approaches as well. On top of everything, a second typhoon has entered the PH area of responsibility and is expected to affect us over the next couple of days as well. If those two typhoons get together, it may be very bad. Hoping for the best. (I thought about doing these weeknotes end of day… but we might lose power, so here we go.)
Server migration update: Migrating the final domain now!
Gaming: I finished Link’s Awakening! Full heart and seashell completion even! It was fun and a great throwback to classic games like Link to the Past. I never played the original on Gameboy, though maybe that’s for the best, as I liked how this one looked and my memory is not tainted by nostalgia over GB graphics. It wasn’t a particularly long game, especially compared to other Zeldas, but there is a custom dungeon feature (new to this remake) which probably adds some replay value, though I don’t have much interest in it at the moment. On to Super Mario Odyssey!
Gaming: I did terribly at the Eternal Card Game worlds LCQ, but I must admit their current celebration promo was super effective in getting me back into the game, as I’m now doing daily grinds in both Eternal and Magic Arena again. I managed to hit Mythic in Magic Arena before month end, but didn’t have enough time for Eternal, we’ll see if I can keep it up next month.
Gaming: I’ve been enjoying games of Root with the Saturday gaming group. It’s a multifaction boardgame where each faction plays differently and has different ways of scoring victory points, and the factions will naturally clash with each other. The main challenge is finding a fine balance between advancing your agenda and interfering with the others. Disrupting the other factions might lose you some momentum compared to the others, but if no one keeps the others in check, someone might run away with victory! Pretty fun. And given that the game supports asynchronous games (up to 3 days per turn), the term “Saturday gaming group” is a bit obsolete.
Done: the Inktober thing! I managed to get through the whole thing without missing a day! Doing daily drawings with a pen are hard for me, given my poor manual dexterity at this age (and it was never that good in the first place). My hands got tired so easily, and a lot of my lines were shaky. Still, I enjoyed doing a lot of the sketches, and while I don’t want to commit to daily drawings again (at least for now), maybe I’ll warm up the old Apple Pencil every so often and do some digital stuff? Maybe?
Watching lately: I finished Season 4 of The Expanse. I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first 3 seasons, though the second half was better than the first. Things were ramping up too slowly, and a lot of things didn’t seem relevant to the what was going on with the Roci crew (and turned out to be mostly geared towards next season’s big crisis apparently?). As I said to a friend, “I’m here for the scifi protomolecule stuff not OPA terrorist or earth politics BS.” Still, looking forward to the next season. Also: Finished five seasons of NCIS (that’s all they had on Prime Video). In the queue: The Boys S2, Star Trek Discovery S3, Mandalorian S2. Where’s my Orville?
Skipped: Hacktoberfest. Oh well.
Considering: Nanowrimo. Haven’t done any prep, so if ever it’s gonna be a late start. I do have some ideas rolling around in my head, but I also have some other stuff to do, so for now let’s say this is “low probability”.
Anxiety: Low, most of it due to awaiting a call back about something that hasn’t pushed through yet, but I don’t really need? Why am I anxious about it then?
Random: This storm reminded me of my worst typhoon experience in Metro Manila, Ondoy back in 2009, so I wrote a short back-dated retrospective on it.
Bad luck: The hinge on one side of my glasses’ frame broke while I was at the cashier at the grocery yesterday! D: I have a slightly older pair I can use in the meantime, but it’ll probably be a few days before I can even go to get a real replacement, given the storm and the long weekend.
Looking forward to: the US presidential elections, with a mix of morbid dread and anticipation, like an onlooker at a car crash.
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