Happy New year lah.

"You know, there is more to life then gaming. There is still so much of the real world to see. It was a frightening moment for me when my friend marcus uttered those words before one of our nightly gaming sessions.

Time screeched to a halt, like someone pressing the pause button in the middle of a Warcraft III battle. Marcus was a gaming lord among my friends, a man who once decleared that he would happily reject sex with a supermodel for a chance to win the World Cyber Games.

He loved games filled ninjas. His stage of enlightenment was such that mundane urges like defecation have been overcome, allowing him countless hours in front of a computer "killing: others like him.

Why give that up for the real world - a unfathomale place filled with mysterious things like fashion and hygiene? It doesnt have save and reload buttons or even respawn points after getting killed.

Instead, it has concepts that have existed in the mists of prehistoric cyber-universe, back when Bill Gates was merely a multi-millionaire. But, alas, one by one, I've seen my friends fall lemming-like to girlfriends and marketing jobs, lost to us forever.

And-I fear-I too am lost.

Growing up is one of those ugly things any right-thinking person should do their best to avoid. But it creeps on you. Like gollum. I remember a time when all I needed to feel divine was to walk out of Serene Centre with my ugly beige schoolboy shorts bulging with $20 worth of Magic: The Gathering cards.

Now, not even the Xbox 360 could give me geekdom nirvana, if only because I just have to think how many hours I have to slog at work before I can afford such things. Then there is the whole girlfriend issue. When I was but a little geek, girls were incomprehensible entitles that stimulated an equally unfathomable and unreasonable desire to acquire one.

Like the Holy Grail, the quest involved various seemingly insurmountable difficulties, such as my colossal lack of height and a vocabulary that included only football terms and Conan The Barbarian small talk. One would think the emergence of geek chic would ease one's dating troubles, but all it did was prove that cool people can do geek better then geeks themselves.

Yes, somehow, I found a girlfriend, along with a job and responsiblity (which should bring hope to everyone). And like anyone who has ever chanced upon the fabled chalice, everything changed. Gaming sessions have become sparse as the clique find themselves spending our nights taming our better halves, working in the office or recovering from just plain tiredness.

No longer are my conversations dominated by topics like magical gaming gear (also known as The Swords Of Female Repulsion). Instead, talk is about housing loans, future children, mother-in-laws and income tax. And if you think computer games bad, do you know how difficult it is to explain why one would want to arrange a pen-and-paper-role-playing session to a girlfriend?

It's not possible to explain to the average woman why a group of grown-up men can sit around a table and pretend to be elves and dwarves and fight monsters for imaginary loot without looking like a total dork.

Sadly, it is impossible to fight time.

As boyhood fades, so must friendship built on nights spent trying to get the Warcraft II multiplayer to work on a 28.8kb modem.

Reality is a bad place for a geek to be cast adrift in."


This post is a long one. And clearly it wasnt written by me.
1. I'm not attached
2. I'm not working
3. I'm language-ly challenged

The reason why I typed it out because I can relate it happening to me soon, about the growing up part and not the girlfriend part. Its a nice article in the newpaper, and I want to share it with you guys. Somehow, it takes a gamer to understand how a fellow gamer feels, esp now my computer has been wrecked.

I'm spending my new year in malaysia. And I hate it. Somehow when I spend new years in a foreign land, away from my motherland and friends, I dont remember to make new year wishes or resolutions. And that year usually get bads. Imagine all the happy new year sms-es at midnight, now turned to the tv in front of me, surrounded by little cousins too young to realise the importance of new year celebrations, watching crappy malaysian channels in the hot living room. Then its of to bed. No MSNs, no SMSes, no CALLS, no happy new year.

God damn it i really hate it when we have to go over to that country for relative visits. There's really nothing in the god damn boring days to do but just stare into the laptop hopping for it to be somehow connected to cyberspace. You can imagine its worst even before a laptop was bought. At least my sister has some friends there. I have NONE. My fellow same age cousins are already working and too old to play those hide and seek and running around and get scolded shit.

Even if I wanted to walk around taking pictures, its much too dangerous to just walk around alone, and even a mode of transportation isnt available except small bicycles intended for primary school kids and worn out bicycle left by my late grandma with punctured tyres and top speed of 2m per minute. I cant even ride the motorcycles yah, 1. no license, 2. my parents think I'm not compitent enough to handle one.

I really hate it going there at the dead end of the year. But I try to hide the dissapointment in my eyes, as I know my dad would be sad not being able to go back to his hometown to visit his brother and sisters.

Haix. Happy New Year my friends. I'm going to have a sucky year ahead.

P.S My previous post poll is still on. Leave a comment!