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thebrownblog · 5 years

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Different Seasons: Two Years in Quebec

Well, once again it’s been a while (I won’t even pretend at the end of this entry that the next one will be soon, it’ll be some time in 2021 if I follow the average posting frequency). What’s up folks? What could I possibly be here to talk about today? Probably the one thing that distuingishes and defines my life, the fact I moved thousands of miles from home to a place that seems to be frozen half the year, and doesn’t have English as a first language…and then decided not to move on again, stubbornly at times.

Before starting this, I just read back through my previous post from October 2017. “A hundred thousand changes, everything’s the same” sums it up nicely. It was clearly written by a younger, more enthusiastic version of myself who was still on a high from just arriving, and hadn’t yet experienced 2 brutal winters. I’d say I’ve probably matured and grown more in 2 years here than in the previous 5, however difficult Paris was. The foundations were laid by the Parisian struggle, but it’s definitely Quebec that’s put a few hairs on my chest.

This is a very seasonal existence, and there’s no way around it. The euphoric highs of summer and the beauty of autumn juxtaposed with the looooong slog that is winter. The euphoria of being out on the road all the time seeing beautiful place after beautiful place vs being stuck at home because of the gloomy and sometimes dangerous conditions (I will NEVER forget for as long as I live, how close I came to death in a sudden snowstorm in Maine last October, when visibility suddenly dropped to about 20cm in front of the car on a winding mountain road with moose out and about at night). I’d go so far as to actually call it a bi-polar existence over the course of a year, a life of extremes for sure. Am I capable of growing old in conditions like these? Probably not, but I’m not ready to give it up yet, and if I ever do I’m not sure it would be to go back to England anyway. Who knows?

However, I loved it here at the beginning, and I still do today. Why? Same reasons, by and large. Open space, open road (weather permitting). My own slightly bizarre version of the American Dream probably (Well, it IS just 25 minutes away). Ever since I was a kid, I was going to end up on this continent somehow. I always wanted to go to the USA. Why? Most likely being a big reader and film fan. Everything I loved reading and watching was always set in America. America to me was not and still is not defined by who is president at the time, and what crazy sh*t is happening politically. It’s more of a concept. To me it represents vast open space where you can go anywhere, and become anything you want as long as you have the will and the fortitude to make it happen (if the American Dream is dead I certainly never got the memo, and don’t really want want to either). In the end I ended up close enough, AND with a humane healthcare system.

What else do I love about here? The fact I feel like I actually have a chance in life. You can still work hard here in a ‘regular’ job here for a few years, save up and buy a house. This is completely dead where I come from, the idea of home ownership for me one day in London is a sick joke, and Paris was no better. I recently just moved into my own place for the first time, and actually have a spare bedroom…and it all costs less than a box room with barely enough space to swing a cat in in London. These things would have mattered less to me at 21, but now rapidly approaching 30 (yikes!) they matter more and more. Quality of life now matters a lot more to me than a place being hip and vibrant, and I have it much better here.

Some people understand completely, and others think I’m crazy, but that’s okay, crazy’s always worked for me.

I think to really understand me on this, you have to understand that I’m not attached to where I come from whatsoever. I miss my family a lot, and it’s painful at times, especially knowing my little sisters are growing up seeing me twice a year, but the place itself I could happily never see again. When you understand this, you can better comprehend how I’ve lasted this long already without the end being in sight yet.

Another big question is how someone from London feels more at home out in the sticks, and I think there’s two valid answers to this question. One is that I was completely and utterly burnt out with big city life after my negative experiences in my last years in London, and then the backbreaking experience in Paris in which I couldn’t even see just how miserable I’d become until I left. I clearly just wanted peace, affordability, a slower pace of life, and no more f*cking public transport!

The second is connected to childhood and Sweden. I grew up in London but I would always go to visit my grandparents a few times a year in Sweden, where they lived in the countryside. It was always a magical place for me, and everything that’s come out of me here (love of peace and quiet, nature, and nature photography etc) all actually started over there when I was much younger, but came out with a vengeance in Quebec. Funny how nearly everything about us all is programmed by our childhoods one way or another, whether we see it or not.

It is also my theory that people always crave the opposite of what they grow up with: those that grow up in the country want the bright lights of a big city, and those that grow up in cities often want a slower pace after a while.

Ironically, my life has also been busier living in a small place than it ever had been before. I came to learn quickly that doing nothing in these weather conditions is not an option unless you want to find yourself fat and depressed in a hurry. There ARE things to do here, you just have to find them yourself, the internet isn’t going to tell you much. Aside from private tutoring, I’ve kept busy in a wide range of eccentric ways. I’ve joined a rugby team, a football (’soccer’ to all you North American lunatics) team, played a lot of badminton, and got myself more seriously involved in photography. You’ll notice a lack of winter sports, which is a shame I know, but sadly I know myself and know I was born with two left feet. I don’t want to risk injuring myself in a way that would keep me from driving for any period of time as I’d lose all of my income. You drive or you die out here. A train?? What the hell is that???

So, what’s really changed for me since the post I made near the beginning of the experience? The biggest thing is probably integrating. I couldn’t understand a word anyone said to me here for the first 2 months. I spoke French well enough already after a year in France, but the dialect and accent here is so different it was often basically worthless. Nowadays I communicate just fine, and have integrated into the community. It’s been a new social experience for me being known pretty much everywhere I go. That’s what happens when you work at schools in a small place and you have something about you that is unique (a Brit who actually speaks the language and lives here…yeah, there aren’t many….).

It’s very different from the anonymity of a big city, and like all things has its pros and cons (sometimes you just want to go into a shop and buy something without being recognised by a current or former student), but mainly pro. Community spirit is a good thing that’s been pretty much lost in larger places. There’s definitely a kindness and willingness to help here that is more prevalent than anywhere else I’ve lived previously. Some of the families I private tutor for seem to have adopted me as one of their own!

Another big change was getting a new 2-year VISA in April which allows me to have any job, my first one was very restrictive, and made it tough to earn decent money at times. After getting it, I finished the year by supply teaching for a few months which was great experience, and certainly an adventure in itself as I ended up subbing for just about every subject on the curriculum. Obviously with the exception of English classes, this meant I had to do it in French all the time. If subbing for Maths, Science, and French isn’t a testament to how far I’ve come with the language from not being able to understand anything at all during the first two months here, I don’t know what is! However I drew the line at doing dictation in French one time, and put Netflix on instead, there are limits!

VISAs, VISAs, VISAs….well I’ve got myself started now. There’s been a constant stress from the moment I decided to stay on in October 2017. With the VISA I currently have, and the year I’m entitled to with my Swedish passport, I could fairly easily stay here until April 2022. However, I’m really tired of temporary solutions, and all the admin and costs that go into obtaining each one. I want to become a permanent resident, which is a more daunting and complex beast. When I come back from my trip home in early September all my energy will be put into finding a full-time job. You can’t get permanent residency without one. Whatever subbing and tutoring pay me is irrelevant because neither count as full-time, and I can’t go and study anything without swapping my working VISA for a restrictive study one (the headache never ends you see).

In many ways this next phase of the journey is going to be the acid test in terms of where I will end up. I will walk away from the teaching world temporarily or permanently if I need to, in order to find a full-time gig and get my residency. However, the job will have to involve my being an anglophone who speaks French to a high level. This is my advantage in this town, and the card I will always look to play in the employment game. If it can’t help me here like I’ve always thought it could, I would have to look elsewhere in the province eventually, and if there was still nothing cooking, I would have to ask myself the question for the first time about whether I would prefer to live amongst other anglophones in Canada, all opportunities being equal.

These are all ultimately questions for another day though. What’s certain is I have a good chunk of time left, and in that time I will continue to travel around Canada and the USA as much as I can within my means. I often feel like a born nomad, and I love nothing better than hitting the road and seeing new places. That’s my pleasure in life, and long may it continue. Everything else will work out how it’s supposed to, it always does.

Tomorrow’s flight back to England finally signals the end of the beginning in this long, meandering, and very seasonal story.

TL;DR:

Winter is too long and I need a full-time job to become a permanent resident, but I still like it here, and people are nice.

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danyelle756games · 4 years

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What are the best online communities in gaming

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casualarsonist · 7 years

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No Man’s Sky in 2017 - A First Impressions Review

I think I’ve made mention before of how I often find myself drawn to or intrigued by certain games that, despite critical histrionics, manage to garner themselves a cult following; games like Homefront: The Revolution, and Watch Dogs. Perhaps this is because I like the idea that some products don’t necessarily wear their value on their skin, that it is within some kind of niche that a game offers the best of its experience. And so it was that one of my favourite Youtubers - hbomberguy - with this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DhaUe6y-Co - convinced me to look into buying No Man’s Sky. Because here’s the thing: I didn’t care about the game before release. I didn’t listen to the hype, I didn’t read up on it, I wasn’t interested. It’s only after things blew up that I even really began to register what No Man’s Sky was supposed to be, and it’s only after watching that video that I wanted to experience it for myself.

In trying to do consumer research for a game so contentious, it’s borderline impossible to find a review that is current, in-depth, *and* untouched by emotion; it was extremely hard to find an appraisal of whether the game was a better buy on PS or PS4 that took into account all the updates and performance tweaks made since its release, as well as to find a qualitative evaluation of the game that didn’t mention whether Hello Games had or had not ‘redeemed’ themselves. In the end, I took into account that PC players seemed to have often have problems with frame-rates, as well as the overwhelmingly more-positive Metacritic rating of the PS4 version (and the fact that it’s £6 cheaper in the PSN sale than the PC version) to buy this version, and as such, this article pertains to that version only. Also, as this is a huge game and the consumer experience no-doubt changes as your experience with the game’s mechanics increases, it’s important to note that I’ve played about 20-25 hours so far, and only ventured two star systems from the beginning, so I’m still going to refer to this as ‘first impressions.’

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No Man’s Sky is an independent first-person space exploration and survival game developed by the UK’s Hello Games. Upon release, it received arguably the largest consumer backlash in the history of video games after their vague, hype-led promotional campaign revealed itself to be anywhere from wafflingly distracting to outright deceptive, and the level of fan expectation pre-release had, at least somewhat independently, mutated into something absurd and unhealthy. In any case, Hello stirred up expectation by promising not just the world, but the universe - literally quintillions of stars, each with their own unique planetary system, and each planet with its own unique landscape and blend of flora and fauna, and to be honest, for the most part, it delivers on that part of the promise, at least to a certain degree. There is some credence to the remaining complaints about the game, but honestly, I think that even if these issues were resolved, some people simply won’t like it for what it is, so my intention here is to give you a feeling of what it was like for me, playing the game with near-enough of a blank slate.

I woke up on a freezing snow planet. My ship was wrecked and surrounded by some boxes with a small amount of basic resources. Activating a nearby terminal, I was given a mission to repair my equipment and the rest was up to me. Venturing out on foot, I found the planet to be pleasantly populated, with a fairly regular smattering of non-hostile creatures, a dozen or so different types of plant-life, and relatively abundant resources. The world looked gorgeous – icy plains and some light hills, dotted with trees and bushes and mineral outcrops, all delivered in a beautifully simple, but not plain, graphical style. Nearby planets dominated the skyline, beckoning me temptingly from across the expanse. I noticed little pop in, and most of the ‘fading in’ was tasteful and non-invasive (although after a number of hours of playtime or on particularly densely detailed planets the fading in became more laboured).

Scanning the area I noticed that there was a point of interest within a minute’s walk that turned out to be small abandoned outpost with a number of supplies. From there, another point lay about 2 mins away again, and from there another, until I’d reached about six different places. Along the way I found holes in the ground that led me through intricate cave systems that, while pretty and adorned with all kinds of stone and plant formations, largely held nothing of practical value for me. After getting my ship up and running I explored the planet through the air, finding more ancient alien monuments and occasionally populated bases, as well as completing the initial missions that seemed to be aimed towards getting me aloft into the stars. I was constantly aware of small robots - Sentinals - that buzzed about the areas of interest, as well as the near-constant presence of noisy spaceships flying overhead. I met a species of alien – the Gek – and spoke and traded with them, learning a small amount of their incomprehensible language, as well as encountering outposts that contained systems holding cryptic messages or puzzles that I had to solve in order to unlock the rewards within.

I spent about four hours on this planet (maybe more) before venturing to the next, drawn by a waypoint that led to an ancient ritual site. Travel from one planet to the other was seamless – taking off from the ice planet (which I have forever designated the name ‘Smegmanius’), I was out of its atmosphere in seconds, and blasting towards the soon-to-be-titled planet ‘McBulgin’. The detail on the planet surface faded rather smoothly in before me as I approached, and as I landed near the site I hopped out of my ship onto an arid, barren surface dominated by areas of toxic haze and harsh outcrops of dry rock and minerals. The difference in climate was palpable as heat audibly simmered the grey rock (although the overall effect on my environmental protection was roughly the same as the previous planet, just hot instead of cold); this place felt truly alien. This feeling was only enhanced by the fact that it was entirely devoid of sentient life, and the points of interest were stationed much further away from one another compared to those on Smegmanius, so exploring the planet was a much more lonely experience, but, interestingly, made me far less nervous and jumpy. In any case, the tangible loneliness aroused by this hostile planet simply through replacing snow with rock, introducing jagged geological geometry, and removing fauna from the equation, had me enraptured.

In exploring the rest of the system and beyond I’ve found planets with vast lakes and squidgy terrain, ‘paradise planets’ with green skies and green rivers that run through deep canyons, desolate moon-like planets with tall mountains, mushroom planets with toxic atmospheres, and barren planets with little to see or do besides mine the abundant outcrops of valuable minerals. I’ve seen creatures enormous, tiny, cute, and horrifying. I’ve seen haunting monuments to civilizations long-dead half-buried in the middle of nowhere, and bizarre arcing bands of shining minerals streaking out of the ground. I’ve seen soaring peaks and deep ravines and scorched, featureless plains, and strange floating islands peppering twisted purple landscapes. I’ve been hunted through snowy forests by predators that make my skin crawl, and fought off pirates in asteroid belts above the looming spectres of ocean planets. I’m a couple of dozen hours in and while there is a certain definite degree of repetition in aspects of the worlds I’ve been to (because this is an indie game made by a small team of human devs and not the Holy Grail made by Jesus Christ himself), I’ve not lost the sense of wonder when first setting foot on a new planet. I have no doubt that there will be a point where I feel as if I’m just going through the motions, but I haven’t hit that point yet, and for £10 I certainly feel like I’ve got value for my money. I’m also certain that I’ll pick the game up again after I’m done with it for the first time, as there is simply so much to see, not to mention the fact that Hello Games keep adding content for free and thereby increasing the amount available for people to do.

It’s just my opinion, but concerning an independent game in which 100% of the players will likely explore less than 0.001% of the available worlds, there is no place for the expectation that everything one experiences will be different every time. Part of the reality of creating something both near-infinite *and* user friendly is that there needs to be a balance allowing the systems to be creative without letting them break the game for the player, or risk leaving them with nothing to see and do – landing on literal bald rock, or a gas giant that kills you just for venturing into it, or an ocean planet with no life (because let’s not forget that, thus far, most of the real observable universe is devoid of life) would lack emotional impact and certainly be disappointing if they were anywhere near as prevalent in the game as they are in reality. And a consequence of this balancing within the procedural generation system is a subsequent degree of homogenisation amongst the experiences. In saying that, I think that they’ve got that balance pretty close to being just right – every planet is its own experience in one way or another; some fill you with feelings of wonder, others with a hyper-awareness of your existence as a lone speck on an otherwise forsaken landscape; some can intrigue you for hours, others for mere minutes. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t welcome additional content in terms of plants and animals and terrain variations (I’d even go so far as to say I’d pay for them), but honestly, while better-regarded games like Elite: Dangerous and its ilk give you the cool feeling of being a space pilot, No Man’s Sky gives you the cool feeling of being a space explorer.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know that there have been significant additions to the game since launch, such as more biomes, vehicles, and narrative additions, and it’s not entirely fair of me to criticise the opinions and reactions of those that pre-ordered the game for full price and played it when it was an inferior state. But the continued vitriol of the most vocally negative commentators doesn’t seem proportionate to the game as it exists in its current state. No Man’s Sky is the one of the few games I’ve played that has actively engaged my girlfriend to the point that she wants to join in with me. We spent 8 hours together the other day exploring the solar systems and passing the controller back and forth amidst mutual expressions of fascination. The controls on-foot and in-flight are simple enough for everyone, and at the time of writing she hasn’t texted me back for 3 hours, so I can be pretty certain that she’s enveloped in the new game that we started up for her this morning, and when we both get home from work today she’ll have stories to tell me of things that I have never experienced, and will likely never get to witness myself. The feeling that you can be playing the same game as someone and know that the things they’re seeing will likely never be looked upon by another’s eyes is truly breathtaking.

However, the truth remains that the game will not be for everyone. Some will object to the gameplay itself and the fact that the core actions of the player are far less expansive than the in-game universe. Many won’t have the patience for the experience and may perhaps wish that NMS was more Mass Effect than Minecraft. And there are still bugs to be found, and items that seem to have an unfinished purpose, although personally I’ve found these to be a rarity. But if those who haven’t yet played can rid themselves of expectations, or (if you’re lucky) not have any expectations to begin with, what you may find is a space exploration and survival game unlike any other. For decades developers have released games that focus on the feeling of piloting a ship throughout space itself and of engaging in various forms of space combat, leaving the planets themselves standing starkly out of reach, but for the first time that I know of, Hello Games have created a product that aims to bridge the gap between the land and the sky and place the player both in the cockpit and the walking boots of a galactic traveller. Much is streamlined about the game, and it is certainly about far as one can get from a space simulation, but No Man’s Sky, for all the faults of its launch and whatever of those still remain, offers a sensation of wonder in exploration that I’ve never experienced before - a feeling that is exciting to share and paradoxically exquisite in how unlikely it is that you will share the experience with someone outside of a person sitting next to you.

#hello games #no man's sky #ps4 #video game #first impressions #review #space #exploration #survival #flight #lasers #gekboy4lyf

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