Typhoon #22 had hit Tokyo the past weekend (Saturday & Sunday). Well, what can I say… after being hit by a 5.7-scale earthquake just 3 days before (Wednesday), the next thing serving up on the list was Typhoon #22.
Not as scary as the earthquake, but it wasn’t a walk in the park either. There were serveral casualties, may their souls rest in peace.
I was out for a while on Saturday afternoon, seeing how it was only a drizzle at that time and didn’t expect to get caught in the thick of the action. The typhoon hit full force by about 7pm when I was walking my 2km route home after having dinner at the GyuDon place. The umbrella was useless, I was drenched from head to toe coz the rain was coming in from all sides. At about every 20-second interval, I had to hide behind the concrete walls of nearby houses because the wind was too strong to safely walk on the road without being blown off your balance – and away (!). This continued on till I finally reached home.
Well, over the course of Saturday, Sunday and Monday when the typhoon was happily going about its business blowing all of Tokyo into a huge mess of fallen tree branches, leaves, garbage cans and other miscellaneous stuff that was not nailed down to the ground, I stayed in the saftey of my room and discovered I had some time on my hands to turn on my consoles and spend some quality time with them.
I’ve been buying games and playing games but had not have enough time on my hands to really sit down and play through the games and finish them. Well, I finally played through Return to Castle Wolfenstien, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge and Beyond Good & Evil to the end during this period.
I’m glad I did take time out to play through and complete these games. Very often, what happens is that I buy a game, then I play it for a while… probably the first hour or so and then I have to put it down coz reality calls and I realise I got a ton of housework piled up shouting for my attention, I got meals to prepare, I got to get enough rest coz I have to go to work the next day… and in the end, the game that I just started gets left on the shelf collecting dust and rarely gets picked up again to play. When next week rolls around, another new game gets released and I go out, buy it, come home, spend about another hour with it, put it down and repeat the same story from the previous week all over again.
It didn’t used to be like this previously, but I guess when you grow older and have to shoulder more responsibilities, it becomes inevitable that you have less time to devote to your hobby. Well actually, that is one of few the reasons why I have chosen to make a career in the games industry. The main reason is because I enjoy making fun games, of course! (Well, I try to!) :P
OK. I remember someone telling me a few years back that “you’ve gotta make time for the things you enjoy doing”. So here’s my resolution – I am going to make it a point to spend at least 2 hours everyday playing games so that I can enjoy, play through and complete my stack of unfinished games. Reality calls? Sorry, interrupt me 2 hours later, thank you!