You would think that, since video games are supposed to entertain you, they would relieve stress, rather than causing more of it. But I've certainly had my share of worries due to the games that I've played.

Every day, I check up on my Animal Crossing: Wild World to see if it has rained in the game. (If you've been keeping track, there is a previous post of mine which speaks of this, so bear with me if you've already heard of it.) Over the years I have cultivated a grand garden of flowers in my town, which I am very proud of it. And as I always tend to get too attached to things, even those that may seem trivial, I can't part with it, not after I've spent so much time and effort keeping the flowers alive. I've grown tired of having to take care of them, day in and day out (the ones that are brown and dying must be watered, so that the next day they will be healthy again).

I have already let go of Nintendogs. That was a bit easier because the worst that could happen would be the dog running away (they don't die, nor do they ever mature. Rather unrealistic). The dog would surely come back after a while. In this case I would not lose my house or anything like that, so I wasn't particularly concerned.

Eventually I expect I'll abandon Animal Crossing completely, either because it falls off my list of priorities or I finally come to terms with loss. But even though I already know what will happen, I can't help but be saddened by the future.

During my 6th grade year, I went to a makeshift YMCA daycare after school, located in a place called the Multi-Use room where school announcements and assemblies take place, since I wasn't trusted to walk home by myself and my parents wouldn't be able to pick me up until 5 pm, sometimes 6, in most cases. I would finish whatever homework I could (we could use the school library if we needed textbooks). At first, in the beginning of the year, I might sometimes run around backstage and play hide and seek, but after a while we were told not to go backstage anymore, so that put an end to it. We also played some games, like Apples to Apples. It can be quite fun if you have enough people. (Unfortunately you need four people to play it properly, and in my family there are only three if my mom would actually agree to play. So I never get the chance to play it.) But as the year wore on, one of the two people in charge of this YMCA would bring in his Nintendo Gamecube more frequently, and we would play Mario Kart Double Dash or Super Smash Bros. Melee or this X-Men game. I did have a good time playing the video games, although it meant I was that much more impatient for them when I wasn't playing.

I did hear some exciting news recently. There's a new kind of Nintendo DS coming out - it's called the 3DS, and so the graphics will be quite nice. There are games on the way, too, like Nintendogs + Cats. Because of the camera built into the 3DS, the dog will actually be able to recognize your face. And there's also a new Animal Crossing that looks nice. The characters you can make are now taller and thinner (I was never too fond of the chibi-ish, short people). I'd really like to try these games out, so I guess I'm going to have to get a 3DS. But this also makes me wonder if I'll even have the time to play them.

What really spurred me on to write this post was the problems I was having with my Sims 3 today. I was notified that there was a game update available for the Sims 3 World Adventures (an expansion pack I had purchased), so I decided to update it. After that I figured I should try to play the game. But then I was told that my expansion was not compatible with my base game. I waited for it to update, but it didn't do anything. Eventually I started rooting around online to see what I could find. It seems that other people were having the same problem, too. I finally figured out that I ought to download a patch to my Sims 3 game, which fixed the game launcher, so I should be able to play now (it has finally stopped telling me my game is incompatible and everything is showing up as usual). I was really worried there thinking I might have to uninstall everything (although I was prepared for this, and backed up my files on my external hard drive). I'm so glad that it's been fixed now.

Labels: 3ds, animal crossing, apples to apples, backstage, games, garden, memories, nintendo ds, nintendogs, patch, pride, problem, routine, sims 3, stress, wild world, YMCA

I was just reading the February 2010 edition of Reader's Digest magazine. (Apparently we only received this issue recently, which is odd. I mean, it's long past February now. I guess they forgot to send it to us before.) This time the magazine had a focus on ways to lose weight and the attitudes of people in various countries about being fat.

Regarding France, many families eat together every night, much more than the percentage in the USA out of people surveyed. And the meals in France are quite long. My French teacher told us that the lunchtime at French schools is about two hours long, so school ends late, like 5:00 pm or so. It's such a long lunch that you might even be able to go home and take a nap (just as long as you got up in time to return to school).

Actually, the longer the meal, the less you eat, given that you talk to someone while eating. If you're holding a conversation while eating, then you don't eat as quickly, compared to when you're focused on eating (as I tend to be). That pretty much explains why eating lunch or dinner seems to take so much longer when my parents are eating with their friends.

In this way, you end up not eating as much even though you supposedly would be spending more time talking. By talking, you have to slow down your eating (unless you eat and talk at the same time, which is disgusting and can also result in choking or food coming out). It's a good strategy, but it does take up time, which is a valuable resource that is impossible to replace.

But the opposite - that less is more - is also true, when it comes to swimming pools. Blackberry Farm, a place of recreation in my town, has its pool open during the warmer months. There's a discount on Sunday evenings (after 5:00 pm), I believe, so my mother and I went to the pool.

My mom had thought it wouldn't be crowded because she figured not many people would know about the pool, but she turned out to be wrong. It was quite crowded. Still, we figured that since we bothered to come we should go and swim. I suppose that less money needed to go swimming means more people flock to the pool.

The deepest section, 6 feet deep, was the one with the least amount of people. (This is an instance of "more is less" - the deeper the water, the smaller the amount of people in it.) The shallower sections were mostly occupied by parents teaching their children to swim.

It brought back my memories of the time when I was still struggling with swimming. My mom and I would go to the YMCA pool because we used to have a membership there. My mom would tell me to do four paces of Freestyle or something like that. It had been difficult for me then. Sometimes I choked on water and became very upset. I used to resent swimming. I feared water. Even showering was something I disliked because I might get water in my eyes. Now I don't fear the pool anymore. I guess the toils and trouble turned out to be worth it.

Labels: conversation, deep, fear, fight, france, lunch, magazine, meal, pool, readers digest, shower, struggle, swimming, time, trick, water, weight, YMCA

CORRECTION: Whoops, this is actually the 299th post. My bad.
This post marks 300 posts in this blog. It's amazing how much I've been able to write over time, and I'm glad that I got this far. I hope you've enjoyed the ride too.

I thought I had better back up some of my posts on my computer, in case Blogger ever blinks out of Internet existence or my blog accidentally gets deleted or something like that. I was looking through my posts and I realized I had used the title "Walking on the Moon" twice. Oopsy. I try not to ever repeat post names, but I unintentionally do so... I guess this is what happens when your quantity gets too big. As for the quality, I hope it has not gone down over time. When I look back at some of my posts, I think, "Oh, that was a fun time, but it feels like so long ago." There are some times when I don't have much to write about, like the post "Ansel Adams", when I was lacking for inspiration, and it was a drag to write the post. (I felt like I should write something, to prevent me getting rusty from less practice writing) And there are also times when I have so many things to write about, I'm churning out posts everyday and I feel like I'm on top of the world. I wonder if I can grasp that feeling again.

There's something I'm always wondering about, and that is my appetite. It seems that even if I eat too much at one time and get full, later on I'll feel hungry again. (I might not really be hungry, only as soon as I see something yummy, I feel the urge to eat it.) I guess I have to ration what I eat since it seems I will always get hungry at certain times regardless of how much I ate earlier. This is rather dangerous and makes me feel like a fish or something. I bet my fish would keep eating beyond their capacities if I gave them a ton of food. (That's why I tend to "starve" them by only giving them the bare minimum at feeding time. I don't even feed them daily.)

While I was walking home today, I overheard a girl talking about how her dog had vomited. (Sorry to give you that mental picture if you were eating) I kind of thought about how people really still behave a lot like animals. I've heard dogs can sneeze and cough too (not sure about cats), like us. Both animals and humans scratch themselves when they're itchy. And we certainly do vomit as well. In the end, no matter how humans try to control and dominate and become "civilized", they're still animals.

I remembered something today that I hadn't thought about in a long time. When I was in elementary school, I used to go the YMCA daycare on the campus after school, where I stayed until my parents came back from work and could pick me up. There were sometimes questions we could answer, for instance, since I mentioned itches earlier, there was once a question, "Do you scratch an itch or itch a scratch?" We would write our answer on a slip of paper, as well as our name, and put it in a plastic box. Then, one day, one of the people working at the YMCA (we called them "leaders"), would randomly pick out a piece of paper where the question was answered correctly (I believe it was sorted for correct answers first), and then the person or people chosen would get a prize of some sort. It feels like a long time ago now.

Even sixth grade seems far away. I still have plenty of memories, but they gradually become fuzzier over time, more surreal, more distant. After a while I end up thinking, "Those were great times. And I'll probably never have them again." I still enjoy things in my daily life. But it's rather clouded by all the knowledge of the world you get, because when you're young everything's fresh and simple, everything is clearly defined. The lines get blurred when you're older, unless you can still keep that innocence, and I long for those days when things were not complicated. I don't know if I can have that kind of life again. I think that you don't realize how nice it is to be young until you get older.

I feel worn out of having to deal with stresses and concerns, and that's why I want to retire. I'd thought that if I didn't have to work any longer, and be able to focus my attentions on the little things, things that I want to do but don't get around to doing, things would be easier. Maybe they would be, and maybe they wouldn't. I'd still like to see for myself. And I don't want to wait more than fifty years for it.

Labels: 300, appetite, blog, complicated, fish, food, innocence, inspiration, life, memories, old, retirement, scratch an itch, simplicity, stress, time, walking on the moon, winner, YMCA, youth

No, I did not take a trip out to somewhere, though it may look like I have not been updating much lately. This is not the case. Although my previous two posts, "Germ Factories" and "Thick as Thieves", are supposedly posted on Monday and Wednesday, I actually posted them on Wednesday and Saturday. (I wrote the posts, but posted them later, so what shows up as my posting time is actually the time I started writing them. Sorry if that sounds confusing.) I kept on forgetting to post them until I had already turned off the computer.

Recently, at my house, we had a leak in a pipe. Although I was unperturbed, my parents were not happy because leaks waste water. They've been discussing and worrying for a while, and then finally they had to go out and buy a new part for the pipe. While my dad was out buying the new piece, the water was turned off at my house. When I got up in the morning, I tried to turn on the water to brush my teeth, but nothing came out. I asked my mom, "Where is the water?" She said that it was turned off and that if I wanted to brush my teeth, she could give me some water to gurgle with (probably from a water bottle or something D: ). I declined, figuring that my dad would be back soon.

Then I thought of another dilemma. If the problem could not be fixed, I would not be able to wash my hands after I used the bathroom! I began to panic, thinking that I would also be unable to shower and so I would have to get a YMCA membership again just to use their showers and toilets. I used to have a YMCA membership, back in the day when I was still doing swimming, but no longer...It's kind of sad. I hope I still know how to swim sufficiently. I heard we have to pass a swimming test when I get to high school (treading for 15 minutes or something like that).

Luckily, my dad soon returned and I was able to brush my teeth. It was then that I realized how reliant us humans have become on our modern amenities, like electricity and running water and cars. I once read a book called A Time Apart written by Diane Stanley. In this book, the main character, Ginny, goes to a farm designed to be like one from the Iron Age, where she lives and works with other people who are participating in this project. They are going to live like people used to, using the tools and raising the animals of the people who lived back then. It was rough, not getting to wash much and all, but then when there were power outages in other parts of England, the people at the Iron Age farm were totally unaffected. I think that's pretty cool, that living without the complex things we've invented can actually be better than our modern 21st century lives.

This reminds me of something else I read about. There was an article about the FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), which used to be part of the main Mormon church but split from it because they still practice polygamy (having multiple wives). The LDS, the main Mormon church, decided to abolish the old tradition of polygamy because they wanted to be more accepted in the world, since polygamy was not looked upon fondly. The FLDS still sticks to the original tradition of having several wives, however.

At first I held a rather critical view towards them, because really, I don't like the idea of polygamy. One man having multiple wives means he will have many children, and I want to prevent overpopulation if it is at all possible. That also means some men won't have wives, which reminds me of what China might turn out to be like (some folks would rather have sons than daughters, so there ends up being more boys, and thus some men will not be able to have girlfriends or wives). However, women in FLDS seem to be more valued since they can bear children, which is interesting, because in some societies women are LESS valuable even though the purpose of women is believed to be bearing children. This means that although the society of FLDS might appear to be a patriarchy, it actually is sort of like a matriarchy. I approve of having a high opinion of women because I am rather discriminatory towards males (Sorry if you are male, but it is true in some aspects).

If your husband had other wives, you'd think that it would create jealousy. One woman said, however, that "I came to realize that this is another test that God places before you - the sin of jealousy, of pride - and that to be a godly woman, I needed to overcome it." I think that's a good way to think of it. I believe you should learn to overcome your weaknesses, and it will make you a stronger and better person. And a few people don't mind, but actually help add a wife to their family. One woman was very happy to have another wife in her family. The new wife is actually her biological sister. She had an unhappy marriage, and so her sister had been thinking, "I knew my husband was a good man. I wanted my sister to have a chance at the same kind of happiness I had." That's really nice of her. I don't know if I could do such a thing, because I am not necessarily the most compassionate person, and I have never had any siblings...

I still personally would not want to have to share my husband with someone, but I think the way of life of the members of the FLDS should be respected too. The children grow up without TV or social pressure, which could be better for their growth, although they may be unprepared for the real world if they ever go out there. I think it would be nice to sing and to worship twice a day. I am an atheist myself, and I've always wondered what it would be like if I had a religion. My parents don't seem all that interested, but I am.

Labels: a time apart, children, electricity, flds, gender, hygiene, iron age, jealousy, modern, mormon, plumbing, polygamy, post, religion, survival, swimming, water, wife, women, YMCA

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