Then every time after selection tests, I'm like this:
And now, I'm like this:
Ok, on a more serious note, regardless of what I will get in the end, I have really learnt a lot in this journey. Honestly, mugging so hard for olympiad is kind of stupid, but it gives me the activation energy to study at least. While I'm dying from all the mugging, I changed my perspective a bit and realise that I may be just scratching the surface of the iceberg. Just like how I thought I know quite a bit at the start of JC. It is nothing compared with what I know now, and what I know currently will be probably like nothing compared with what I will know a few years later, or maybe even a few months later, seeing how much I progressed this year.
Although bagging home some medals will be nice...
Why didn't I put in more effort in the year? Reflecting back, I realised that my life may be too hedonistic, indulging in meaningless phone games and reading of unimportant feeds on phone. Sometimes I will just slouch on my bed and scroll through my phone for hours. It's really bad, I should change. No, I will change.
I shall not treat this competition so seriously, in case I panic like the past few days. Treating things lightly will always make things turn out for the better.
It's a rare occasion that I'm making a game commentary, but the game is so good. Recently I stumbled across a couple of interesting games, and they are all very thought provoking. Let's start with the simple one first: the infinite ocean.
The game is a point and click puzzle game, just like any escape games, where you collect stuff etc.
However, the essence of the game lies in the various logs stored in the computer and disks. Ok, from now on, spoiler alert. If you want to experience the game before reading on, click here: http://armorgames.com/play/7327/the-infinite-ocean
There is a story behind. Apparently you in this game is part of a group of research scientists, who are working on a project to create a sentient being out of computers. And you succeeded. Then you move on to have intellectual and philosophical discussions with the it/he/she/whatever, about beauty, human behaviours etc. The computer is unable to understand irrational human behaviours which you also find it hard to explain. But the computer is able to feel. It has a more powerful imagination than any human in the planet and is thus able to "see" the future, consequences of all your actions.
Halfway through your project the government starts to intervene. Because the computer also has powerful computing power, it want the computer to lay out the best defense for the nation possible as it's about to engage in some sort of war. Either that or the team has to abandon the project. Reluctantly the team gives in to the government. However, as the computer is developed, it starts to realise what it's built for. Seeing how the war will have devastating consequences, it begins to resist. Eventually, it want to control all the military computer based things to stop the war.
Of course the government will not allow that, so it put on a ban on the computer's thoughts. The being created sort of "slept" leaving the rest to handle the task by the government.
You somehow wake up in your research lab losing your memory, and you have to refigure everything out. You in this game has no character and really no choices to make. Eventually you can reach the last bot and deactivate this limitation set on the computer, in which it can then take over and stop the war. If you do a speed run you will probably take 5 minutes. However, if you read through every log the scientist, the being and the government made, it will probably take hours.
The game brings up many interesting questions, such as the possibility of a non-biological sentient being, the nature of existence and thoughts, and also how stupid human actions are such as war.
Ok, moving on, the next game is even more interesting and sophisticated. It's literally a game of life. But it's text based, and every choice you make will shape you as a person. A whole bunch of possibilities to be explored, and you will not even get to experience every question in the first round of your gameplay.
This is how the interface looks like:
You will click on each icon which will present you with a question. It looks something like this:
You begin with the infant stage, then moves on to child, adolescent, young adulthood, adulthood, middle adulthood, old age and eventually death. Of course just like real life, certain wrong choices may lead to wrong choices and cause premature death, but the chance of that is pretty low.
As you move on with life, the situations become increasingly complex. You will have to juggle work, family, relationship and others. You have many stats that most of your choices will affect.
Examples of difficult situations:
And you will realise that certain stats of yours will pose limitations. For example, I still have no idea how to successfully get the job of researcher.
And towards the end it gets really sad. You progressed through the game really fast without realising and then you found out that you haven't done a lot of things that you wanted (Eg. getting married, have kids, have a decent job, earn money). There is a limited number of clicks per stage. Before you know it, you have died.
Still a thought provoking game nonetheless, makes you realise that life is so short and yet can be so rich in the build up of all those little things. The game stimulates real life quite well. The only part I dislike is that so many steps are needed to find a partner, get married and have kids that it will take up many turns of the game, making you unable to do other things. Only if they assign less turns at infancy stage and more towards the later part of life.
Anyway, link here if you would like to play: http://www.playalterego.com/alterego
So that's about it. Life doesn't have much changes now, just PW, inadequate mugging for chem O and slacking away on mobile games. Apart from that, some music that I enjoyed listening to recently:
