Category: Writing (Page 4 of 6)

The calendar says that it is nearly winter, but the weather feels as if winter has already arrived. At the same time, it’s hard to believe we’ve been here for five months and that Christmas is only two weeks away. The girls were having a similar conversation last night, and it made me think about what we did in November. 

On November 1, I captured a video of the autumn rain. I didn’t record this thinking it would make a good intro to a blog post, but play this thing on loop. It’s incredibly relaxing. 

Technically, bonfire night was on the 5th, but London celebrated in style on Saturday the 3rd. The girls and I went to Battersea Park and took in the biggest fireworks show I’ve personally seen. It was truly a delight. 

The following week took me to Dublin for work. Traveling for work generally means long days and little time to enjoy the place I’m visiting. The museums and cultural attractions are typically closed by the time I leave the client office, but I usually manage to find a decent meal, a drink, and then see whatever I can. In Dublin that meant this guy:

And of course a pint of Guinness. 

I didn’t like Guinness in America. I tried it a few times, but it always tasted slightly burnt. When I came to London, I tried it again. It was better! Creamier and that burnt flavor was gone. Then I tried it in Dublin. Reader, a pint of Guinness in a busy pub in Dublin might just be the best pint of beer of in the world. (I am open to suggestions otherwise!) It’s like drinking a hug from an angel. Like warm sunshine on a cold day. Like a nice, long piss after… well, you get the idea. It’s not remotely the same beer as America. I realize folks have lots of reasons for not consuming, and I respect that. However, if you enjoy a pint now and again, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better pint anywhere. 

The following weekend Carissa and I managed to get out of the house for a few hours for a date night. We saw Dessa in concert, and the show was delightful. 

Dessa has her own, distinctive sound that covers ground between indie, hip hop, and pop. I enjoy music as a neophyte. I do not catch the complexities of composition, and I cannot carry a tune in a bucket. What I do especially love are clever lyrics, and Dessa’s lyrics are razor sharp. We had a delightful time supporting our fellow Yank.

Toward the end of the month I made my first-ever trip to Portugal. As with any work trip, the pictures are A: photos from airplane windows, or B: inanimate objects. I need to work on this.

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Lisbon was great. Warm weather, friendly people, great food. 

My biggest challenge was the language. It turns out that all those years of Spanish have left me in a spot where I can almost sort of understand Spanish if people speak slowly, but completely confused me for handling Portuguese and its pronunciation. 

Enter Scene: Brent walks into a small, family-run cafe.

BRENT: Buenos dias. Una taza de cafe, por favor.

WAITER, in English: Sir, this Portugal. We speak Portuguese. And your Spanish is atrocious.

BRENT: Uh, I’ll have a glass of water. Please. 

That story may not have actually happened, but it is true nonetheless. 

The final day of the month saw me back in London, and the girls and I went to Winter Wonderland at Hyde Park. 

1. Winter Wonderland is lovely
2. Winter Wonderland is crowded
3. Winter Wonderland is expensive
4. We plan to go back next year

The girls went ice skating, and we all went through the magical ice forest. It was cold. It was also magical. There were rides. There was bratwurst. There were CHURROS!

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The park is a “Christmas” carnival, which means it is an exercise in capitalism in its purest form. They let you in the gates for free, but everything from there has both a queue and a cost. The place was absolutely jammed with people by the time we left around 9:00 PM, but we still had a lovely time, and the girls want to go back next year. 

If nothing else, for the churros. 

Oh, hello again.

Some things are changing around here. I’m moving from southwest Missouri to London, UK this summer. There will be more blog posts. Expect to hear lots about museums, food, travel, and general life in a place that is very different from my corner of the Ozarks.

There is a novel in-progress. It’s a sprawling thing that isn’t quite science fiction, isn’t quite fantasy, is definitely not Hamilton fanfic, but is definitely inspired by the American Revolution, wealth inequality, steampunk, and the month I cooked vegetarian food. “Sounds weird,” you’re thinking. “But I like weird. When can I read it?” Now that, dear reader, is a good question. I don’t have a good answer. “Someday” would definitely be accurate. “Next year” would be too ambitious. I’m planning to send this one out to the major publishers when I feel like it’s ready. It may well be years before it’s either published or I give up on selling it and publish it myself. Don’t hold your breath, but keep an eye on this space for updates.

There’s also another Porter Melo story kicking around in my head, but I probably won’t write it until Prosperity, LTD is out on submission. The Porter Melo story will be about soccer, FIFA corruption, and organized crime. Probably set in London since I’ll be able to do plenty of onsite research. This one I likely will self-publish. Ideally it will be available before the 2022 World Cup.

I do have a new story available Right Now, though. It’s only available in paperback, and you can find it in the Santa Barbara Literary Journal at Amazon. The story is titled “Petunia’s Baby” and it’s about a young lady that falls in love with the wrong sort of man, realizes that the world doesn’t owe her anything, and finds her own happy ending. Spoiler alert: things get dark, fast. If you’ve read “Who We Once Were, Who We’ll Never Be” (my story about the young lady in China), you’ll notice some similarities. Look, I won’t pretend that these aren’t my way of trying to send not-so-subtle messages to my daughters. Kick ass and take names, ladies. And have an alibi.

It’s been a while since my last boardgames post and I’ve played a number of other games in the last two years. Many of these games aren’t exactly new, but they’re new to me.

Some new favorites:

Hanabi
This is a cooperative card game with a unique twist. You don’t see your own cards until you play them. There are five colors of cards (plus a bonus rainbow color for advanced players) with numbers one through five. The goal is to play all five colors in order from one to five. Each player gets a turn and they have one of three actions. The player may give a clue to another player. The player may play a card from their hand. The player may discard a card. Players win by playing all twenty-five cards or by getting through the deck without four misplays. There are some limitations on the kinds of clues and the number of clues, but it’s a very elegant set of rules.

The game is deceptively simple, and there are layers of strategy in which clues a person provides, who receives clues and even how long it has been since a person has received a clue.

This a fascinating game, and I highly, highly recommend it.

Love Letter
Another fairly quick card game, but not cooperative. In this game there are eight types of cards ranging from a lowly guard all the way to the princess. The theme is that the player is trying to send a letter to the princess, and the person that sends her letter as close to the princess as possible wins the round. The players start with one card in their hand and then draw a single new card each turn. Each type of card has a unique effect, and the player must always play one card. There’s a good bit of interaction between players, and the rounds move very quickly. My girls love the game, though I’m not quite as crazy about it. The randomness of the card draws has just as much (or more) outcome on the game as the individual player’s decisions. This makes it fun for newer (or younger) players, but it gets old for those with more experience.

It’s fun, but simple, and well worth consideration.

Pandemic
Pandemic is an older game, but my group has only recently started playing it. We immediately loved the theme of CDC researchers trying to stop the world’s destruction by multiple viruses. The game requires good communication and good coordination in order to succeed, but even then there are no guarantees. Some of the role cards are significantly stronger than others, so if you’d like an easier path into the game, consider selecting some of the more powerful roles.

I love this game. The theme, the teamwork, the nailbiting tension as the draw deck dwindles and too many infections remain on the board. It’s a blast and a must-play.

Terra Mystica
In Terra Mystica you are playing as one of 14 different factions. The victory conditions are the same for every faction, but there are some differences in how they get there.

The basic goal of the game is to terraform land, build buildings, lead a cult, and score victory points. The game happens over the course of six (or maybe it’s seven, I don’t remember exactly) rounds. You get points along the way for leading some faction of the cult (Wind, Water, Earth, Fire) or building certain buildings.

The buildings themselves are pretty amazing. You have the settlement, recognizable from Settlers of Catan. It upgrades into the “trading post,” recognizable as the city from Settlers of Catan. The trading post upgrades to a Stronghold, recognizable as a squarish wooden thing, not from Settlers of Catan. Or if you’re feeling cultish, the trading post instead upgrades to a temple, recognizable as a round wooden thing that could belong to any other game ever. And finally the temple upgrades to a more expensive temple, not substantially different than a regular temple, called a sanctuary.

The real clever bit here is that your buildings are all on a little mat in front of you, and much like in Eclipse, when you place a building on the board, you then get paid the resources that the building was previously covering on your mat. Your settlements provide workers. Your trading posts provide money and “power.” Your strongholds provide something unique for each faction. Your temples and sanctuaries provide priests each turn, but also each one you build allows you to a gain a favor, and the favor itself provides various things including one time perks and recurring resources. The real key here is that you have to expand territory to put out new settlements, and those settlements provide additional workers, but when you upgrade the settlements, you put them back on your little mat, and you lose the worker income. So the game becomes a balancing act between going horizontal into more territory or vertical into better buildings.

There are four currencies in the game. One is money. It’s just… money. But money can’t buy you love, and neither can it buy you buildings unless someone actually builds them. So money gets used with your workers from your settlements to upgrade your buildings. Once you build temples, you get priests. They are used for things like building a navy (because buggery?) or incurring favor with the cults. Along the way, various things give you “power” and this is the most interesting currency, at least from a “I haven’t see anything work like this before” perspective.

Power is a finite resource on your playing mat, something like 14 little purple chips. These chips live in a set of three connected circles cleverly numbered 1, 2, and 3. They start in some combination of circles 1 and 2. The gimmick is that to spend them (which lets you do things and also moves the chips back to circle 1), you need chips in circle 3. And you can only move chips from 2 to 3 if all the chips are gone from circle 1. You can use power to gain extra money, extra priests, extra workers, bridges (recognizable as the roads from Settlers of Catan) that allow you to link buildings across rivers, and a few other things that don’t spring to mind. Once you get an engine going to bring in resources, power gives you a good bit of flexibility.

At the end of the game you score points for your position on each of the four cultist tracks. You also score for the total size (horizontal; it ignores vertical) of the linked buildings in your empire. And I definitely missed that the scoring ignored upgrades the first time I played, so that hurt. Ultimately, it’s a very clever, very fun game that combines the best bits of several other games, adds some of its own and calls it a day.

Risk: Legacy
This is not the Risk of my childhood. Yes, there’s still some dice rolling, and yes, Australia is still really strong, but there are so many changes that game only bears a passing resemblance to its namesake.

The biggest, most unique aspect of the game is that you the player will permanently alter the game every time you play it. At the very beginning of the game the players start by customizing their starting factions. Each faction has a sticker sheet with some abilities on it, and you only use part of those stickers. Once they are put on the faction’s card, they are permanent, and the others are thrown in the trash forever and ever amen. This is a theme that repeats itself through out the game. Events happen. Players respond. The game forever changes.

The second amazing aspect of the game are the “surprise” bins. The box ships with a number of sealed compartments. You are only supposed to open those compartments when the events listed on the compartment occur. This can be something like putting thirty armies on the board or using three nuclear missiles in a single combat or creating a special city. The boxes contain new cards to add to the game, new rules to put into the new rule book and all manner of wondrous and amazing things.

One of the single best moments I’ve had in any board game was when one of my regular gaming buddies and I got into a fight over a third buddy’s capital. The fight triggered an event, and it permanently modified that space on the board. It. Was. Glorious.

Unlike the Risk of yore, the game finishes when the first player acquires four tokens. At the beginning of the game (as in when you first start playing it), each player starts with one of these tokens, so victory can occur by capturing only three enemy capitals. No needs to conquer the whole world; only their nearest neighbors.

The game is intended to played fifteen times before the board stops changing. It’s been a blast getting to fifteen, and while there’s no reason to stop, I’m more likely to buy a new copy of it and start over from scratch. I really enjoy Risk: Legacy, and if you’re into wargames, you should take a look at it.

1. Loperamide
Lopermide is the generic form of Immodium. If you’re used to North American cooking and sanitation, and you go to China, you’re going to get the runs. It’s not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when. So plan on two loperamide for each day you’re in China. You may not need them, but it’s a guarantee someone else in your group will.

2. Antacids
You know, Tums. Because even if you don’t get diarrhea, you’re going to eat the street food (it’s amazing) and you’re going to want something to settle your stomach so you can keep snapping pictures and gawking at the splendor of Asia.

3. Travel packs of bathroom tissue
Yes, they have toilet paper in China. Most of the time. Except where the toilets look like this.

No, it’s not a hole in the ground. Yes, that’s a place you’ll need to take care of business. Okay, you’re right, it is a hole in the ground. And guess what, it doesn’t come stocked with TP. Bring your own.

4. Melatonin
Jet lag is a real thing. It took me about four days to get over it when I traveled from the US to Shenzhen. Doze on the plane a little, and when you land in China try to stay up until 9:00 PM so you can get on a Chinese schedule. And while you’re at it, don’t plan your trip to the Great Wall on the first day you’re in the country. You’ll be too tired. Go see the local sights for the first couple days, and don’t push too hard.

5. Nyquil / Dayquil
You’ll get sick. Or someone in your group will. Pack some flu medicine just in case.

6. Bandaids and Neosporin
At Mutianyu there’s a toboggan and it’s awesome and I totally fell out of my little chair and scraped all the skin off my left knee.

It was a really shaky chair, okay? I’m sure they have bandaids and Neosporin in China, but they won’t have them wherever you actually get injured.

7. A Book
Yes, you’re in China, and yes there’s plenty to do, but the plane ride from Chicago to Hong Kong is 16 hours. The selection of movies was surprisingly good, but you’ll still want to take a break from staring at that tiny screen.

8. Snacks
If you have kids, bring some familiar snacks. Granola bars or fruit chews or whatever it is the kids like. Chinese food in China is not the same as Chinese food in the US. (Caveat: I’m in a moderately sized city in the Midwest; there’s real Chinese food on the coasts.) You will not find the General Tsao’s chicken you expect. And while this is fine for adults, any kids–especially ones that are picky eaters–will appreciate something familiar, even if it’s a snack.

And seriously, so will you, Mr. Grown Up that thinks you can handle Chinese food. Give yourself a week a week in China and see how you feel after you get grease stains on your two favorite pairs of pants. See how you feel when the bird flu (i.e. minor cold) you caught on the plane really takes hold. You’ll be happy for that package of Fruit Roll Ups you stashed in your bag.

9. The Google Translate app with the Chinese language pack installed
The ability to type in “cold water” and have it come back with 冷水 is a life saver when you’re exhausted and thirsty and a tiny glass of hot tea just won’t do. Don’t be a horrible tourist and assume that saying something louder in English will make the non-English speaking Chinese waitress understand. Just whip out the phone and show her what you want.

If you install the language pack over wifi (or before you leave), there’s really no need to get the expensive overseas data plan if you have Verizon or AT&T back home. And while you can get a SIM card for cheap, keep in mind that mainland China and Hong Kong use different cell networks, so if you’re visiting both you’ll need two sets of SIM cards. And you’ll need your phone to be unlocked.

10. A sense of adventure
You’re in China. Things are different. Embrace the differences and enjoy the experience. Try the street dumplings. Gawk at the scorpions on a stick. Just be smart and be prepared.

As I write this I’m sitting in the Hong Kong airport waiting on my flight home. It’s the third weekend in a row that I’ve been to Hong Kong, though the last two involved trips to Hong Kong Island and Kowloon rather than a direct trip to the airport on Lantau Island.

On my first trip to the city I went to Hong Kong Island and walked around for a while. It’s glass and buildings and hotels and parks. Bentleys and BMWs, Mercedes and Maseratis. Prada, Gucci, Michael Kors. If you’re looking for luxury and excess, Hong Kong is a great place to find it.
But you don’t have to walk far to see the poverty.

Above the streets crawling with hundred thousand dollar cars were walkways full of women. Old and young. White and brown. And they’re all women, at least from what I saw. Covered walkways and stairwells teeming with women and girls playing cards and eating lunch and telling stories and living their lives. It reminds me of New York. Ostentatious wealth and abject poverty shoulder to shoulder. I don’t know where they are from or what their stories are.

After my first trip to Manhattan a few years ago I told my wife that Springfield and Manhattan have as much in common as Springfield and the moon. The differences between Hong Kong and Springfield are much the same, if slightly further apart. Shenzhen, though, I’m not so sure about Shenzhen. It’s very different, of course. Very Chinese. But the part of Shenzhen I was in was a middle class part of town. There’s a mall by the hotel, and as I walked through it on my last day in the city I noted the vehicles. The Hondas and the Toyotas, the Chevys and the Fords. It could have been the parking lot of any strip mall in Springfield. The stores were names I didn’t recognize, but they could have been the Chinese equivalents of Dr. Judy’s office or Rick’s Automotive or Buddy’s Carpet Care.

The cell phone is just as ubiquitous in China as it is in the US, but they’re bigger. Physically bigger. Everyone carries a giant white cell phone and talks into it (often on speaker) constantly. From the dolled up girls in their Benzes to the cabbies making their rounds. It’s a status symbol, and it doesn’t matter how poor a person is, they have a giant phone.

Children are the same little tyrants in China that they are in the US. They fight and cry and run and make their parents want to pull their hair out. And a minute later they come running back and grab your legs and wipe their snot on your hip and tell you they love you and pretty much just steal your heart. In China the kids pee on the sidewalk until they’re about five, but I’ve seen more than a few college kids relieving themselves in worse places, so I think it evens out.

I spent a fair amount of time talking to my Chinese colleagues. We were about the same age, and we were all programmers. They were traveling for work, too, and none of them were from Shenzhen. They came from Beijing and Shanghai and Guangzhou. They left behind their wives and children, and they looked forward to the weekends when they could visit with their families. We talked about work and family and American TV shows. We worked together, side by side, and we made progress even as the treadmill beneath us continued its endless cycle.

Folks have asked about everyday life in China. It is not so different than life in America. My life in Springfield is not the same as Carey’s life as an actor and a waiter in New York. Nor is it the same as Karen’s life as a stay at home mom in Chicago. Shenzhen is a city full of people from all over China, people of all economic classes. There is no set pattern of daily life across such a spectrum, no more than there is across the spectrum in America. We all live differently in some aspects, but we all have responsibilities. We work and we eat and we play and we laugh and we cry. We hug our wives and our husbands, our children and our parents. The wheel turns, and we turn with it. My colleagues, nay my friends, in China, they speak Java and I speak C#, but the syntaxes are not so different. And neither are we.

The trip to the airport was entirely painless. I left the hotel in Shenzhen around 7:00 AM and caught a (27 yuan) taxi to the Guangdong border crossing. When I climbed out of the taxi a tout with a manbag over his shoulder approached and asked if I was going to the Hong Kong airport. He pointed me to the end of the taxi stand and produced a roll of stickers and a ticket and asked for 150 RMB. All of which, including the price, was in line with what I expected. I paid up, and about 15 minutes later (I think we were waiting on additional passengers to fill the shuttle) I was going through customs which took all of five minutes. It literally took longer for the shuttle folks to pack five passengers’ bags into the back of a Toyota van than it took to get through customs. The van took us straight through to the airport, and from the time I left the hotel to the time I reached my gate in Hong Kong International it took under two hours.