Probably about a couple of people know that I have less and less belief in the project that I’m working on at the moment. Just accumulation of many many little problems, mostly management problems. I’m seriously considering to take off. Yeah, take off. As in leave everything and grab another opportunity (which has been offered to me like a fresh bread to a mouse). Not immediately of course, but probably in a couple of months.

I shared this low morale situation to a couple of my colleagues.
Both of them were trying really hard to talk me out of it and offer me help to fix the situation.

“I really really want this to work.”
“I don’t know what I’d do if this doesn’t work.”
“It’s like something that I wanna do before I die thing.”

I may have to re-assess my decision. We’ll see.

“Another step ahead,
is another footprint left behind…”

“Life isn’t lived till you’ve tasted every flavour it has to offer.”

My dad said,
ever since he knows how hard it is to build 3D movies, everytime he finishes to watch one movie, he will stay over to read all the names in the credit until the end. All the hundreds of names that people never care about. Now he knows how much effort it takes to get your name there. One name represents sweat, blood, and countless hours of work. God knows how much sacrifices they’ve made.

FYI, my brother is in 3D media industry, and I’m in games. So we’ve been sharing our stuff and work with him. When my first game was published, I brought it home and asked my mum, dad, and 2 younger brothers to play the entire game together (it’s a 1-4 players game). It took them about a few days to finish the game. I should share some pictures about that next time :)

“Never take someone for granted because you’ll wake up one day and realize you’ve lost a diamond while collecting stones.”

This post here about Calo & Pahit Getirnya Mengurus Paspor (sorry, post in Indonesian) reminds me that one of the reasons I snatched my Australian citizenship as soon as I could is so I don’t have to deal with Indonesian bureaucracy ever again. EVER!

The last time I went to the Indonesian consulate in Melbourne to do something (I can’t remember what), the people there talked and fooled around AS IF there was NOBODY there, while the fact was there were at least 10-15 people lining up, each with their own busy schedule I’m sure. We were kept waiting for so much longer than necessary. It was beyond unprofessional to the point of ridiculous. I swore all the way through and promised myself not to be involved in that craziness ever again. That would be the last time!

And it was.

I mean seriously, I would have expected Indonesians living overseas would get their act together and have a little bit more common sense than the ones staying in that polluted corrupted country. Do I sound bitter and hateful? I AM. Look at my blue passport with kangaroo on the front page. I have left Indonesian citizenship without even a fraction of a second thinking otherwise.

Now this is something interesting.

I cannot go to the office tomorrow, because I’m a chicken (as in I was born in the year of chicken, of course).

Tomorrow our office will have some kind of ceremony, like baptism. So everybody needs to arrive slightly before 10am, each bringing a bottle of mineral water, and wait at the door. Only the boss can open the door.

Since our boss is here for only a week, there are only 2 good days on which the ceremony can be done. But one day clashes with monkey sign, and we have 3 monkeys in the office. The other day, which is tomorrow, clashes with chicken, while I’m the only chicken in the office. So they sacrificed me.

Therefore tomorrow I cannot and MUST not go to the office. Bad spirit.

I’m guessing if I insist to come and see what’s going on, they will use the mineral water to splash on me.

Conscious faith is freedom.
Instinctive faith is slavery.
Mechanical faith is madness.
Conscious hope is strength.
Emotional hope is cowardice.
Mechanical hope is sickness.
Conscious love arouses love.
Emotional love arouses the unexpected.
Mechanical love arouses hate.

God uses loneliness to teach us about living together. Sometimes he uses anger so that we can understand the infinite value of peace. At other times he uses tedium, when he wants to show us the importance of adventure and leaving things behind.

One of my programmers (there are only 3 of us really), almost decided that it’s time for him to leave.

This is what he said. Things depend on what point your life is. He’s at the point where he wants to get married. 3-4 years ago he would work on games for no money. And he did. But he can’t anymore. The other job offers him a better career path and bigger salary.

Passion can only take you to certain length. He’s burnt out. It’s another story of a burnt out game developer :(.

Do you know that a game developer only stays in the industry for 5 years in average? My colleague stayed for about 4 years. I have only gone through 2 years.

From what I see in my workplaces and what I heard from people from other companies, game industry is full of young people. Rarely there are people over 40, 50, or even 30. We’re all a bunch of twenties. Young, passionate, and still able to sacrifice a lot of things for a dream.

I know game industry is maturing, but it’s still in the process to. Hopefully I will be there to see it grown. From inside, mind you, not outside.

So since yesterday I digged up all my old websites/writings/posts and found a lot of interesting things. It’s funny how a mere few years can change stuff.

For example, I wrote this when I was 22 yo:

Things I wanna do before I die (now in real life =d): live in different city or country every 3 years or so; publish something, be it a game, a comic, a book, etc.. (what else can you publish?); have a studio apartment in the middle of a big city; have a labrador of my own; do all the expensive sports such as skydiving, snowboarding, scuba diving, kayaking, etc. (it’s not fair. it’s far too expensive for some people, like me =\); do road trip for a few months going to all 51 states of USA; find a soulmate to do all these stuff with (i almost forgot.. shoot..)

If I think about it, I’m not in bad position at all. I’m 25 now and among the list that I created 3 years ago (which I assumed I spared a lifetime to do those), I HAVE lived in different city/country every 3 years or so, 2 years being the longest in fact; I HAVE published a game, 2 games in fact; I haven’t got studio apartment in the middle of a big city, but I HAVE lived in one :); I haven’t got a labrador, mostly due to my nomaden living style; I HAVE done some expensive sports like snowboarding, diving, kayaking (so left skydiving, bungee jumping, what else?); I haven’t done road trip around USA, but I HAVE been there :); and lastly I haven’t found a soulmate to do all those stuff with (surprise surprise).

Let me see what kind of soulmate I was looking for when I was 22:

Looking for a soulmate that: likes to play games. Not too much that he still cares about me more than the games, but much enough to want to share all the games and game consoles with me. then we can play together and have a lot of games yaaayy!! \(^o^)/

Mmm.. If following the 22 yo me, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find such soulmate. Wondered why I couldn’t get any. Maybe then I eventually realized that all gamer guys are dorks (while gamer girls are cool).

I guess now it’s the time for me to update the list. But instead of “Things I wanna do before I die” I’ll list “Things I wanna do in the next 5-10 years”. So here goes not in particular order:
- live in Japan for at least 1 year. I’m thinking to just go there and study Japanese.
- work in USA
- start up my own game company or go freelancing
- go backpacking around the world for a few months (hot spots: India, Africa, South America, Europe, Middle East, North Asia)
- study Chinese in China (this, I almost did before I decided to go Singapore instead)

Should I put “find a soulmate” in the list? I don’t want to actually. Lately I realized (I probably did long time ago, but lately in more realistic kind of way) that my life goals and living style makes it really hard for me to be with someone, almost to the point of impossible. They just don’t go along each other. Like I have to choose either one and not both.

I told a lot of my friends before, that I want to move around places to live and work. They shrugged it off “yeah, why not”, perhaps thinking it’s a temporary thing. But now, a few friends start to seem genuinely concerned. “When are you gonna settle down? It’s really hard for any guy to follow your lifestyle like that.” And now they’re making sense more than if I heard it a couple of years ago.

Here’s the thing. I think it MAY not be because I don’t want to settle down ever. It’s because I haven’t found any guy that makes me willing to settle down. Well the one I wanna be with is not in the position to. So for the time being, I’m just frantically trying to “finish up” things I wanna do before I need to slow down my adventure to be with someone that’s worth more than all these. I’m 25 yo and this is what I think. I’m sure it’ll change drastically again in 2-3 years :)

This sentence actually made me smile ;D

If a beautiful girl tells you she’s done some modelling work in the past, and you ask her what 3D package she used… you might be a Game Developer.

(04/11/02) Courtesy of Harm Cuppens
Taken from The Game AI Page: You might be a game developer if …

But the other entries weren’t that great. Like a game developer is just another computer geek. I should compile my own list, collaborating with my colleagues..