Paintball

During my visit to the Philippines, I had the opportunity to try out paintball for the first time.

It's not how big the paintball gun is, it's how you use it.

It was fantastically cheap. It only cost 400 pesos, for renting the gear and 40 pellets. That's about $10.

The battleground was the side of a hill in a pine forest, with the addition of some wooden planks and stacks of tires to provide additional cover.

In action

It was two on two, and we were sent to the top of the hill, while our opponents started below. I figured this gave us a pretty good tactical advantage. However, instead of sticking to our fortified position, I wanted to move around and try to come up with some fancy tactics. Imagining my partner would move laterally and help me pin down one of our opponents who was advancing, I tried to flank him and immediately got myself pinned down behind a tree instead. My partner (perhaps wisely) stayed safe behind a wide fortification and didn't budge.

The rule was, you were in till you ran out of pellets, regardless of how riddled with holes you were. So once the initial shuffling around was done, it basically degenerated into a stalemate, where you would poke your head out, take a couple of shots, and then duck back away, till our ammo was gone. I could have said to hell with it and taken a few hits in exchange for finding a better position, since there was no consequence to getting hit, but the visceral fear of getting shot was strong enough that I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Ouch.

Not that I didn't get shot. My left eye and shoulder were hit, so I was definitely quite dead. The head shot was pretty sobering, and racked up the adrenaline several notches.

My partner was shot in the head - just above his face mask, which left a shockingly large red welt for a few days. One of our opponents was hit in the head and body. The other, I don't recall.

Weary wounded warriors

Next time, I want to do some target shooting first, to get a better feel for a paintball gun's range and aim.

Clearer sets of rules seem like they would be interesting. Not to mention they would help avoid the deadlock we hit and clarify victory or defeat. But having to leave the game early due to being eliminated is no fun either. Maybe some sort of rule where you had to return to a safe zone before you could rejoin the battle. Basically, respawning.

Adding more rules and adjudication would probably break up the adrenaline and tension, though.

The fascinating thing about video games is that all of that can be handled automatically, permitting smooth play despite extremely complex rule systems.

I looked to see if there were paintball video games available. (A video game simulation of a game which is a simulation of war?) The only one I found was way too realistic to be fun.

Something bright, colorful, and arcade-y, with paint splashing wildly everywhere, seems a lot more appealing to me than trying to compete directly with drab and hyper-realistic shooters, which have explosions. The lack of viscera and death should make it accessible to all ages.

Maybe an augmented reality game? M did mention technology to map the camera view to a 3-d space.

A brief update.

Went to the Philippines, returned, interviewed, moped, back to work.

Ancestor worship

Today I went to a vaguely church-ish event, which was about, from what I understood, honoring your ancestors.

I have great respect and fondness for my ancestors. Specifically, those from two generations back, all of who are gone, regardless of how much time I spent with them (but not enough, never enough, I know now, even as I repeat the same mistakes with those still here). Those who were born, lived, and died in a different world, a world which I shared briefly with them and already has the warm, misty feeling of "the good old days."

I only met one of my great-grandparents, and my only memories of her are memories of photographs, not of an actual person.

If you asked me, "What did she look like?"

"An old woman in a chair," is all I can tell you.

Of these people, three generations and more removed, I know only the barest of details, names and a two-sentence sketch of their lives.

I do not know them. They are ghosts. They were beloved by people I love. And yet to me, they do not exist.

What is there to venerate of these anonymous ghosts, these decaying black-and-white images of the past?

I can only bring myself to respect the ones I knew, the ones who I have, belatedly, reached some understanding of, if not from my personal experience, but from recognizing the ripples still spreading throughout the lives of those who remain.

Though I do not share the religion of either side of the family, a dream I had a couple of months ago really shook me.

I was at a table with my family and a close friend, R.

R mentioned that he had lit a menorah (the Hanukkah candelabra-like thing) at home, and I ridiculed him for it, since, well, he's not Jewish. And nor am I, and I have no recollection of my father participating in any sort of ritual of his own volition.

Caught up in ridiculing R, I finally realized that the table was lit by a plethora of tea candles, and my father was lighting one from the centerpiece, which was a menorah. (To get an idea of just how Jewish I am, in the dream it was the last day of Hanukkah, but instead of lighting a candle each day, they were snuffing out a candle each day. Oops.)

I gradually became aware of the others seated at the table. My father's parents, one of his aunts, and a good friend and neighbor of my grandparents. Not an exhaustive list, but a fair quantity of those from my father's family who I had grudgingly spent a lot of time with in my childhood. My cynical laughter snuffed out.

Berry murderous.

In the sudden silence, I began to cry. I picked up my own candle and shakily lit it, sobbing, and repeating the word, "sorry," whenever I could catch a breath. They never said a word, only looked at me all the while.

And then I woke up, feeling bereft and unsure of what I was apologizing for. I'm certain it wasn't for the Hanukkah gaffe, none of them were particularly attached to ceremony, that I recall. I think I was trying to apologize for only knowing them as a child, not as a person.

I'm afraid that if I have children, they'll relate to their grandparents in the same way.

Why learn Japanese?

Because when the police pick you up for intervening in a fight between your friend and some random asshole (hereafter known as "asshole"), being able to articulate...

"Asshole kept attacking us respectable folks even though I apologized (without knowing, admittedly, what the hell we were supposed to be apologizing for) and told him we were leaving," while presenting Exhibits

1. bloody mouth 
2. torn shirt 
3. broken glasses 

and sounding like a reasonable human being while asshole is screaming "fuck you, pigs!"

...is priceless.

Also: asshole hit like a pussy.