5 THINGS YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT ME(ME)

So, I’m back from my Best Beach House New Years Party Bash Ever Fun Time Happy Hour and because I don’t like dying to strange curses, I’m honoring Scott’s tag. Unlike Scott and Raph, I’m not quite an open book so pretty much all of this should be new to you. Present stalker company excluded. (When looking around for someone that I could inflict a tag upon, I noticed in the 2 or so weeks between Scott tagging me and me actually complying that Ryan also tagged me. The more messed up skeletons may come out later after I’ve stopped hyperventilating from already giving out entirely too much information)

1. I have a degree in psychology – This, of course, may only propel the myth that psychologists are more batshit insane than the rest of the populace and will not create the desired effect of dazzling you with delusions of grandeur.

Being a rather introspective person (which is fundamentally different from an introverted person), an active interest in psychology was always on the books; moreover an interest in behavioral psychology (which may be evident in some of the psych-slanted things I have posted). So, when I had found I got the score required to study psychology at university, I enrolled without hesitation.

After finishing my degree I realised I didn’t want to follow what 95% of the other graduates were doing and head on into clinical psychology (although flipping through the DSM-IV and figuring out what issues your friends have is pretty damn fun). With Artificial Intelligence taking my fancy, I enrolled in a second degree – Computer Science. I would have finished that degree if it weren’t for the fact that 1.5 years into it I took up a job in an industry that offers the best mix of psychology and computers ever – computer games. I still happily use my psychology degree every day as I write game design documents and balance pieces of data.

2. For the entirety of 30 seconds I understood fluent Norwegian – And that’s not to say that I understood someone speaking English with a Norwegian accent. I’m talking about a knowledge of “Regnbogen har mange fargar” and “Dette er ein hest” (here’s a hot tip if you ever find yourself in Norway; don’t ask for “pult ost” when you want “pultost”).

What with Norway being a sea-faring nation (I hear they once had these things called Vikings), Oslo is situated right on the water, nestled amongst fjords, and has its residential fingers spread across the surrounding coastline. Our story starts one night when, after leaving a bar in town at closing time with just a few drinks in me, I had to embark on my journey home – a journey that involved getting out of the heart of the city, circumnavigating part of Oslo’s bay, traversing through some parkland, and passing by one of the royal family’s residences in order to arrive safely home. All in all, an hour trip in my current state, or half of that normally. 30 or so minutes into my moonlit stroll I decided to take a voluntary rest by propping myself against a low window sill. It was either that or take a forced rest in a snow bank. Catching my breath, and my head, against the cold building, I heard a number of footsteps head my way up the sidewalk and pause next to me. Unable to lift my head, I instead listened to “å” and “ø” inflected speech that asked the Norwegian equivalent of “Hey, are you alright?”, “Does this guy look ok to you?” and “I’m hungry. What time does 7-Eleven close?”. Those might not be the exact questions that were asked, but it is how I remember them. I wouldn’t know. I can’t speak Norwegian anymore.

As my new acquaintances made their way down the street for a 2 week old hot dog, I got up and continued on my way. 30 minutes later, as my head was clearing and the sun began to stick its nose over the fjord, two things occurred to me; How Did I Understand Some Bits Of Conversational Norwegian When All I Had Learned Thus Far Were The Important Norwegian Swear Words and, perhaps more importantly to my then current position, Why Was I Now Standing Outside the Bar That I Had Left Over An Hour Ago? That night, by the time I got home, my easy walk ended up taking close to 2.5 hours.

3. I like snow – That may be a little bit of an understatement.

Growing up, I lived two hours away from a major snow resort (no longer deemed a “ski resort” after snowboarding came kicking, screaming and shredding into the world). Weekends, holidays, and later, boring university lectures, saw me falling over on flat ground, “making a piece of pizza” down small green gentle inclines, careening half out of control on blue runs, racing down black slopes, tearing it up in trees, rocks and powder, and eventually hucking flips and grabs in the terrain park.

At some point during all of that I joined the local race team and spent a number of years competing in FIS and non-FIS Slalom, Giant Slalom, and Super G races. This also gave me the chance to join a national team that trained and competed in Europe and North America. (Side note – my most memorable crash, or non-memorable as may be the case, involved high speed, a rolling Super G training run, an unconscious me, broken ski equipment, and a mountain creek)

Once I entered university, tuition fees let me know that it might be a good idea to start making money rather than spend it (partying excluded, of course). I took a job as a ski instructor at my old mountain haunt and for a few winter seasons taught busloads of people in Australia (literally) and semi-famous people in the US. Before I traded the fresh air and brilliant sun of the outdoors for the caffeinated water and blinking fluorescent lights of an office, I had obtained the highest ski instructor certification obtainable in the US that does not entail one becoming an examiner themselves, and had completed some additional US and Australian ski instructing and race coaching certifications.

To this day, some of my dreams still involve skiing. A smaller percentage of these dreams involve the Playboy Ski Team that I met one year.

4. My life has flashed before my eyes. Twice – The first time was when I was about 10 years old. I was out in the middle of the street, on my BMX bike, and was attempting to do a bunnyhop/front-wheel-spin combination. I should have tried a basic bunnyhop first. As my wheel came back down to make contact with the ground I belatedly realized that I had not spun my handlebars fully in the required 360 degree circle. Instead, the front wheel landing perpendicular to the frame of the bike caused my body to be flung forwards where my chest met the steel edge of my handlebars with a sickening crunch. Winded, I crawled to the side of the road where I tried to regain my breath. But I couldn’t. I sat there; moving pictures of people, places, and the annoying little girl from across the street flipping endlessly through my head as I tried to recall what someone should do when they can’t breathe (I was sure stop, drop and roll wouldn’t help). The only problem is that when you tell your brain “Hey, man. We can’t breathe. What should we do?”, the brain doesn’t really help much. Instead, it prefers to answer with “What, really? Ohshitohshitohshit, we’re gonna die!” and then wig out. In the end, it was actually a few thoughts along the lines of “You know what? This not breathing thing and watching a home movie in my head kind of peaceful” that caused my body to recover from panic and find its lungs.

The second time was when I was in my middle to late teens and I was in North America for ski racing. One day, after what had been a mediocre several days in terms of snowfall, it totally dumped. Totally. Dumped. The storm continued into the next day and since training was a bust (racing in waist-deep powder is a no-go), I went free-skiing off the sides of the boundary chairlifts where good lines were sure to remain since, after all, they weren’t marked as runs for the general public. Dropping off the side of an incline and swerving amongst the trees, my run came to an abrupt end when my right ski went under a submerged tree branch and got tripped up, flinging me a couple of meters down the hill and into a tree well. The force of my body hitting the tree and entering the tree well caused not only a couple of branches to shed their snowy contents on top of me, but one side of the entire tree well in slide in on top of me as well. It only took me 5 seconds to evaluate my situation (surrounded by snow head to toe, one arm trapped underneath my body, two oversized planks attached to my feet that prevent me from moving, feet higher than my shoulders, my head facing down the hill, limited room to breath with my nose and mouth touching a wall of white) before the credits of my life rolled. I lay there; moving pictures of people, places and the now totally hot girl from across the street flipping endlessly through my head as I tried to figure out what to do. This time I was a little better prepared and snapped out of my movie pretty quickly. The first thing to do was to get oxygen, and I was lucky enough to find that by shaking my head from side to side I was able to cave in some snow and suck in some lungfuls of air. From there, it was a slow and painful process of first extracting the arm that wasn’t stuck under my body in order to clear the rest of the snow off of my head, digging my waist out of the snow, freeing the skis from my feet one by one, flipping myself upside down in order to stand up (carefully, mind you, so more snow wouldn’t cave in), and then climbing out of the tree well. A good 40 minutes and one lost ski pole later, I continued my run through the trees. These days, I don’t bother about steering clear of trees (they’re too damn fun). I just make sure to jump tree roots.

5. This year, I’m looking for a new job - That is, according to the promise I made to the New Years Gods. A promise that may have been spoken in half-Norwegian at 2:45am that night. And that’s not to say I don’t like my current job. I do. But right now I have an itch that needs to be scratched; new ideas that need to be shared and challenged; a desire to contribute to, and help grow, a new team and a new company that needs to be fulfilled; a lust to create, mold and share a new game experience with others that wants to be sated.

So, we’ll see what eventuates this year. Who knows? Maybe this site will start making money and I can retire.

So, in keeping with The Way Things Are Done, it’s my turn to help prolong this internet chain letter longer than it should have been and tag 5 other people. I choo choo choose you; Aggro, the conglomerate at Kill Ten Rats, D-One (I’m not sure if this is seen as me deciding who has a voice or not) and, because I have hopes that they will reply, John Smedley and Paul Barnett.

Game on.