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.
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