Flowers and Graves

Every day during my daily commute to work I would get off the jeepney at the corner where the flower shops are. And today would have been no different, except for the fact that instead of roses and tulips, there was an abundance of daises, lilies, and those other types of flowers usually reserved for floral wreaths of the dead.

Halloween is finally here.

I never really saw Halloween coming, or I simply just failed to acknowledge it. It's probably because I'm always distracted by a lot of things recently, and it wasn't until I saw the flowers that the thought finally hit home.

Ironically enough, Halloween, or All Saint's Day as they call it here, has always been of great significance for me. This is because every night of the first of November, my family and the families of my aunts and uncles would trek to the cemetery and pay a visit to the graves of my grandmother and grandfather. It is an unbroken tradition as far as I know; ever since we decided to stay here in the province I could almost always be found staring at the grave candles at November 1. But despite this, it was never really a solemn occassion. Except for the standard one-hour prayer vigil (usually headed by one of my more devout aunts), the rest of the night was punctuated by conversations, children making balls out of the melted wax from the candles, and the token card games of tong-its and pusoy. And it was hard to be solemn at the cemetery anyway, as it was always crowded with people and resembled more of a busy night market than that of a place of repose. There was even one time when the family of the grave next to ours brought a karaoke machine, buckets of beer and barbecue grille (which was promptly followed by a drunken brawl, thus permanently turning our all-night vigil into an until-midnight one).

Ever since my grandfather died in 1997, visiting the cemetery became more important for me. Suffice it to say that Gramps became my surrogate father when Dad was away; a wrinkly but robust old man toiling in his patch of cassava while his skinny young grandson tailed behind. I would never forget those tall cassava stalks, nor my grandfather for that matter. And after he passed away on that fateful birthday of his that January, we would visit his and my grandmother's grave regularly. But as the years passed by the visits became less frequent, and it even came to a point where the only time we would go to his grave was during All Saint's Day. And then came the time where I went to work in Manila. That was the first time I that missed the yearly visit. And as what I have planned for myself in the near future should come into fruition, I would probably be missing a lot more visits to Gramps.

But as long as I am still here, I'll still visit him.

Last Blade Blues

(much to the horror of Setsuna, Hibiki started to sprout wings)

I downloaded a MAME Emulator from the office the other day. For those who don’t know what MAME is, then the feeling is quite mutual because I don’t know what it is either. All I know is that it can simulate Arcade games like those coin-operated ones at the mall. And along with the emulator, I also downloaded 2 arcade games, or ROMs as they call it in the emulator trade. And one of these was the Last Blade 2: Bakumatsu Roman.

One of the reasons why I decided to download the emulator was that I wanted to try Last Blade for myself. Neil, my cousin and undeclared sensei on all things manly, once told me how great a game Last Blade is. And coming from a man who would rather spend the day reading Nietzsche than play video games, his recommendation was something to consider. And when I researched the game on Wikipedia, I was impressed with the artwork as well as the complexity of the unit sprites. So when I managed to stumble upon a website that offered a Last Blade game emulator, I decided to grab the opportunity and downloaded it.

And so far I’ve been getting ass kicked by it for almost two consecutive days.

Okay, so I did play a bit with it (and managed to actually enjoy a second or so of the game), but most of the time I was either being slashed at, pummeled, sucker-punched or having my face hammered at the ground. Last Blade 2: Bakumatsu Roman is by far one of the hardest and most unforgiving fighting games that I have ever played. The enemy AI is brutal and uses all of the skills at twice my speed. Sure, my old Compaq keyboard is not exactly the best gaming peripheral out there, but c’mon! How the heck can you land a hit on someone when you’re literally moving like you’ve got hot potatoes in your pants? And blocking is almost non-existent when the wily bastards lands one on the jaw. If were not for the fact that I spent two month’s of my savings on our PC, I might have thrown it out my window out to sheer frustration.

But as soon as my head cooled off (and right after my blood receded back to its normal temperature), I realized that the game was that hard because of the fact that it is an arcade game. Arcade games (with the exception of the Street Fighter vs. Marvel vs. Capcom vs. Care Bears franchise) are designed to be difficult. After all, how are they going to rack up on the money if you’ve beaten the game at a single sitting? Arcade games were meant to give its customers a thrashing, and have them spend tokens one after another with the illusion that they just might somehow beat it and place their name at the high scores. Neil must have played a console version of Last-Blade, which is usually watered-down and has a more merciful difficulty setting. Either that or he’s got the hand articulation of Spiderman on crack.

It took me another day before I decided to end the madness and stop playing Last Blade altogether. Arcade game or not, it is a game not worthy enough to test my anger management capabilities. So until I discover how to lower the difficulty level of the ROM, or they introduce a new character that has a fully automatic AK-47 as a weapon, the game is in the back shelf of my PC. But should any of you would like to be interested in getting a crack at it and want a copy, feel free to contact me. I’m always willing to share the love, or in this case, the frustration.