The stress has got me struggling what to write for this entry.
I thought of two options:
A “Minor Update” to let you guys know that I have this overwhelming commitment and my updates might be a bit behand in the next one or two months.
A “Quick Update”
The first option would mean a heads-up that the cadence below, which I have been following for this year, might be broken.
I have stuck to three posts a week, on afternoons/evenings of Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, so that you can read them on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
The second option would allow me to complete this entry fast and at the same time, would not grant me excuse to break the cadence just yet.
I decided to go with the second option.
After all, the building of a cadence is not easy. I should not just give it up so easily.
And I believe writing is good for me, even for the current commitment and the bigger thing that is coming.
And I believe I can still manage for now.
And most importantly, I do not want to disappoint and lose you!
And it is not only gaming that might do this to us.
In Chinese Kongfu movies/novels, it is far too common that the character falls into a cave or a lake and then discovers some superb marshal arts manual or weapons. And then he emerges as the best Kufu master, takes his revenge, gets the perfect girl and rules the world.
Here, the marshal arts manual and the weapons are the “Cheats”.
In western super hero movies/comics, people get their super power from accidents. For example, Spiderman gets it from a spider bite and Hulk from a failed experiment. And then they rely on that super power to save humanity.
Here, the accidents, the bite or radiation, are the “Cheats”.
These very very attractive “Cheats” are shortcuts that do not really exist in reality.
They might seem to exist, but they do not.
Once we fall into the habit of relying on “Cheats”, that is the beginning of the bitter end.
Gradually, we convince ourselves to believe in more and more “cheats” and waste time and money on them, without any sustainable results.
A good example is my investment journey.
I changed my approach from Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) into broad indexes to buying individual stocks, just because my wife’s return surprised me.
And then I started speculating.
All this while, I never really sat down to research a sector or company.
Even by luck, I had very good returns in the first few months, I was not able to pocket it.
And now I am sitting at huge losses.
In comparison, to select the DCA approach to kick start my investment journey, I spent months in researching and only after that, I made the decision based on my style and sound logic.
And even if it did not bring me stellar returns, I was seldom in the Red Zone.
The misconception of reality will translate into tangible losses.
While it is a fact that the danger exists, it is a choice how we deal with the fear.
From a practical point, focusing too much on fear only paralyzes us. We have to live with it and be cautious along the way.
To do that, it is advisable to think it through before making the decision.
A good tool is the Six Thinking Hat, where we take on different “roles” and “perspectives” to assess the same issue.
That way, we are our own “Think Tank”.
While “Blue” and “White” hats typically are used in the beginning of the process, there is no restriction on the sequence of the hats and how many times we can put on each hat.
From my experience, decision typically comes to us while we have the “RED” hat on, which means we start to feel confident that this is “right” or “wrong” after round(s) of collecting facts and information, structuring thoughts, assessing positive and negative aspects and trying to come out with creative ideas to deal with problems at hand.
From Internet
However, no methodology or tool can guarantee right decisions.
So the next part is implementation and consequence management.
If we are blessed with success at the end of implementation, enjoy it and use it as our next starting point if we want to keep going (no shame in stopping if that is what we want).
Most importantly, never forget to be grateful.
Remember there are people who are equally qualified for success, but suffering from set-backs due to factors they have little control over.
If we know them, we should help them.
What comes around goes around and what goes around comes around.
3.Another opportunity knocks but I am not sure about it
I am still a bit scared by the offer retraction.
That makes unsure about this one.
My life now is not super, but ok. Actually, I can make myself feel satisfied with it.
With this opportunity, better perspectives, growth and money will be available to me, and at the same time, I will be exposed to the risk of another offer retraction.
It is most likely a no-brainer for most people. For me, I need to think and evaluate hard.
While it could be called a competition, it was a very casual one, because it quickly became clear that our performances heavily depended on the tool we got allocated.
The tools were supposed to be identically efficient.
They were not!
So the casual competition became even more casual.
Most of us did not care about winning at all.
The prize for winners were not attractive anyway.
Instead, we focused on interacting with our colleagues and having fun.
As the game went on, to our surprise, we could not help noticing how fiercely the two VPs, highest management present that day and oldest among us (50s and 60s), competed against each other.
They were observing which tools were the most efficient and demanded them to be assigned to them.
And of course, they tried everything to be as fast as possible.
In the final round, when most of us got hungry and just wanted to have a good dinner, the two VPs were still in their games, full hearted.
Of course, one of them was the champion.
And no one could miss the excitement on his face. Clearly, he enjoyed his sense of achievement.
As one of the first to lose interest in the game and give up competing for winning, I could not help wondering whether I lack the fighting spirit in me.
The game surely looked boring and unfair.
I chose to lose interest and give up.
The two VPs chose to take it as another opportunity to challenge themselves. They decided to give their best to win.
I wonder whether I have given up too many small things like this at work and in life.
Each of them could be an opportunity to improve myself or others.
Each of them could have accumulated to make a difference.
Maybe that is why they are VPs.
Maybe that is why they look and feel younger, even with their grey and white hair.
I published this post last week and only got 27 views for this post, which is extremely low. I think the bad title "Another Gaming Episode" ruined everything.
When I started writing this post, I really just wanted to share my first ever experience to finish "Credits" of a game and the observation on the very high development cost vs the very low retail price.
And then scale came in and then decreasing world population and the corresponding risks to retirement.
While population posts risks to all fronts, from as big as who rule the future world to what happens to our property value to as little as what happens to retail prices for games, I think the risk to retirement is probably the most relevant for us commoners.
Unlike the ruling of the world or the worthless properties or the expensive games, quality of our retirement is probably the one thing that we would care most in our last stage of life.
I think it is important that people like you and me are aware of the risk to retirement planning posted by decreasing population, even though we may not be able to really do anything here and now.
Since only 27 people viewed it, I would like to repost it with a more "scary" title and some minor adjustment to the content, just to broadcast the awareness.
I completed the game "Cyberpunk"! Yay!
Well, only the main storyline and only reached one of the endings…There are still tons of side quests left, even though I have completed so many.
I did not count, but I must have thrown in more than 100 hours easily.
Such a good way to kill time!
Overall, it is a great game and CDPR is still releasing patches and DLCs to make it better.
Better here really means closer to what they had promised before the release.
I probably wont play the 1.3 patch any time soon. I will try something different for now.
Maybe when patch 1.7 is out, I will replay it as a female character with a female voice.
Apparently, that affects the gameplay significantly.
I tried so hard to romance Judy…
As a man, the game forbids me to do it…
From Internet
One thing I would like to share with you here is that this is my first time ever to have watched the complete Credits of a game after completing it.
As far as I can recall, the last time I watched the Credits of a game was when I completed Call of Duty 2 for the first time.
There was an animation immediately after the game was completed, to draw players’ attention.
It was easy for players to just watch it. It was fun also.
But once I saw the “text” coming out, I immediately pressed “ESC”.
Cyberpunk was different.
It shows the “text” and on the side, a small window appears that plays the video messages your friends in Night City send to you.
I have to say I felt quite personal and “warm”.
And it flows extremely well with the storyline, where, in my ending, the player leaves Night City and lives “freely” for whatever time he has left.
That was more than enough to draw me in.
But the messages only last a short while, after which the Credits go on for a much longer duration.
And a “Fast Forward” option is provided.
Such a nice touch!
I understand the names etc mean a lot to the developers, but for players to spend like half an hour to go through it would be hard.
From Internet
As I went down the list, the first thing I noticed was that so many people were involved in making the game.
The efforts and costs put in developing this still buggy game must be tremendous.
A quick google search showed USD 313 Million development cost for the game and that was until end of 2020. They have released a few patches in 2021 too. So the cost can only be significantly higher.
And the game retails for ~SGD 50. You can get cheaper on Lazada.
Such an affordable price is only possible due to scale and almost zero marginal cost.
From Internet
Scale is key and that means user base, which is a fraction of world population.
And apparently, decreasing birth rate is a big problem now.
It has been a big problem in most developed countries, Singapore included.
It is now also a big problem for developing countries, like China.
China has been worrying about the opposite for so many years with the “Birth Control” policy. The fine put my family in debt for most of my childhood.
Now they are completely turning the tide. Making babies for Money is a real possibility.
And the cities in China are “fighting” for the young generation, by rolling out all sorts of policies, from houses to “Hukou” to subsidies.
It is not exaggerating to say that the power of a nation or a city ultimately resides in its population.
From Internet
And declining and aging population could give rise to many problems.
Retail costs for games would be a relatively minor one.
Just imagine when we are all old, there is only a very limited supply of care-taking workers because there are a very limited number of people young enough to perform those duties.
The services will become so expensive that majority of old people wont be able to afford it.
It is possible to have no one taking care of us, no medication, no counseling, no peace of mind, even no food.
And any of our existing plans for retirement, the money we save, the property we keep, the insurance we buy, could prove a joke, in front of a miserable retirement.
From Internet
Woooo….
Not sure how a gaming episode turns into the hopeless reflection of retirement lives…
But there is no need to feel so pessimistic.
I believe problems will solve themselves.
Maybe we will detach from our bodies and live in cyber space.
1. Whatever happens is the best arrangement for individuals
If people are meant for something, frustrations provide them opportunities to get stronger.
Frustrations also provide opportunities for others to witness their determination, commitment and improved capabilities, boosting people’s confidence in them to support them till they take their places in the circle of life.
Similarly, if people are not meant for it, frustrations provide them opportunities to realize that and pursue other things that they are meant for.
Frustrations also provide opportunities for others to witness their change of course, so that the people in the original track will stop wasting resources supporting them and the people in the new track might see their potential and start investing in them.
If there is really circle of life, then frustrations put people in their places.
And being in the wrong place is probably the most pathetic cause for certain failure.
So whatever happens is the best arrangement for individuals.
