Seeing Friends in Sydney

Near the end of February, a few of my friends from back in the states flew out to Australia and so I made sure that I went out to Sydney to meet them and have a fun few days with my best friends. It was the second time I was in Sydney, but the first time that I was able to actually explore and enjoy my time out there. Previously, for work, I had stayed glued to my hotel room and making sure that my business trip went well. This time around, we got to do some adventuring. My trip started with some walking around the Opera House and botanical garden area of the city and we eventually made it all the way to St. Mary’s Cathedral and King Street Wharf. As it hit evening, me and my best friend Dylan went into the Opera house to watch a live D&D session get played, and it was honestly one of the best shows I had experienced live. I had seen some live comedy and broadway shows back in New York, but nothing with the level of engagement that this show had. Each attendee was given a character that they were able to vote for certain pivot points in the story on, which did end up changing the endings, and it became a story that I know only me and a handful of strangers in the crowd were able to share that didn’t exist for anyone else. We chose character names, and the decisions we made ended up impacting the ending. Super great. Dylan was actually selected to go up on stage, and I was selected to give an adjective for the villian at the very end of the story. I came up with squeeky, while another attendee in the audience made him a sailor (we wrote these choices on cards ahead of the show starting and they were picked out of a hat).

The next day, I spent some time seeing some of the more suburban areas of the surrounding Sydney area. My friends initially flew down for a YuGiOH convention that was being held in Parramatta, and so I made sure to go and see what that was all about for half the day before heading back and exploring a few comic book stores, book stores, and hobby shops around downtown. Window shopping is great, even if I literally had no room in my backpack to even consider making a purchase. It also helped me figure out a few gifts to bring back to the US for my trip in May.

Over the weekend in Sydney, half the champs were working the YuGiOh conference, so I had a walk with Dylan out to the Bondi to Cogee Beach walking trail and I really enjoyed the views. We decided to move the date to one where it was more cloudy and I think that was a good plan as we were out there for a while, but never got fully burnt. We did get a little sunburnt on the first day walking around the city.

Then finally, with my mom bringing my full license back in January, I rented out a car for Monday and drove everyone out to see the Blue Mountains and we did a day trip for hiking a few recommended tracks from my hiking group and ended the afternoon by seeing the Three Sisters. On the drive back, we met with a few of one of the locals that my friends knew from the YuGiOh conference and we made dinner plans at a fancy all you can eat seafood buffet. It was pricey, but I ate oysters and swordfish for the first time, and had some good crab legs and lobster tail as well. The buffet also extended to some other more common meals with lamb and some indian food. I also tried passion fruit for the first time and really liked the tanginess from it, and the experience was worth having.

Back to the Basic and Simple Joys

Since I didn’t have much time between the Great Ocean Road with my mom and flying out to Sydney, a big chunk of the beginning of this year was spent doing fun travelling and less time in my apartment. When I got back from Sydney, things started to fall back to normal. I spent some extra time catching up on some shows that I had fallen behind on and then I also committed some extra time to play some video games together with my friends co-operatively. I had already decided that I would previously purchase “It Takes Two” so that I could play that with my sister when I flew back to the US in May, but in the middle of March, the same studio released “Split Fiction”. I had previously tried to host a co-op game like it with my best friend Dhruv who was back in New Jersey, but the game was unplayable because of the latency travelling across the sea. This time though, I committed to buying a better internet package (more megabits for me please) and we had a lot better performance. And on top of that the game was a blast. Ever since I moved to Wisconsin and life got busy with work and typical adult chores I kind of fell off of playing games with anyone. I no longer really play multiplayer video games, and instead fell into playing single player games, but there’s just something truly joyful about playing co-operatively with someone else and aiming for a goal. I ruined my sleep schedule to make it work with time zones, and Dhruv likely did the same from his end, but in the end it was worth the extra planning to make it work. We’ve also played a few puzzle games, which are single player, but we share the screen of and kind of give hints to the person controlling the game itself. Since puzzle games don’t require quick inputs and more thinking, it works super well.

It’s reminding me that I also want to play some board games when I go back to the US, or maybe take all my friends out to an Escape Room for a day. My sister also has “The Box” by Neil Patrick Harris that maybe I should just play with the friends when I’m out there. I tried to buy the second box that released earlier this year, but the cost to ship to Australia was more than the box itself so I quickly threw away that idea. I played Root for the first time with some coworkers as well and it was a super fun half day activity and so I just need to play some more board games. I know there’s a bar nearby that holds board games you can play and drink some beer and eat pub food, so I should go. The only reason I haven’t already is that it kind of feels weird to go alone, but I just need to head out and make some local friends my age.

Here’s a more general list of other things I had done since the start of this year, as well as what I still plan to do before I fly out to US in May:

Video Games:

• Completed Dredge, Dishonored, Jusant, Sifu, The Roottrees are Dead, The Case of the Golden Idol, The Rise of the Golden Idol, Split Fiction
• Currently planning to watch Dhruv play Outer Wilds and I have Firewatch and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on my list.
• There are also two games I’m really looking forward to coming out in April to play: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Blue Prince.

Books:

• Completed Tao Te Ching, In the Buddha’s Words, and Meditations on First Philosophy as part of my Philosophy reading project for the full year.
• Completed Play Nice, and At Home: A Short History of Private Life.
• Still reading Stormlight Archive: Wind and Truth but hope to finish before the end of March.
• Planning to read Walden during my trip camping out in Tasmania.

Movies:

• Watched Anatomy of a Fall, The Castle, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Watched Conclave and A Real Pain prior to the Oscars
• Watched Logan, The French Dispatch, and Last Breath as part of my backlog of movies
• Watched The Gorge on my birthday back in mid February
• Planning to watch The Brutalist and need to watch M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story as I told my analyst in Singapore I would watch that cricket movie and I think it’ll be fun to watch a sports movie

TV Shows:

• Watched Interview with the Vampire, Hacks, Secret Level, Win or Lose, and Prime Target. Only Win or Lose stuck out as worth recommending to others.
• Finishing up Sakamoto Days, Severance, and Solo Leveling this month as the final episodes release
• Also planning to stay up to date with 1923, Daredevil Born Again, and The White Lotus as episodes release.
• Probably download Timeless, Pachinko, and Pantheon to watch on my flights back to the US.

Images and Videos

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