It’s been a while since the last post.. Hmm, I don’t seem to have anything much to say. I’ve been mostly spending my time at home, trying to stay away from entertainment; but failing terribly. Studying for an exam that isn’t really that important is hard to do, but I must do well. Anyway, I just returned from a rare trip out of the house. Every time I leave to go somewhere, I suddenly have to deal with the huge stimuluses that seem to envelope me. Yesterday, I went to join a few friends for a a game at the escape rooms. I always felt excited prior to entering these games (it was actually just my second time) because I anticipated a lot of thinking and logic and cool and fun stuff. But I always end up disappointed. The experience itself wasn’t disappointing, but I think I was very disappointing. I entered the room and just felt helpless because everybody was doing things at x10 the pace that I was at. And I couldn’t seem to figure a single thing out. I was just walking around aimlessly, shining at everything and anything with a torch. I guess there are a few reasons for that. For one, I really didn’t expect this room to be so high-tech. From the first puzzle on, they had motion-sensors or something and all those cool stuff I thought was too lame to exist in such a simple room. As a result, I didn’t even think it was a possibility that could happen. One of the puzzles had green laser shooting out that emitted sound when we touched them, and another had a decibel-meter and you had to shout loud enough for the door to open. My first time at escape pretty much involved low-tech stuff. Secondly, both times, I went with people who were very experienced with such rooms. Playing escape rooms require a kind of logic that can be hard to grasp for newcomers. For example, how would you even know to scan the room with infra-red light? My friends started doing that the moment we stepped in. Thirdly, and lastly, you had to think really quickly, like an agile frog. I remember everyone was so busy in the second room finding something to do I simply tried to find something to do, and settled on trying to solve a cryptic message. I stood there for a whole 15 minutes pretending I was thinking but it later turned out that it couldn’t be solved until the others had been solved.
Disappointed? Very… I always looked forward to those sherlock holmes-esque kind of puzzles but I was always either unable to solve it, or simply too slow. I think the pace of my thought is just too slow. After we managed to solve the entire room and escaped (with a little over 1 minute to spare), I took the “IQ too low” templates for the group photo simply because I think I really deserved it hah!
With every passing day, I’m inching closer to the start of the semester! The coming semester will definitely be the hardest semester in my college life. The only positive is that I think I will like all the modules I’m going to take. I can’t even believe that I’m stressing over it before it has begun. I guess it’s because I anticipate very high-level competition and very intense sessions with my course mates. It’s time for the hermit to crawl out of his shell again. On the other hand, I’m sure there are a lot of things that I can distract myself with. One would be signing up for more career talks – which always help to make me feel my studies are not important at all. Next would be of course, to look forward to the camps and mission trips at the end of the year. Lastly – and this is contingent on how well I do for my exam – , whether I will apply for further studies. Looking at the photos of my well-travelled ghost friend – who is currently expanding his erudition at MIT, really makes me want to work hard for it too. Back to studying!
signing off,
Fatpine.
fatpine 