New Experience: GMing

This is only peripherally writing related but due to the unexpected real life circumstances of one member of my gaming group, we are running one-shot games until December when he goes away. So for the very first time, I signed myself up for being the GM (game master) of a game using a premise that I thought up ages ago (I did intend to dip my feet in GMing sooner or later, it just came up sooner. I thought my very first game would be a different game, one that I adapted from a Chinese online novel). 

The game premise was a combination of inspiration by a FB game called Criminal Cases: Time Travel and my own imagination. The world premise is as follows:

The game is set in Earth in the near future, where a dimension incursion was repelled with the use of new time travel technology. However, the technology itself was later captured by the invaders which gave rise to a disrupted timeline. So a band of fighters was formed who constantly wage wars with the invaders across timelines in various ways with the help of subsidiary characters summoned from history or stories. 

The fighters operate in units of 4 as a hit team, with fixed roles within the team. They embark on missions with a range of explicit objectives that all ultimately contribute to thwarting the dimensional invasion. 

In this setting, PCs are at least partially robotised which makes rotation across roles possible: you just need different calibrations to your mechanical body parts for the different roles. There is also good camouflage technology to make the most outlandish subsidiary characters blend in at any given timeline. 

I ran two sessions before my trip and it went okay according to player feedback. I had hoped to use this experience to strengthen my shortcomings in descriptions and this is too early to report back on how the experience would help. But that is one goal I have in the back of my mind besides having fun with my friends. 

I want to keep it short and sweet today. More forthcoming as need be. 

23 days Italy, Switzerland and France trip on trains- Switzerland part 2

Day 12 started our 3 days’ stay at Interlaken. The first day was spent at Interlaken and Brienz. We had breakfast at Cafe de Paris where we had two plain omelets. Since that was rather filling for us, we skipped lunch. There was really nothing at Interlaken (it was also raining that day) so we did some random pics and moved onto Brienz in the afternoon. I think the focus of the Brienz was the village and around the lake.The lighting was not right around the lake so we ended up taking more pictures of the houses instead. We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant and I ordered three dishes- half a Cantonese style roasted duck, prawns and mushrooms plus vegetables. The roasted duck was too dry and the mushrooms were so salty to be almost inedible (I’ve actually experienced this before when I joined a Eastern Europe tour in Shanghai but I forgot since that was a few years back).  And true to Switzerland being high in living costs, the bill came up to 111 Swiss Franc!

The second day was our big day visiting villages near Lauterbrunnen and for that I bought two  Daily Saver Pass but somehow selected the digital ticket option that nearly got us into trouble (more on this later). We basically visited Lauterbrunnen in the morning and did Staubbach Falls. Originally we planned to go up to Murren via the Grutschalp cable car but it was apparently down for maintenance until June so we caught a bus up to Stechelberg instead. We had to change cable cars at Gimmelwald and I was originally apprehensive about the cable car but in reality it was a huge cable car jam packed with people so I could always choose not to look outside much. I was also prepared for it being really cold since Murren was at a high altitude but in reality it felt all right. Our down jackets and two layers of turtlenecks were more than enough for it. We didn’t shoot much photos of the Alps because we were very reluctant to get outside the set pathway and it was raining on and off that day so that lighting was not too good either. We had lunch at Murren where we shared a prawn spaghetti. I originally had visiting Wengen as the next day’s activity but we wrapped up Murren early so we had a bit of rest at the hotel and then after discussion we decided to do Wengen too. And then we had the fright of our life when the ticket inspector would not accept photos of the Saver Day Pass (the morning ticket inspector did accept it since he could still scan the QR code from the photos) because he was sticking to the rule books and apparently we could have taken a pic of someone else’s tickets even though each ticket had our full name and date of birth on it. Luckily, an Asian girl sitting right across from us was kind enough to share her wifi with me so that I could show the original email, phew! But I was determined to never get a digital ticket again if I could help it, it was just always such a challenge for me who came very late to switching to a smart phone and never learnt to use anything besides the basic function of web browsing on it (I didn’t get a local SIM card because this trip involved us being partly in Switzerland which was not part of the EU and I didn’t want to switch between 3 SIM cards and hold onto such tiny things at the same time and the experience with data roaming at Italy made me even forget that I could open data roaming on my phone. Plus, the ticket inspector was just being pushy and totally unhelpful.) We were going the flexible approach with dinner for this day because my extensive research could not find which place was best suited to our tastes. In the end, we opted for a supermarket food dinner costing 6 Swiss Franc in total. 

We had an open day for the next day and because I was worried about the train transfer at Bern and I googled to learn that Bern was very close, we visited Bern on the last day of our stay at Interlaken. Because the main goal was to check out the Bern train station, even though we got a free map from the tourist’s center, we basically only visited a church at Alstadit and the signature clocktower and then called it a day. Mum found the capital city very old and dilapidated and I pointed out to her that it was because it was the Alstadt that we mainly visited. We had MacDonalds for lunch for short of anything else that appealed. For dinner, we had seafood pizza at the restaurant just below our hotel (it was not owned by the hotel though). The topping was not quite full but passable. And given Mum and my small appetite, I finished my half and ate a small piece for Mum while she threw away about ⅓ of hers, clearly sick of our alternating diet between pizza and pasta/spaghetti. 

Remarkable Women in ancient China (22)- Wang Zhenyi

Who is she:

  • A female astronomer 

Notable Life Events:

  • Born in 1768, to a highly learned family. Specifically, her grandfather had been a local governor while her father had turned to studying medicine after failing to qualify as a government official through the imperial examination. Her grandfather taught her astronomy, her grandmother taught her literature and her father taught her medicine, geography and mathematics  
  • When she was 16, she and her father went traveling around China and such an experience broadened her horizons. When she was 18, she became pen pals with many female scholars and focused on exploring astronomy and mathematics through self learning. She kept postponing her marriage until 25 when she married Zhan Mei, a renowned scholar and calligrapher. 
  • She became renowned for literature as well as her knowledge in mathematics and astronomy and she even taught male students 
  • In 1797, her grandfather passed away in the region where he worked and she went to stay there for 5 years during which she studied from his stores of books and learnt riding and martial arts from the wife of a Mongolian general 
  • She passed away in 1797 at the age of 29, childless. She gifted away all her written work and drafts to her best friend who passed onto her nephew who organised and published her work. 
  • Her contributions in astronomy and mathematics included
    • Works on sun and moon eclipses as well as rotation direction of various planets in the solar system 
    • Being expert in the Pythagorean theorem and trigonometry and she has an essay on applying the Pythagoeran theorem to triangles which is proved to be correct 

Moonlake’s thoughts on her: 

This is clearly a woman who knows what she wants from her life and works to cultivate that. I have great respect for her. 

English Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Zhenyi_(astronomer)

Craft and Curiousity reads 2024: Change of Plans 

I had just ordered In Cold Blood by Truman Capote from my local library because I had heard about it during the UBC novel writing courses and I found it on my local library’s electronic catalogue so I switched out the Lovely Bones. 

I’m still contemplating the idea of swapping out the Shipping News for the Banned and the Banished series. I mean, with the October trip, I only have November and December to work with. That is still plenty of time for one book so I think I will leave it to my whims when I come back. 

Book analysis as learning tool

I’ve been doing book analyses on and off as a means to improve my own writing craft. This is something I picked up from the UBC novel writing courses. I mean, it’s a simple enough idea but the key takeaway or revelation was that you could use this to study specific craft elements which means that you can take a more focused approach when analysing a book and basically be more focused on the get-go about which book to handpick for such an exercise. 

Personally, I’ve done Under Heaven to study the omniscient voice at first (but then I realised I was wrong in that regard, it’s actually written in third person limit with an omniscient narrative voice) and then I’ve given it another pass to study how tension works in a scene, especially if the conflict is subtle. 

I now have a new target- the Banned and the Banished series that I’ve just read. My aim this time is to study the partition of different voices in a story with a reasonably large party written in third person limited and absorb in any other aspects of interest to me such as the non-linear unfolding of time. 

And that’s all my share for today. Feel free to leave me your comments you have.

23 days Italy, Switzerland and France trip on trains- Switzerland part 1

Day 8, we finally left rainy Venice for Zurich. Not much to be said for the short flight but somehow we got completely turned around from the tram stop to our hotel, which was only 5 minutes away, and ended up lugging around two checked in luggages plus one hand carry and two backpacks for half an hour.  Spooked by that, Mum insisted on calling a taxi to Fraumunster which was actually not that far (price of a short ride from the closest tram stop to the hotel). I was still apprehensive of taxis after the Rome airport incident but the taxi driver this time around was honest, displaying the Google map openly. So we mainly visited Fraumunster and the lake since we could not really find our way to Alstadt or Old town in Zurich. We had dinner at the place I reserved way earlier than the time I actually booked and they let us do that. I had the marinated salmon and Mum decided to order calf kidneys after seeing it at a surrounding table. The calf kidneys were actually yummy.  

Day 9 was spent at Lucerne where we did half of the attractions (basically, we gave up Musegg Wall and the attractions on that side). I also had visiting the Meggen Castle being an optional item on this day but we did not really feel like it so we just returned to Zurich where we grabbed a quick bite to eat for dinner at Santa Lucia Subito which was right next to our hotel. I ordered the ravioli alla parmigiana (dumplings with eggplant fillings) for Mum and the salmon spaghetti for myself. To be honest, the eggplant dumplings tasted more like pumpkin dumplings (I think that’s because there was too much butter and the whole dish just tasted buttery). My salmon spaghetti was all right but I’m not crazy about creamy sauce in general. I could have ordered pizza but the pizza was fairly overpriced at this place- a plain Margherita pizza costing 18 Swiss Franc. 

On day 10, we took a train to Thun and just at the square near my hotel was the prime spot for taking a picture of Thun Castle. So, Mum and I did the cheat way of just taking a picture of it down below rather than going all the way up. In fact, that is the approach we’ve been using for this whole trip. At Cinque Terre, we mostly just took pictures at the entrance rather than hiking up any stairs. Well, the only physical exertion we had was at Riomaggiore where we could not avoid going up the steep incline because its terrain was just steep. But, back to Thun, I don’t think we visited much attractions in Thun on this day. The only place we visited was Mühleplat where we chose to have lunch and ice-cream as dessert at La Faroviro, an icecream place/cafe combo. It was a Sunday with not all places open for dinner so we just walked around nearby to see which restaurant was open and ordered a seafood pizza at an Italian place called Al Ponte. 

Day 11 was supposed to be spent at Spiez but I also wanted to visit Schloss Schdau which I originally planned to visit on day 10 (but we always cut down on my planned itinerary whenever we felt tired) so we split the day between Thun in the morning and Spiez in the afternoon. We took the bus to Schloss Schdau and got off at the wrong bus stop but it was still fairly close so we walked over to the park housing this ‘pink’ castle (it is pink but a very light coloured pink and sometimes looks a little orangey). We hopped over to Spiez via bus (because it was free with the Panorama Card that came with our stay in a hotel) and walked to Spiez Castle. We did not end up actually buying tickets for a tour but we took enough pictures without having to pay because the foyer was free for public access. We originally planned to do part of Faulensee walk but instead we just walked along the harbour and had lunch at one of the restaurants there. We went back to Thun for dinner at my reserved Italian place where we shared garlic prawns and a spaghetti (no recollection of which exactly and even with a photo, no idea what the noodles came with- some fried stuff?, the noodles looked like egg noodles, flat, thickish in width but very thin by height).

Chinese Lore- a selection of mythical fauna (23)

Wen Wen

Physical Description:

A bee-like insect with a forked tail and a tongue that grows backwards.

Special Properties:

It makes a loud sound.

Ying Shao (or Baby Spoon)

Physical Description:

A magpie-like bird that has red eyes, a red beak, a white body and a tail shaped like a spoon.

Special Properties:

It makes a sound like its name.

Nuo

Physical Description:

A mouse-like creature with a patterned forehead.

Special Properties:

Consuming its meat is a cure for big lumps on the neck.

Hao Fish

Physical Description:

A tuna-like fish with a red mouth, red tail and red feathers.

Special Properties:

Consuming its meat is a cure for a disease that produces white spots on the skin.

Moonlake’s Book Discoveries: September 2024

Fantasy 

Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman

I got curious because His Darkest Materials was the title for the lesson on research for the novel writing course that I did with the University of British Columbia up on the edX platform. As I was reading it, it reminds me a little of one movie that I was watching during my movie marathon stint. As it turned out, that was the Golden Compass, a film adaptation of this very book, I only found out when I was chatting to my good friend and current GM of our gaming group. 

This first book is okay, not really absorbing for me so I’m just limiting myself to one session per day. It does set up the series nicely though. 

The Moon Goddess’ Daughter by Sue Lynn Tan

This book has caught my interest because I’m always a bit fond of folklore retellings and this book does not disappoint in providing new twists to it. Other than that, it’s okay but nothing more about it really grabs me. Apparently it’s a duology but as yet, I’m not sure whether I will read book 2 or not. 

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon AND One Hundred years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marqez (audiobooks)

I already talked about them in Broadening Horizon reads so won’t repeat it here. At any rate, I did not finish either. 

Wit’ch Fire by James Clemen 

The book is okay. It gave me a throwback to epic fantasy with the formation of a party on a quest with a slight twist: many members have their own agenda. I am currently of two minds whether to pursue this series or not. As per usual, I will read the blurb of the second book and see. 

Wit’ch Storm by James Clemen 

This book introduces a bunch of new characters and maybe because my attention is not fully with it, I do feel like it affects comprehension (not to the extent that I cannot finish it but just sometimes I would get lost and have to exert effort to remember what happened to a bunch of characters earlier on in the book). But other than that, the book is fine. I do intend to go on with this series. 

Wit’ch War by James Clemen 

This is the last book held by my library out of this quintet and it finally reveals the key aspect on the underlying world/main conflict so that I can guess where the series is heading. I think I will stop here. 

About the book itself, it has a twist that I wasn’t expecting from book 2. Solid work from the author but overall not quite my cup of tea. I mean, it’s labeled epic fantasy and I don’t think I can dispute that but it’s just not the same type of epic fantasy that I’m fond of. 

Mystery

The Hairdresser’s son by Gerbrand Bakker

I didn’t feel like reading anything too engrossing so a mystery it is. So after reading blurbs, I picked this one up but it’s not quite my cup of tea. I guess I’m still more keen on a murder mystery rather than a generic mystery. The ending is open-ended but because I’m not on board with the story, it doesn’t leave me with anything. 

The Lost Choice: A Legend of Personal Discovery

As a mystery, it is average to be honest and I’m not sure that is the genre that my library put it under (then again, I don’t need to rehash that libraries don’t assign books to the right genres and nowadays I think publishers and authors also play with genres and subgenres as a marketing gimmick). But it does have a strong thematic statement that touches me. And it’s done well so that it entices thought rather than bashing you in over the head with it. So overall, I like it. 

Gifted Touch by Melinda Metz 

I was expecting more paranormal mystery with this book but it is more teen school drama. Having said this, it’s not bad but I’m just not convinced that I’m invested in this book enough to start reading of this series which I know from the Q&A with the author at the end of the book is already all planned out. 

Good morning, Killer by April Smith

I felt a little misled by the blurb and had to go back and read it again. My final verdict is that it does not intentionally mislead but isn’t what I expected it to be either. Basically, it diverges off the main case into the protagonist’s complicated love world half way and this might be in response to the new passion in character driven fiction but I personally am not buying it. Having said that, it does read okay, just not really my cup of tea.

Silent House by Blake Pierce

I did not want to start a long novel when I have to go on an overseas trip in October so mystery it is until the actual trip. 

Now this is more of my type of mystery book. The book focuses more on the plot but also develops the main character solidly. What is lacking is the twist part but I think that is getting harder and harder to pull off for an experienced mystery reader like myself (I’m still not the most astute but just from the sheer amount of mystery reading I’ve done I have to admit part of the attraction of this genre is wearing off for me). Overall, a solid read for me. 

Sleeping with Fear by Kay Hooper

The premise of an investigator with memory loss is not that fresh nowadays but the author does milk it for all it’s worth in terms of tension and stakes. I didn’t guess the twist (culprit). Overall, I like it. 

Historical Fiction

The Empty Throne by Bernard Cromwell 

The prologue nicely plays (and continues) on the end of the last book and gives it a bit of freshness. The book itself is okay but since I’m going on trip soon this is another nice stopping point for me. Not sure if I will continue with book 9 or not, I guess it depends on my whims. 

I wonder why people never…

The jump-off line is actually invented by Laurie Wagner, inspired by An Ordinary Day by Jean Reinhold. 

I wonder why people never expect things to go wrong until they do? Inborn optimism or protagonist syndrome? 

I wonder why people never talk about the failures or think about them even if they are talked about? Why such an obsession about success? What values is success without failure? 

I wonder why people never have the same standards over the most basic things? It’s individuality, I guess, but also frustrating. How low can some people stoop to? 

I wonder why people never… I don’t wonder actually. Not about that. I wonder about constellations and how I can create new ones to fit different societies. 

I wonder about the first names being given to things and the inconsistencies between languages and cultures. I wonder about speculative biology even though I never did biology. I wonder where I am going with my current novel. I wonder if life is always a repeated pattern or I’m just too astute? 

23 days Italy, Switzerland and France trip on trains- Italy part 3

Day 6, we traveled by train from Florence to Venice. In general, I found Santa Maria Novella much more pleasant compared to Rome Termini. The platform numbers came out about half an hour rather than 20 minutes on the dot and obviously it was smaller so less mad dashing across platforms. Also, by this time, I had learnt a couple tricks including just boarding the train at the closest door and then walking to my cabin on the train and in general just going through the entrance gate ASAP. I picked a hotel very close to the arrival wharf from the line N San Marco ferry outside Santa Lucia train station but we still got lost a bit because we were reluctant to go through what in our eyes was an alleyway (but considered a normal street in Venetian eyes). 

The intention was to visit Burano and walk to the Fondament Nove ferry wharf which, according to Google maps, was only 15 minutes away from our hotel. So at first, I was confident that we could make it by always going left and in the direction away from our hotel. But after several turns, I admitted that we were lost and we gave up and backtracked to our hotel. We had a pizza lunch nearby- we ordered a Daviola pizza. It was not as spicy as Mum liked it- quite mild tasting, but not bad. It did leave us very thirsty afterwards, though. After lunch, we spent the time taking pictures of the Doge Palace and Basilica San Marco (they were supposed to be included in the day tour I reserved through Viator tomorrow, the only day trip I booked this time around but we had a whole afternoon to kill and they were very close to our hotel). 

We had dinner at Ristorante Principessa, the restaurant that was part of a 4-star hotel just around the corner from our hotel. We had an assorted seafood plate (assorted prawns including what I assumed was the Norwegian lobster with the flat body, small spicy octopi, squid meat dyed by squid ink and fishmeat on bread) and seafood spaghetti (I originally wanted to order the prawn and crab meat gnocchi but the waiter must have incorrectly deduced where my finger pointed). Both were excellent and the best meal we had at Italy so far. 

The second day at Venice was spent with a walking tour that brought us across 5 or all 6 neighbourhoods of Venice and included the gondola ride (as I’m sure I’ve said before, I mainly joined the tour to avoid the hassle of needing to haggle with gondoliers over prices) as well tickets into the Basilica San Marco and the Doge Palace. We had the afternoon free after the tour and I was going to talk Mum into taking the line 1 ferry to visit more attractions but Mum was too tired from all the walking we did from the day tour. So back to hotel for rest and then onto dinner at 1000 Gourmet Venezia. We originally had our eyes on the Boscaiola 2.0 pizza which had grounded black pork meat and black truffle cream but apparently by the time we got to Italy black truffles were out of season. The waitress suggested the Burrata pizza when we asked her so we ordered that. The crust was the high and soft variety which was not what we were used to but the burrata cheese added to the pizza was something new for us. It tasted good and we were very happy that we chose to visit this pizzeria. Overall, we had the best food at Venice out of our 3 chosen Italian bases. And that almost concluded our Italian trip (well, not quite, a little bit carried over to day 8 when we had to travel by plane from Venice to Zurich. But that goes into the Switzerland leg of the trip so tune in for that next month).