[ A Slice of Life is Strange ]

I played this nice little game today. It is called “Life is Strange” and it is a 5-part adventure game. I played the first part today, took me about 2-3 hours and boy, where they some nice, well spent hours.

You play as Max, an 18 year old hipster/geek. She is a photography student in a college in her hometown, a place she hasn’t visited in 5 years. She has friends, bullies, enemies and mysteries to deal with. She considers Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within to be one of her favourite science fiction films and Henri-Cartier Bresson to be one of her favourite photographers, to be honest I was won over by those two facts alone.

Oh, she can also turn back time.

A slice of Life is Strange

A slice of Life is Strange

All in all, a fun,unique, crafted with love and care game. Gameplay is okey, Graphics are charming, Voice Acting is quite good and the writing feels very honest.

TL;DR: If you think that a mix of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twin Peaks and The Longest Journey is interesting then… you know what to do.

[ Thinking about getting a new PC ]

The title pretty much sums it all up. I am thinking of getting a desktop. A monster PC where I can play all the games. A few things would be different this time around. It would be the first PC that I will have that’s not in Greece. Also, it would be the first PC that I will have bought with 100% my own money. It is a strange feeling indeed. I wonder how I should name it. Ukanef MKV would be the obvious choice but…

Well, we have time to see, because you see, budgeting is something I do now, so saving money would have to happen.

See ya!

~Garret

Garret’s Place

Sitting on the windowsill drinking tea. I have done this many times before, but this time it is different.

This time it is in MY house. I pay the rent, with zero (financial) help from my parents.

I guess I felt something similar when I was alone for the first time in Mitilini, on my first place there. Sure I wasn’t paying the rent back then but being alone in a house that for all intents and purposes was mine, was a feeling that I always notice.

I should get back to procrastinating packing, I will once I finish my tea.

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I believe I’ll be having many more like this. Here’s to 2015!

~Garret

[ Last entry of the Mancunian Garret ]

It is not raining while I am typing this.
I am sitting on my desk in my house.
In Manchester.
For the last time.

I am moving to Dublin. I haven’t really kept my blog up-to-date, some seriously life-changing things have been happening the past few months, although most, if not all, who read my blog already know what is going in my life, still I feel kinda bad for not documenting such an extraordinary change better.

Long story short, I am moving to Dublin to work for Riot Games, of League of Legends fame. It has been a long and slow process (almost 5 months now) but everything seems to have gone perfectly.

The Manchester gamble has paid off in a way that I could not possibly imagine when I first got here.

I am not exaggerating when I say that I feel like a very big,bright chapter is starting now.

Next entry will be from Dublin.

Goodbye Manchester, you were the best.

~Garret

To Scotland, a travelogue.

Day 1

12:51 Costa in Arndale.
Going to see Rena and Jayne. Haven’t been to Scotland since I was 4-5 years old. I remember grey castles and green fields.
Well, the bus got delayed, so much for British punctuality.
Anyway, thought I ll have a quick breakfast then, the weather was clear blue skies ten minutes ago but now it has grown suspiciously grey. Me likes.

18:07 Somewhere near Glasgow.
Well, the bus seems to have some engine trouble and now we are stopped by the side of the road. The bus ride is not a pleasant one, the lady behind me was trying to silence a baby-shaped tornado siren, I know that she probably is not enjoying it either but hey, does chloroform cause any permanent damage?

Also the bit of the window that I was supposed to be looking out from has a huge sticker with the bus company logo that has the wonderful matte effect that you get when squinting your eyes.

I am listening to Dan Carlin’s fourth part of Blueprint for Armageddon describing the battles of Verdun and Somme, so despite my annoyance, I know it is not as bad as it can get.

Wait, is that sound incoming bomb—-

20:21 Glasgow, some bus stop.
Another bus came and picked us up.
Now we are only four people left on the bus.

20:51 passing through Cumbernauld

Silly name, Craig Ferguson hails from here.

Day 2

12:00 Rena’s place

Jayne and me slept in the living room, Rena’s house is weird. It has this hub-like area out of which five rooms radiate. So yea, last night we had some drinks some food, partied like crazy…. Until 1 AM when everything closed down because they don’t want people getting drunk.

16:32 Dr. Noodle

Pain. Burning. Fire.

Got some noodles, decided to be brave and add the “Hot Chilly” and… Now all that exists is pain. I managed to get it into my eye , twice. On the wall there is a picture of Deckard from Blade Runner eating noodles in the rain, which is what I always think of when I am eating noodles. Rain is nice.
I am in pain.

23:11 Rena’s place

We got back from a really nice walk in Dundee, now we re back with Irn Bru and peanuts and a beer called Raven Ale.

13:37 Rena’s Place

It is the hour of the l33t, it was a glorious morning, we watched the LoL finals , Samsung White demolished Royal Club in a spectacular fashion, I would love to see the SSW Rengar skin.

Anyway, I have this theory that one of Rena’s flatmates, Ridade, is a Vampire.
There are several reasons why I believe so.
As I said before, this place is quite strange.
It is on Blackness road.
There is only one mirror in this house and it is tiny.
There are no windows.
The only window is in the room I am staying in and that room has a door that closes automatically so no sunlight can reach the rest of the house.
Last night Ridade came to say hi and she was dressed in black and was quite pale.
She also mentioned that she had been “hibernating” when asked how her day was.

Coincidence? Or have I stumbled into something big here? (That’s what she said)

Κάμερα σε μένα!

Day 3

8:44 Dundee bus station.

The moment where I get in a transport,ready to leave for a long journey is something I find very relaxing.
Anyway, returning to Manchester now, Scotland was awesome. Dundee had a very unique feeling to it, not unlike Mitilini in a way.

I just realised I am wearing my shirt inside out. One sec….

Okey, what was I saying? Yea, Dundee was cool, really enjoyed the Trade’s Union pub and the Discovery museum, which was all about this awesome exploratory ship, called as you might imagine, Discovery, that was built here and was one of the first ships to explore the Antarctic, part steamship, part sailboat, mostly made of wood because apparently wood can take the pressure from the ice much easier than metal does.
Learning about and eventually stepping in Discovery made me think of a 19th century Starship Enterprise.

Man that century started with such potential.

The people were nice and friendly too, I thoroughly enjoyed the accent (try saying Scotland but having a hiccup instead of the T).
Rena seemed to be doing okey, a bit depressed but Dundee seems to be the right place for her at the moment.
It is interesting to think about how the Mitilini trio has changed over the years.
I also finally met Jayne in person, she is such a thoroughly good person with hair like a princess and she made my visit that much more enjoyable.

Anyway, I am rambling.

Scotland was as green and grey as I remembered it.

And it is awesome!

The Burial of the Dead

You dream you’re at the quietest party ever. You are in a vast dark ballroom lined with mirrors. Dead men and women wrapped in bandages stand around, glasses of wine in hand. No-one says anything. Very occasionally someone coughs. You can’t wait to leave, but you feel an obligation to the host.

Untitled_Artwork

Inspired the above quote from by Fallen London, for some reason the writing in that particular story thread really got to me. Really nice images.

Drawn on the iPad.

~Garret

[ Page Itch Round 2 ]

I recently bought two books. One is a collection of novels by Robert Aickman, not exactly horror stories, but definitely weird stories that have that very subtle uneasy effect that only the best horror stories have. The other one is the You are not so smart book. A collection of articles by the site with the same name, linked to me over and over again by qb, I finally decided to give this guy a shot.

Anyway, my point is , even though I have a kindle, I often get tempted to buy a nice paper book. It’s not that I don’t like my kindle, I don’t really know what is.

Today I saw that Amazon released a new line of tablets, among them their latest Kindle. It is a magnesium bodied, glass screen wonder. With screen that lights up and everything.
My first thought was “THIS is what I need in order to read all these books that I have been meaning to. Cause, you know, I don’t have a bedside light, so I can’t read any ετερόφωτα books, I simply NEED a paperwhite kindle.”
I think that that’s just my brain bullshitting me (no I haven’t started reading You are not so smart yet), I had nothing but a scrawny flashlight on Hralkeia, that did not stop me from using my Kindle Paperdark more than I had the past year.

But still, dat new KINDLE eh!

P.S. Scotland had a referendum today, about whether they should be an independent country or not. The predictions were quite inconclusive so who knows, maybe tomorrow morning I will wake up in a country destined to become quite smaller.
Unless the closeness of the polls was some cunning british MI5 scheme to make it seem close so people who REALLY want to stay in the UK vote so and don’t vote YES just to deliver some sort of angry message.

ANYWAY GOODNIGHT

~Garret