Minecrafting

My son loves Minecraft

During this pandemic, we had extended periods of time when it was not possible to leave the house nor do any activities outside, so I went to videogames, because I like them and they work great to pass the time at home.

The idea was good, and I managed to spend most of April doing an indoors activity that me and my son enjoyed without getting too nervous about meeting friends and going out. For sure it's not good to do this all the time, but during this period it was nice to do so.

With my son I've played together some games. When he was little he was obsessed with helicopters, so I played Just Cause 2 without being violent, just grabbing vehicles, and he liked that. This moved later to Sonic 4, which was probably the first one where he actually played, with the 2 players mode in part 2. This made him interested in other Sonics and other platformers like Cuphead, and well, we just kept trying different ones and different options.

In this way he has learned how to use the basic controllers, plus it has always been a nice bonding activity. I love video games and it's fun to introduce some of them to him and to try new ones together, when they're age-appropriate. For example, I think Nintendo is over-hyped because they tend to repeat themselves way too much and this pathological need to fit their same famous characters with same plot (rescue the princess) everywhere is detrimental, but it's true that their games are rather good for children. Getting the switch has allowed us to play great games, like Luigi's Mansion (that's a good example of detrimental, the game is great but King Boo as the ultimate bad guy really kills the scary but child-appropriate tones because Boos are too cartoonish), Towerfall or Untitled Goose Game.

However, for a while now he has asked to play Minecraft after trying it  a few times as a demo I had on the Xbox. And since I was curious as well, it was cheap, and we were confined, I ended up buying it.

And minecraft is great.

First, while there is combat, this is optional: You can pass the time in creative mode where you cannot die or be attacked, and in this way you have a relaxed atmosphere that allowed him to understand the usual control setting of camera/movement using both joysticks. In other games there was too much action or they required too much fine control right away of this mechanic for him to learn without getting frustrated, but in Minecraft you're allowed time.

Then, the game itself is incredibly detailed. The graphics are what they are, but this allows for a game engine that focus on functionalities rather than in showing off. And by doing that, the game offers a lot of items and different uses you can make of them. It's impressive how can you make castles, rollercoasters, traps, automatic processes and more complex stuff, like basically functional siege cannons,  RAM memories or even basic computers.

The game itself has no point whatsoever, but letting you create and move around freely gives you the tools to let your imagination create your own objectives: Building a house. Then building a tower. Then building something more complex, and so on, and so on, and in this way it stimulates a lot of creativity.

Basically, Minecraft is a computerized Lego with infinite pieces, so of course it stimulates creativity and it's quite addictive. And this made me also try, on my own, the survival mode. This is a bit too hard for him still, he prefers to be able to create things at will even if sometimes activates survival on creative worlds, but it's still interesting.

Survival mode is not that hard, but it forces you to create a home and slowly build things up from there. Very early on you realize you will need a lot of iron, so you start mining, and then you want to improve things, make a better home and a better mine, create new equipment, personalize things, and so on. It's also quite addictive and fun, even if there's no purpose either and you're just passing the time and trying to go a bit deeper and achieving an easily sustainable situation. 

The way he plays sometimes can be quite, just repeating actions or spawning lots of mobs, but he also creates more complex things like houses connected to rollercoasters, fish tanks, tunnels, structures, traps, etc., and it's quite cool to see what he thinks and makes, some of them are quite complex and cool. 

 

If the original game is not enough, they sell extra worlds that offer retexturing, new fucnionalities, new models, etc. You have to pay for most of them, but some of them are quite original and give new opportunities to create new things or play with a new concept. 

Overall it has been a great finding and it's really cool to have an infinte lego-like world to explore our creativity.

It's the end of the world (as we know it)

So, we're again in Interesting Times. And maybe we have had enough for a while.

Nevertheless, this has created an opportunity at least. Yeah, it's a horrible thing what's happening and it would be better if it didn't, but it's giving us lessons, really important ones. And I'd like to mention some of them, as I think about them.

1-In lots of workplaces, it is possible to work from home. This one is written from a privileged standpoint, of course, shops and industries and the primary sector is not included in this. But there's currently a lot of new jobs, based on services, where we have been forced to go there every day and stay there for a lot of hours, to be present just out of a certain old fashioned panic that if we don't have someone breathing on our neck, we won't work. Well, not the case, clearly. At the same time, there's meetings and such things that in the end were not as necessary as we thought and can be shortened or eliminated without that much problem. For sure in-person contact has its advantages too, but this should really made us rethink how we work, and try a more balanced system where maybe we can easily be home at least half of our time.

2-Really essential services are the primary sector, the food shops and the cleaners. Jobs like working in a supermarket or cleaning offices and houses should be better valued and paid nicely. Also better considered.

3-Healtchare must be public. Private healthcare that depends on profit has no advantage in dealing with this, because it requires a lot of resources and hours and it's overall too expensive. Also, public healthcare must be well-funded and have enough resources. And given this learning, I would go further: Just straight up ban and nationalize private healthcare companies. Also, if you're all for private healthcare and vote for parties that are against public one, it's only fair you refute any treatment nor help in public hospitals and facilities. Or reconsider your vote next time.

4-Capitalsim doesn't work. The system is totally broken and this crisis is showing its worst sides. Under pure capitalism, we would need to continue working right now, as we die left and right. Under pure capitalism, now people should just go hungry and starve and die out as they cannot work. Under pure capitalism, any business that was unable to function for this period should just close and disappear, or leave its employees to die out at least. This is neither a sustainable model nor a model we should want to keep. This needs to go. I'm not advocating for communism, but we must get rid of the idea that the market is great, when the truth is the market would see humankind destroyed in order to keep benefits. We have seen this before, in the people that lose track of the real world and require workers to do extra hours to finish a project that will ultimately have no meaning 2 weeks after completion. Well, I'm exaggerating a bit on this example, but this same attitude is the one where some manager considers that maybe people should just work, because the company needs it, without realizing this means people will die.

5-Related to this, we need to make people in power responsible for their actions. Managers who have disregarded warnings and asked people to work have killed people. Governments who haven't taken action once it was clear how serious the situation was and have not followed medical expert's recommendations are guilty of personally killing people. One thing is not knowing what to do, another very different is thinking that since your friend the banker prefers people to die than to close some of his business, you can allow it. Or allowing it out of some political agenda. This means you are killing people. And this is not the only situation when this happens: when a government allows banks to kick people out of their homes from unpaid mortgages, both the bank and the government are directly killing people. When a manager over stresses their workforce to the point of people having nervous breakdowns, they are directly killing people. When a rich bastard not only doesn't pay their taxes but also pressures the government to close public hospitals, they're directly killing people. No more fucking euphemism, if you do these things you're a killer, and you should not be allowed to get away with it.

6-Centralism doesn't work. Look, I think Spain is a failed project and I'd rather be left out of it. Maybe you don't think the same, that's fine. But what is undeniable, as we've seen in companies, countries and other organizations, is that when you centralize everything, when you try to manage personally more and more and more things, when you're further away from the real action separated by layers of responsible people, well, you have a less clear image of what is happening. In this crisis, hospitals and small towns or neighborhoods can know better what's the best actions to take. They can know better what resources they have, what do they lack, what to do. So you leave them be, unless they prove to be doing a bad job out of it. Then, if they lack things, if you have organizations over them you can manage that from such a higher level, and so on. But when you try to, basically, micromanage everywhere, that doesn't work. So let's not do that. From a government point of view, I believe regions should be more independent and able to take their own decisions, since they tend to know better their own needs. For example, now Spain has declared we can go back to work. This is idiotic and will cause deaths as the experts are saying (see point 5), but I'd say that for some regions it may be OK. However, should be managed region by region as I said, to see which ones can do it and which ones cannot.

7-Spain's traditional parties plus the right wing parties are useless. Right wing, we know, they're here to steal and lick their rich friend's anuses, and people can die as far as they care, we all know that. However, I hope it also helps to show that PSOE is almost as bad: they militarized the crisis instead of giving funds to healthcare, and since their members are professional politicians that don't know how to do things but know how to get paid from public funds, we've had the situation were resources are not reaching the people, or they buy the wrong things and millions are wasted, plus time is lost.

8-Left-wing parties do not deserve special protection just because they're considered left-wing. We made this mistake before with PSOE, letting it do things that were not left-wing just because we labelled it as the left-wing party. So, the same applies now to Podemos. They're part of the government even if they're not big enough to make some changes. I understand they're not able to criticize some of the government actions without creating a conflict, but that doesn't make them untouchable. We should criticize the fact that they let military to lead this crisis. We should criticize that they're not protecting workers by allowing people to work. And we should criticize their silence or their praise to the current government, when it's not right.

9-USA, UK and Brazil, as very capitalist and right-wing countries, are far from the worst of it, and it will be a massacre in there. Spain is already one because of several of the mentioned points, and forcing people back to work now will kill and numbers will grow again.

10-Catalunya's proposals have been a bit more smart than Spain's (because duh, it's not very hard to be), but far from effective, and one of the involved parties has also been de-funding public healthcare, and that's something we should not forget either.

There's plenty more things I could say, but politically speaking I find these are quite relevant...

Argumenting

Things are getting tense in Catalunya.

The Government has approved a law to organise a referendum on Independence on 1st of October which proclaims Spanish legislation cannot touch it. Spanish government and tribunals have reacted by indicating that anything referendum-related is forbidden and that the law is suspended.

There's more details, but well, the most probable outcome at this point seems a vote happening on 1st of October nevertheless, where "yes" wins.

The Catalan laws were approved with questionable procedures that limited the possibility to debate them....but then again it was done like this because Spain was indicating that even debating such things was illegal, and therefore there were no other options.

In all this mess, several newspapers have started a misinformation and lying war against independence, while several people have made articles or comments where they attacked the referendum.

And in all that, what I have not ever seen are arguments about why we should not vote, or vote "No", that could stand on their own. So I want to comment on some of the arguments said and why they're bullshit....but I also want to point out that there are arguments, valid ones, and it's just mind-boggling that people that I though were smart are not mentioning them....

1-Because it's illegal:

-This one is the first thing that lots of people mention that are against the referendum, and it's really really stupid. For starters, its legality is a matter of interpretation. However, let's say it was clearly and without doubt illegal. So fucking what? As lots of people mentioned, legality is not an indication of morality or ethics. People say that one should respect the law in a democratic country, but I disagree on mindless obeying. First question to ask regarding anything illegal, is to ask why is it illegal. Is it morally or ethically wrong? Is it harmful? Is it plain stupid? If you check this, it's rather evident that some laws make perfect sense. You cannot rob, kill and/or rape because it's ethically terrible. You are not allowed to do drugs because it's a danger for your well-being. Of course there's already shades of gray, and for example maybe rather than forbid drugs for that last one it is better to control and regulate them..this could be debated, and that's why some laws are a must, but others can be debated. Why is a referendum illegal? Because it would leave the integrity of Spain int he hands of Catalan people. And why is this bad? Well, here is where it fails. The only reason this is bad is if you believe in frontiers, in countries, if you feel patriotism for Spain without any other reasons than being Spanish and feel personally insulted by the though of Spain not having some piece of land that was theirs before. I consider patriotism idiotic, since where you are born is a rather random thing to be proud of, it's the same as being proud of having 5 fingers, as if you are personally responsible for them. A referendum is also illegal if you believe people should not decide things, which is antidemocratic as hell. And there's plenty of things that were illegal and should not have been, like women voting. Legality cannot limit ethical causes, and if that's your main reason, what should change is the law.

2-Because it's nationalistic propaganda/patriotism, which as you said it's rather stupid.

-First of all, Spanish nationalism is SO much worse than Catalan one. Second, while there may be some people that really want to be independent because they don't feel Spanish at all and are really really proud of being Catalan, this is also patriotism, which is stupid. However, if you check the general opinion among independentists, the nationalism aspect is not that important compared with the chance of self-governance. Currently, Spain's government and institutions are a cesspit of incompetence and corruption, unable to do much apart of behaving like a corrupt dictator, with the novelty that they do so in group. This is fairly evident for anyone not suffering from brain damage, and that includes a big chunk of the Catalan people, who want to get rid of that and be able to promote a better management and better laws. Lately a lot of progressive laws that could have improved life in Catalunya have been suspended or nullified by creating another law that supersedes them. The problem is that in Spain at the moment we do have a lot of brain-damaged people apparently, and the main parties that are corrupt, dictatorial and useless keep getting votes, so there's no clear solution for Spain. A clean break from that sure would solve the issue for Catalunya.

3-Because in the context of the European Union it makes not sense to put more frontiers, and in general frontiers are stupid.

-Indeed, frontiers are stupid. For example, the Spanish frontiers are not allowing refugees and are also kicking them out back to the sea on the heat of the moment, something that has been declared as illegal by international right. Controlling such frontiers in Catalunya would not be to close the region to the world, but to open it a lot more than what Spain is allowing.

4-Because it's right-wing propaganda and it will become a dictatorship/neo-liberalist hell worse than Spain (so what you say about making progressive laws or opening frontiers won't apply).

-The independence moment is really transversal, and if you check any demonstration or statistic you will see that people of all ideologies are supporting it. What's more, this movement has forced the traditional right-wing party of Catalunya (which disgusts me) to move toward the centre and become much more progressive (but I don't trust them at all still and I know they have corruption, but not as bad as the Spanish one). Also, the parties that have always been more supportive of a referendum and independence have always been more on the left side of the spectrum.

5-Because it's left-wing propaganda and it will become a lawless/communist hell like Venezuela

-Again, the movement is transversal and you can see that a lot of ideologies are involved. It is true the left has more supporters in Catalunya and inside the independentist movement, but the left parties involved have been very calm and rational in the last years while ruling, promoting more social justice and never advocating for pure anarchy, trying to follow a model more north-European if anything.

6-Because the law of the referendum and its conditions have not been agreed with Spain.

-This one is the most used by people more in the middle/undecided, or against the referendum as it is but not against the idea of voting/doing something political to solve the issue instead of just illegalizing it. The problem here is that this depends on Spain. Spain has a tradition of being authoritative and is not used to negotiate much. Let's be clear: The left lost the civil war against fascism because there is a lot of fascists tendencies in Spain, a lot of patriotism for the wrong reasons, and there's only one accepted way to be Spanish, and since then things have not improved greatly about this topic. For a big group of people, Catalunya is not Spanish enough, instead of thinking that Catalunya is another interpretation of Spain, as valid as any other. The current government has the support of such people and any negotiations would be considered as weaknesses. That's why in the last years the Spanish Government has never even considered any negotiations, and has just said Catalunya should shut up and behave, basically. The Catalan government has offered to negotiate until the last minute, but Spain has never offered or proposed anything. So, how can this be negotiated if one of the parts negotiate by saying "no, end of discussion"? Some of the people defending this argument say that this is now, but that we should work to change this dynamic, and vote to put into power people more open to negotiations. The reality however is that with the latest election results we are very far from having a big majority of parties open to that. One of the parties currently not ruling that is defending this argument or proposing other solutions ruled for 8 years and did nothing of the sort, so their promises feel pretty much empty. Asking to pact is asking for people to wait maybe 40 years while renovating the parties, to reach an unknown situation where maybe things improve...or maybe they don't. People defending this option are way too optimistic about it, I think, based on previous experiences. However, I can understand to a certain point people defending this.

7-Because independentism excludes and divides people.

-This one I've heard it from several newspapers that I thought were better than this. This argument, similar to the patriotism or frontier argument, assumes or tries to tell that independentism is about Catalunya being isolated and defending "proper Catalans". However, this is easily disproven by the fact that there's a lot of independentist that are immigrants and children of immigrants. This movement has always been inclusive, and you can see that people in Catalunya just love it when newcomers integrate. One of the best things that Catalan government has promoted since Franco's dead is the fact that, to be Catalan, you just need to live and/or work on the region, and this attitude is clear in all the movement. Most of the divisions come from the unionist side's attitude, where statistics show that the emotional component of feeling Spanish is the most common reason to want to avoid independence, and therefore tend to act in more emotional and extreme ways (although lately it is true there has been some extremism on each side)

8-Because Catalunya will be kicked out of EU.

-First of all, as long as people remain Spanish (which is an option available), they will be part of the EU. As for the theoretical new country, you don't need to be in the EU to have some of the benefits of the EU, as Switzerland or Norway show, but also it's unlikely that EU will not manage things to include a rich region that would be in the top tiers of GDP compared with the rest of European countries.

9-Becasue Catalunya will become poorer.

-Of course if Catalunya becomes poorer, EU may not want to accept it. However, the general consensus is that industry and business in Catalunya is strong enough that there are 2 likely outcomes: If Spain negotiates with Catalunya, Catalunya's economy will rapidly grow from the start. If Spain penalises Catalunya, Catalunya's economy will have problems for a short-term period until it regulates the situation and then it can grow at medium-term.

I could list more reasons that I heard these days, but most of those are over-simplifications of the situation or just plain wrong. The only one that might kind of work is number 6, but it ignores reality too much....which brings me to one reason I have not heard yet, but it is actually good, and I'm surprised no one has mentioned loudly yet, that I know.....

10-For solidarity towards the poor Spanish people that will be left with the brain dead, conservative and corrupt Spanish traditional parties.

Now this is a reason I can get behind to defend not separating. Catalunya is a very progressive area compared with the rest of Spain. The current vote estimation for Catalan elections indicates that  around 60% of the people would vote a party on the left spectrum. Checking the results of the last Spanish elections, Catalunya gave around 2.100.000 votes to parties from the left-centre. In Spain in total, there were around 11.700.000 votes to parties from left-centre. Almost 18% of the total votes for the left came from Catalunya, while the region represents only 14% of the total votes in Spain. Losing those votes, even if you also lose the votes of the Catalan right, means it's much harder to implement changes on Spain, especially since the party that seems to really want to change things in Spain (they're not perfect but so far they're at least trying) was the most voted party during these same general elections in Catalunya.

Basically, separating from Spain is a bit like abandoning any hopes of changing it. It's admitting that the system is too corrupt, too biased, to change it from inside. It's a bit like admitting defeat. And it's leaving all this great nice Spanish people more at the mercy of a group of bastard.

However, there's an alternative approach to this. Spanish politics are stuck in a bad place, for too many years. Breaking from that would be traumatic yes, and would leave the progressive side weaker in Spain. Nevertheless, maybe that's what is needed to make people in Spain react, and see the old parties for what they really are: A bunch of useless corrupt assholes.

Maybe a shock therapy like this can put some life into this old and outdated system....

Ciudadanos and Cognitive Problems In Spain

Again, I found motivation to write something from the sorry state that Spain is showing.

This Sunday there will be elections in most towns and cities of Spain, and also in plenty of regions. Catalunya is not one of them and will have elections later on, on September, but Barcelona will vote this week.

The polls around Spain show weird results. New parties have appeared and have gained an incredible amount of support in a very short time. On one side we have Podemos, CUP, and other parties and organizations from the left that are trying to remove the traditional parties from power to improve life conditions and increase social policies. Most of these parties are getting support from people that used to vote PSOE, but since PSOE has done really stupid things that have situated its central power in the center-right rather than the left, several of those voters have abandoned PSOE as an option. This is understandable: If you support the left, currently in plenty of regions PSOE does not represent the ideas from the left, and is involved in several important corruption cases. There may be regions where PSOE is still defending the right ideas, but central POSE and lots of other regions are corrupted by having had the power for too long, and own too much to the banks and big companies to really work for the people.

What does not stop surprising me is still the massive support that PP has. Half its leaders are being judged or already condemned for corruption. Where they go corruption appears around them constantly. They have openly said they had a secret accountability book, even if legal (or not really illegal but unclear). They have failed to comply with all their program. They have increased taxes for the big majority of the population. They have modified laws that have reduced salaries, and new jobs are mostly temporary contracts. And even after all that and more, still people supports them in embarrassing numbers.

And what is even worse, the people that have stopped supporting them apparently have decided to vote Ciudadanos.

Ciudadanos is a new Spanish party, but before it became nation-wide it was a Catalan party (Ciutadans) for a long time. In Catalunya, they defined themselves as anti-catalanist, basically defending the idea that there are more important things to worry right now than catalanism, independence and defending Catalan language. This is a perfectly valid posture, but they followed it by centering all their program in anti-catalan proposals: instead of really focusing in other topics (like unemployment, or corruption), they centered all their campaign in being against Catalan language and Catalan independence…Which basically is still wasting time and not trying to do anything for all these things that they said were more important than catalanism (like unemployment, or corruption).

They also tried to say they were not a party from the right, and several times skipped talking about it or claiming they were center-left, or center. However, they sounded suspiciously similar than PP, and several of their members were ex-PP, or ex-PSOE with ideas from the right.  I always considered them from the right, but they were ambiguous about it.

After the initial success of Podemos, Ciudadanos decided to go national, and presented candidates all around Spain. They presented themselves as another new party, an alternative to the corrupt old parties. And then they declared themselves as a right-center party, and basically took as candidates politicians mostly from PP but also some from PSOE or IU, that had not won before any important position and took this as their chance to enter a parliament and get paid for life.

They have won quite a lot of support. And I keep realizing there's no hope for Spain as long as 25%-33% are raging fascist or mentally disabled. Even if they're not truly aware, that's what they are. PP has lost lots of votes, but most of those votes have gone to Ciudadanos, which is made by the same people with the same ideas.

I will make a prediction: during these elections, PP and Ciudadanos will pact in lots of regions and cities to rule together. Because there's an embarrasing number of mentally handicapped that keep voting PP. But the rest of the mentally handicapped that had voted PP will go ahead and vote for PP2, Ciudadanos. You can see it in Valencia or Madrid. According to the polls, the loses of PP are gains for Ciudadanos, almost to the decimal in estimation of vote.

The only solution is to have enough parties from the left to win over these two parties (and also to win over PSOE in some regions where PSOE is not doing very different things than PP).

I will just finish saying that Catalunya's situation is more complex, because there's the independence factor as well...but, to not avoid the chance to offend some more people, I will say this: This Spanish mental handicap that seems so common in the population also affects Catalunya, to all the people that believe independence is more important that the state of the country when it becomes independent. To explain it to these same people with cognitive problems: CIU governing an independent Catalunya is not very different than PP governing Spain, and one of the the only differences is the language and culture that will be promoted.

If you don't see a problem with that, well....as I said, cognitive problems.

Economics, Apartments And MMORPGs

As I mentioned in previous posts, we're currently searching for an apartment to buy. If we don't find anything before we go to Rio it's fine, but we're investigating to see what's in the market, and if there's an affordable apartment that we like, we will not wait 2 years to get it. Right now we've found one that we may like, and we've even made an offer, but things are still pretty much in the air.

As I said, the whole selection process deserves another post, but right now I'd like to talk about apartment prices, their negotiations, and economics in general. And also how the experience of playing in a Massive Multiplayer Online game helps a lot as an Economics case study, for apartments and for the world in general.

Apartment prices in Spain are still stupidly high compared to people's salaries, but right now they're reaching a level where you can consider to buy one without sacrificing your first-born to the bank. Second hand apartments are still the only option because, with a few exceptions, new apartments are owned by banks. Bank managers (as in bank owners and directors, not office workers nor office directors) know that the prices have gone down and nobody is even able to consider paying such prices for new apartments, but if they lower the prices of new apartments they need to write down that they lost money. Of course, they'd prefer to rape their mothers before admitting that they screw up big time and that they have thousands of useless empty houses that give no benefit, so instead they don't lower the prices and maintain a price bubble.

They hope that the prices will go up again and they will get a benefit. This may happen, but it may take 50-100 years (which is how many years may be needed to get back to a situation in Spain where most people not only can easily buy houses, but can also eat afterwards). Meanwhile, our friendly Spanish government gives them our money (recovered from us through taxes) so they can continue operating without having to get money from selling that big amount of useless cheap houses.

So, we're left with the second-hand house market.

In there, things are currently interesting. Prices were not able to resist the evident difference between supply and demand, and they have plummeted quite a lot. Just 7 years ago it was normal to pay 500.000 euros for a small hole in a wall, and now it is reasonable to get decent places for 200.000 or less (depends on size of apartment, situation, age, state, etc.).

Now we're in the process of negotiating the price for an apartment we consider as an option.

Negotiating prices, reading the market tendencies and the economy in general reminds me a lot about the time I was playing Lineage 2. Lineage 2 is a Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (or MMORPG for short, pronounced like yhatzee does). You have a permanent world where you log in and your character appears. Levelling up and progressing through Lineage 2 is an extremely hard task (or it was when I was playing) that it's not easy achievable. (all the following comments are based on my experiences of the game when I was playing it, before 2008).

The problem I faced when I was playing Lineage 2, is that to level up you need to invest a lot of money in resources and equipment. And the process of levelling up does not reward you with equivalent money. Basically, to level up you need to lose big amounts of in-game money. To be fair, there are ways to get money levelling up and hunting monsters, but they require you to play for 8 hours straight, together with more people, and to limit usage of resources to a minimum. Even like this, profits are minimal. In this world it is true that permanent growth is possible, since when you kill a monster more money gets added to the world. Anyway, this creates funny economic dynamics.

To put it in perspective...once you reach level 20, the equipment that you will need to start using at that moment to be able to fight people and monsters of your level costs close to 2 millions in the internal currency. Once you get to level 20, if killing monsters has reported you around 100.000 of the internal currency count yourself as lucky.

As you can see, there is a bit of a gap between standard income and necessary money to survive. This only gets worse in later levels, since after level 40 the equipment you need is not even sold in game shops, you need to craft it from pieces that monsters drop. Getting all required pieces takes usually more time than levelling up to the point where the equipment you were trying to create is now useless to you.

As a result of all of this, the basis of living in that world is player commerce. Players have the option to trade things and even open shops that offer things and services (like crafting services). Capitalism is king, and prices evolve with the time depending on demand and on what is affordable by most players. What's more, thanks to the constant influx of money to the economy from the players, the world is in a permanent state of inflation, with very strange and particular cases of devaluation. The ones that got rich keep getting richer, and new players will have it very hard to reach a stable economic situation where you don't need to save every single coin.

This really teaches you the workings of the real world, if you want to survive inside the game. For example inside the game I managed to establish a small business of selling helmets. These helmets were needed to complete a set that gave some extra stats for players between level 40 and 52.

However, I did not own any helmets. I did not have the pieces and materials that allowed you to build such helmets. I did definitely not have the ability to even finish building these helmets.

What I was doing was buying materials in a city, for a price that I knew was rather cheap. I bought them in bulk, and when I had my calculated quotas of materials then I proceeded to contract players who had shops to create composite materials. Finally, I contracted someone who was able to made the actual helmet from the composite materials and pieces.

Once I had the helmet (or helmets), I proceeded to go to another city where this helmet had the biggest price (because prices changed from city to city, given the fact that reaching each city required different levels and hours of play). In there I opened a shop and sold the helmet.

Recollecting and buying all the composite materials and pieces, and then contracting other players to build composites and the final helmet was a long process, and it costed around 1.2 millions in the game currency.

However, the completed helmets were sold for prices between 2 and 3.5 millions (depending on the moment). In the worst case, I got 166% of the invested money back. In the best case, 290%. And I did absolutely nothing. I was just an intermediate that knew prices of materials and prices of the finished item, and knew which margins were acceptable. Sure, I wasted a lot of in-game time on this, but it was usually time I was studying at university, and meanwhile my computer was on with the automatic shop activated so other players could sell me materials or buy my helmets.

Sometimes I got people competing, trying to sell helmets next to me for 1.5 million and similar things.I just bought all their helmets with my investment money and sold them for 2.5, getting me an easy, fast and clean benefit of 1 million per helmet.

So, this game showed quite easily a number of points that you always need to consider in doing businesses and buying things, especially when their prices do not match the price of materials used or hours invested in them:

1-Living is expensive, and working hard does not guarantee that you will have money or that you'll be able to afford necessary things.

2-In order to win lots of money, you need to start with lots of money.

3-Without laws regulating business, established companies can ruin any competitors by just buying their stock to resell it at inflated prices or by selling at a loss until the competitors run out of business.

4-Try to avoid as many distributors, agents and other intermediaries between the maker of the product and you. Each step makes the final product stupidly more expensive than the real cost of making it.

5-Monopolies will abuse their position of power and inflate prices.

6-Even with inflated prices and monopolies, customers will call bullshit when the price is too much, and they will opt to live without your product if necessary.

There are more lessons that you can take from the game, but there's no need to list all of them. It's just to show that these games are great examples of pure capitalism (and how incredibly crappy it is for everyone that doesn't have a great idea or control over some particular market). It also shows the catastrophes that can happen in such unregulated markets. (there's a lot of other MMO games that can show you examples of this).

Regarding apartments, what the game taught me is that the price of such things is as much as people are willing to pay. Building an apartment does not cost their actual prices. The apartment prices depend on the idea of a fair price that most people will have in their minds, and prices will change only when people think they should change.

At the moment, every week or two I get notifications that some apartment I was interested dropped 10.000 euros, or even 20.000.

I believe that no matter what newspapers and government are trying to advertise, people still can't pay for apartments, and what's more, people still believe they should not pay for such prices and that prices will go down. There's a big advertising campaign to change people's minds, but I don't believe it's working yet.

I want an apartment where we can live, and I don't care if the prices will drop more, or will increase later. I just want our own place. However, it is an interesting moment to buy, and it is funny to see all the people trying to convince you prices might rise a lot any time next week...

Maybe I'm wrong and prices will really increase soon....but somehow I doubt it.

Back in Barcelona

Having a child and temporarily moving back to your parent's home is quite time-consuming. We've been here for a little more than a month now, but it feels like ages ago, and we've been very busy.

In this time, we've been visiting friends and family. Everyone wants to see Elay, and Elay has a particular timetable that difficuls visiting. (Apart from that, he's very very funny and we're enjoying a lot being with him and seeing him learn^^)

Anyway, we're more adapted to life here now, even if its only temporary: we've managed to be assigned to Rio too, so around July we will move again, for a big period this time.

Meanwhile, we're taking live here as a small vacation, even if we work and do similar things. At work the level of things to do is not comparable to the integration team, and at home we have our parents to help with Elay and to do some daily things.

Living in Barcelona is really really nice. It sounds patriotic, or like those people that say that your original home is where you live best. I don't agree with that, I just think Barcelona is my favourite place to live so far: Adler was too wild, too poor, too corrupted and too much old-fashioned with ideas. London was too big, too gloomy and cold, had too many people and its people thought too much "inside the box".  Vilnius is too poor at the moment, too big for its public transport network and way too cold 9 months of the year. Lund and Malmo are my second favourite places, but the weather is still not as good, and their people are colder too.

Barcelona is a big city but not that big(like Vilnius and Malmo), it has people but not too many (like Adler, Malmo, Lund and Vilnius), the weather is very nice(like Adler), its economy is not very poor (like London, Malmo and Lund), the transport network is really good(like Malmo, Lund and maybe London), it has lots of things to do(like London and Malmo), it allows you to buy things on shops or through internet(like London, Malmo, Lund or Vilnius), it's in the coast(like Malmo and Adler) but also next to the mountains(like Vilnius), it's well communicated by plane and train(like London and Malmo), you can use the bike to move around(like Malmo and Lund, and maybe London), and the city has lots of beautiful areas and places(like London, Malmo and Vilnius).

So, based on a number of things that we subjectively think are best, we can objectively mark Barcelona as our favourite place so far. Scandinavian countries are a close second, and if economy and politics doesn't improve, this will add to the city's drawbacks, but right now it's our favourite place.

One of my favourite things that I've rediscovered is bicing, the public bikes that you can use for free for 30 minutes.

We' be been checking apartments to buy recently (something that may require another post). Everything is very close in this city, and if I go alone it's very easy to grab a bike and go. And the feeling of freedom that you have going around with the bike is one of the best in the world, specially in sunny but fresh weather while you move through big streets lined with trees and grass...

I really have missed using the bike^^

An Ideal Apartment

The baby seems to have started moving in a noticeable matter. I haven't noticed yet, but my wife can tell when the baby wakes up.

We're in the middle point now, and we're of course excited. One of the things I've done lately is to start looking for an apartment to buy.

When I was little, I imagined that at some moment I would own my own house. The house prices bubble crushed this idea hard. When I was in the middle of my degree in university, i thought i'd be lucky if I could afford a normal rent. However, the "good" part of this crisis is that apartment prices are going down, with no sign of stopping anywhere in the near future. I believe at least a year will pass until they reach a reasonable price, and after that, for a while, we may have an inverse bubble (people expecting the prices to go down some more amd not buying at the real price apartments should have).

They're still stupidly expensive, mind you. However, they don't seem to require all your savings plus 50 years of mortgage anymore. I believe that, if prices keep going down, it may be possible to pay close to one third/one half of it with savings only (well, it depends on the apartment, of course).

First of all, even with the current crisis, the political situation and the overall stupidness of the country, I would like to live in Barcelona, eventually. I like houses, but in Barcelona it's not really possible to get one (unless its a little hole, in ruins, or crazy expensive). In U.K. and other countries is more common to have houses for middle-class people in cities, but in Cayalunya non-posh houses are present only in small towns, urbanizations or in the middle of the mountains.

Therefore, I would like an apartment in the city. As per the situation of the apartment, I'm fond of the Sants-Les Corts area, since it has everything you may need (markets, schools, shops, bars, restaurants, metro and train stations, not far from university area, not far from the center..). However, the area where I've always lived, Clot-Sant Andreu, has also most of these things, so it's also an option. After these two, lots of places in l'Eixample are very nice as well, specially next to Sagrada
Familia. Anyway, I'm not eliminating options.

For the apartment itself, that it has elevator is mandatory. You can live in a place without elevator for a while, but you will always have lots of extra difficulties. First floors or basements are not a good option, I'd prefer something higher than the average street light. The higher the better, but I'm not picky after the first two floors.

Once inside the apartment, let's start with the size. I would like to have 4 bedrooms. The main bedroom would be for us, of course. I think it could be around 10 square meters, if we want a big bed and a big closet to put all of our thingies. It could be smaller than that, but around 10 seems the right size. Then I would like to have 3 smaller bedrooms, 6 square meters each, at least. I lived all my life in one such bedroom, and that's enough space to consider it decent. 2 of those bedrooms would be for possible future kids, and the third one would act as an office or guest room (as in, it should work as both).

Two toilets are mandatory, I hate the idea of having only one, after experiencing it in other houses. One should have a shower or bath, bidet (also mandatory), closet and all that, and the other only would need a toilet. Any extra thing would be nice, but not necessary. I believe the big one could be around 6 square meters, and the small one only needs 2 or 3.

The living-dining room should be big enough to allow two big different areas: The couch/TV area and the table area. We'll talk about these later, but I believe the minimum size should be around 20 square meters. The kitchen needs to be big enough to fit all necessary equipment, but it doesn't have to be bigger than that. I'm not sure, but allowing it to be 10 square meters seems enough. Maybe part of this can be a small laundry room or something similar.

A terrace is optional, but welcomed. Let's say it adds 5 square meters to the total.

Adding everything up, we have a minimum of 72 square meters. However, depending on the distribution of the house, we will probably have corridors. Some corridors may be nice, but they add a lot to the total area. Let's assume not the best distribution, and add 20 square meters made up of corridors (I believe it's a reasonable number given the rooms the apartment would have). This pushes the total size of the apartment up to 92 square meters. Being generous, let's say a round 100 square meters.

So, my perfect apartment is around 100 square meters, including some small terrace, 4 rooms, 2 toilets, one big living room and kitchen/laundry room.

Apart from size, I would like to have natural sunlight (preferably during the morning or a bit after noon time, before evening) in the main bedroom and the living room. The rest of the rooms do not necessarily need sunlight, but they should have exterior windows, and if there is another building in front, there should be enough distance to avoid being able to jump from one to the other...The toilets should have some type of window or ventilation system better than just a small grid with a fan in one corner (otherwise humidity is quite a danger).

I believe that the apartment I described is reasonable enough. I can make concessions (not all rooms have windows, not as much sunlight as I would like, etc.) if the apartment closely resembles this description.

Now, let's talk about some internal details. First, I would prefer an apartment with no furniture. Furniture raises the price, and with some possible exceptions, I would prefer to choose it myself so it fits in very specific ways. I want to use space wisely and according to my taste. Our current apartment in Adler is awesome for the moment. Howver, for long-term stay, it has such wasteful distribution and furniture I could cry. I want to avoid this, even if it implies not being able to prepare all rooms when we buy the apartment, since it may be too expensive to prepare everything from the start. As for the condition of the apartment, I would prefer a new apartment, not older than 20 years.

Since we would have no furniture, ideally, there is something I'd like to do: All apartments usually have the electrical installation (and water, gas...) inserted in the wall and covered with plaster. If there are problems, you need to make holes and plaster it again once you're done. I would like to leave all this in the open, not hidden in the wall. Then, I would like to put some type of wooden cover (or any other material better suited for this) over these lines in the walls. This cover would be removable at will, and would allow a higher degree of customization. I don't know if it's a reasonable idea, but in my ideal house we would have that.

Since we would have an easy way to lay new cables, we would then make sure all rooms have all the necessary electrical plugs. These necessities could change with time, but it would be easier to control. Another thing I would like to add is network cables. I would need to decide a place for the router, and then I would like to set up a network with different connection points (that could be just ethernet inputs on the walls). Each bedroom would have one of these, and the living room would have one too.

With an ethernet cable network, I would get a good router with 5 entries for ethernet cables. If necessary, we could get some small switch instead. This would be set up as a private network, and it would be different than our wireless network, also set up.

Another thing that I could set up using the wall covers is a tower computer in the living room, with cheap processor, memory and motherboard, but decent sound and graphics card(with HDMI), and a lot of disk space. Maybe even a raid configuration for backup purposes. It should also have a DVD player, and maybe a Bluray. Then I would connect this to the network as the main house filesystem, and I would connect a good sound system and our TV to this computer, to be able to easily play videos and music from the filesystem or online.

There are other details that would depend on the distribution of the apartment, but another thing I would like is a proper gaming table. It would be in the living room, and it would be wide and big, enough so 6 people can play table games comfortably, without space constraints, even with some of our bigger table games like Arkham Horror.

Anyway, that's the apartment model I'd like to have. I know I will not even be living in Barcelona in at least 1 year, and who knows what will happen in this time and later. Maybe Spain breaks, maybe the euro crashes and our savings are worthless, maybe I will not have a job....However, I still like to think about it, check current apartments, and imagine our future place...