Control

This confinement period sucks, but the good side is that I can play more videogames.

Since last Christmas I got a couple of new xbox games. One of them was The Outer Worlds. The other was Control.

The Outer Worlds seems nice, it's like a different version of Fallout, it's made by Obsidian and they tend to make amazing RPGs (like Pillars of Eternity). It has nice touches but I haven't explored it more yet, because as an RPG it can be a bit overwhelming at times with the number of quests. Plus taking decisions and selecting sides can be sometimes a bit tiring. But I hope I'll get to it.

The one I've just finished now it's Control. And I have to say that I loved it.

In Control, you are Jesse Faden, a girl that is trying to find her brother who disappeared after a mysterious accident, abducted by an organization called Federal Bureau of Control, that investigates paranormal things. So you start the game finding the building where the Bureau is located, entering it and realizing it's in an emergency lock-down because it has been "invaded". You see people floating around and frozen, and start to investigate.

Soon enough you end up gaining a special object, a "magical" gun, that converts you automatically in the director of the place. And you discover that some people are being possessed by the "Hiss", some type of red corruption/vibration/chant that is trying to take over.

This is a horror game, but it's a subtle, mental horror, the type I love. The initial enemies that you find are just people with a reddish glow on them, using guns and weapons to try to kill you, but the weirdness escalates slowly but surely. You find all these log messages and videos explaining some of the core concepts of the game, like the existence of Altered Items (common items that have gained supernatural effects from repetitive use), Objects of Power (beefed up versions of the items that allow people to have cool skills like telekinesis or levitation) and Thresholds (places that basically are intertwined with paranormal stuff or other dimensions).

The building is not normal nor a stable entity, and sometimes it shifts and changes, although mostly you see this happening only after cleaning an area of Hiss. Its proportions are not normal (definitely bigger in the inside) and the atmosphere is that of a bureaucratic office that normalized dealing with strange things, very grey and white. It feels cold somehow, very official, with pictures of the directors on the walls. The graphics are awesome though, and they're mixed sometimes with real-life footage and with the atmosphere it's hard to tell the difference in some cases.

The atmosphere is eerie, and as you advance you keep hearing the whispers of the hiss and see the red lights that mark their presence or areas where they're strong, giving you a certain anticipation but also this feeling of tension. Enemies respawn in certain areas but it's not a sure thing and they don't respawn in the same way, so you're always wondering what will appear this time, if anything. Enemies have levels, even if you don't leel up in the traditional sense, and this helps indicate the difficulty of the game.

The main plot is interesting and suspenseful, a bit typical but executed quite well, and the different videos you find of the people that ruled the building before the breach gives you a nice insight into how things were (plus they're usually fun/creepy/interesting. And the actors doing them are great, special mention to Dr. Darling). Luckily you also find survivors (I don't like games where you never find anyone else, seems unrealistic) and this also creates some safe areas and some sense of normality. The side quests are really good most of the time, and while the main plot there are no "bosses" apart from the occasional named enemy with more life and armor, in the side quests there's a variety of encounters with weird stuff that is quite enjoyable, although also quite frustrating sometimes (I've died a lot in some of them).

Related to dying, if you do die you don't exactly lose progress but you respawn in the nearest control point. Whatever you have done is saved but enemies tend to respawn if you didn't pass an area. Also, you lose money/points/whatever, a percentage of them (I haven't check what happens if you run out. I think nothing, it's just annoying because you don't have any, but killing enemies gives you back lots easily). The game has no levels but it has a point and crafting system, and you accumulate those points, plus strange materials (they have very very strange names), that you can use to upgrade weapons and create special mods for them and for yourself. Even without levels, by increasing your skills and adding these upgrades you can later on breeze through earlier places of the game where enemies remain at low level.

Where the game shines is in certain moments of...wrongness, caused by some paranormal thing. It can be in the side quests, or sometimes in the main plot, but it's these moments where something is not right: The room you're in is too big, the walls are bending strangely, the room is twisted, some door that was not there before appears now, there are strange coloured lights around the room...or stuff like the Oceanview motel, which needs to be experienced, and while not scary per se, it's just...not quite right. And I love games that can pull off this effect, because it's not easy to do and it really fucks with your mind in ways that explicit gore and blood will never manage.

Having said that, there are some unnerving enemies. Without spoiling much, Hiss can also deform their hosts resulting in body horror. Also the more deformed ones tend to scream in  a way, especially next to you, that is quite disturbing (Special mention to the fucking Hiss Distorted, which is also invisible until it shouts and appears next to you and halves your life in one hit). But again, it's not about blood and gore, it's very well done how it creates tension by showing you something clearly very wrong.

Another side that the game does very well is the dream-like moments or the moments when you're clearly in some other dimension, like when you see the foundations of the building or the active threshold (and I'll leave things at that to be all cryptic and not spoil the fun).

One little detail that I loved is that the authors of this game are the same ones that did Alan Wake. Alan Wake was a nice horror game, but while nice it felt somehow a bit repetitive and it lacked a certain something during most of the game . Alan Wake shined the most at the end and in its expansions, but sadly the final 3rd expansion was never released. However, in this game they got a small vindication by including Alan Wake as part of this world, and commenting on the events of the game as part of an Altered World Event (AWE), an event where something para-natural has happened and has altered the normality of a place.

Finally, I have to say the ashtray maze section, done while heavy metal music (the game's company is Finnish and it shows :p ) sounds all around you, it's fucking amazing. Even if they say so in the game...

Highly recommended.

Interesting Times

There's this English saying, with unclear origins (read more here), that says that there is this curse: "May you live in Interesting Times". Terry Pratchett used it in one of his books too. The idea, of course, is that the history moments that are most studied and explained are those of turmoil, chaos and strife.

We are indeed in one of these periods. and I'd like to talk about two subjects related to that, the election of a new President in Spain and the latest judicial verdicts and actions by the UE tribunals and parliament.

First, it seems finally a President has been elected in Spain. This President has been very difficult to elect, since the party he belongs to didn't have enough representatives in parliament to be elected on their own. This means the party needed to pact with others, and traditional parties in Spain are really against that. They're used to order around and dictate, starting from a clean majority, if possible an absolute one, to rule whatever they want, regardless of the program they had. This party, PSOE, is no different.

PSOE has been defended during this period as a leftist party, and the election of this president has been indicated as a triumph for progressive forces. However, this is totally false. For a long time now, all around the world, powerful forces (aka rich people and the newspapers and news agencies/broadcasters they buy) have been moving what is considered the centre of the political spectrum more and more to the right, to accept certain policies as "moderate" when they're clearly right-wing and conservative, and to promote neo-liberal economies. Because of this, PSOE is being considered as "left", but that's blatantly false (at national level at least. it´s different at regional or city levels).

PSOE has accepted authoritarian ways to rule, has maintained laws that restrict freedom of speech and has used repression as a tool while governing temporarily in this period without majorities. PSOE also reformed labour laws in Spain in favour of the big companies, have delayed retirement age and all around applied neo-liberal policies for some time now, refusing to act on things like house prices or bank control. PSOE has refused boats full of rescued refugees that were at sea. PSOE has done nothing to tax more or stop giving public money to the Catholic Church. Their attitude till now regarding Catalunya has been exactly the same as PP, the extreme-right wing party of Spain, of sending police and tribunals and twisting legislation to punish people. And so on.

The only thing that PSOE has done that can be considered more "leftist" has been defending abortion rights, defending LGBT+ rights and Women's rights, and proposing to legislate on issues like Euthanasia or drug use. While these are noble causes, these alone do not define a leftist party, and plenty of moderate or right parties in Europe nowadays defend some of these positions too, so it's not like revolutionary radical leftist of them.

What's more, PSOE had the chance of ruling with a true centre-left party, Podemos, since last elections, but because they're centre-right they wanted instead to pact with Ciudadanos (another right-wing party) or rule alone, which is why they repeated elections. Problem is they lost votes and Ciudadanos sank even more, so these two options were definitely not possible and they were forced to pact with Podemos instead and, all of a sudden, defend themselves as "progressives" when they're far from that.

Having said that, this is better than the alternative. The alternative was the three extreme-right-wing parties of Spain (yes, we have three of them, we don't have a "new extreme right wing" now, we always had it, it´s just now split in pieces and that's good) ruling together, but thankfully they have been fragmented and don't have a majority to rule even if they pact. PSOE alone will not do much, but since it will have issues governing, the fact that they need to pact and negotiate is a good thing. We will see if Podemos and the other leftist parties can twist its arm enough for them to actually act and do some progressive things.

There´s people in Catalunya that say that PSOE is the same as PP, and to let them rule is bad. This reminds me on the campaign started in USA to convince progressive voters not to go to vote Hilary using targeted ads, that infamous scandal. While I agree that PSOE is not good, the reality is that the possibility of the extreme right parties ruling again is catastrophic. I´m not sure whats the best course of action really, but seems to me a scenario where they need to pact with left and independentist parties is better than one where all right-wing parties ally themselves and rule.

However, as a final note: This government won't push leftist policies enough and will still pretty much protect the powerful. If you want real change, PSOE is not the party, you need to vote more left. There's several options there (which is a problem, when there's this fragmentation too), but there are better left options. It's a matter of selecting one. And yes, they're not perfect. The curse of the left is that there's no perfect ruler, instead of the right where this doesn't matter because you just obey your leader. But still, vote the best left option that there is, or change is impossible.



As per the second topic: The UE tribunals have ruled that three Catalan politicians that could not swear on the Spanish consititution because they were in exile or in prison are members of UE parliament, regardless of the fact that they could not swear on it becasue members are elected by people voting, not by posterior procedures, and therefore the Spanish tribunals cannot prosecute them without the approval of the UE parliament. Two of them are exiled and will join the parliament on 13th of January, and the third one is in prison in Spain, but this verdict makes his trial void (and would need, legally, to be repeated after UE parliament allows it).

This has been followed by the UE parliament ordering Spain to fulfil the law (indicating without explicitly saying that they need to liberate the prisoner), since the UE Tribunal is the highest instance and the Spanish tribunals need to follow it.

This links nicely with my previous post. The problem of how Spain reacted to the Catalan independentists is that it's not legal, it's not democratic, and in general it's not how a progressive democratic country works. Spain has acted like a dictatorship, has twisted laws, bypassed rules, done whatever they wanted however they wanted it, ignoring their own legislation and just going for punishment, revenge and blood. Anyone defending that doesn't understand about democracy, regardless of your opinion on independence, and that's something that I really hope that those who do not defend independence understand, finally, with he help of Europe: Every Single Time that Europe tribunals have been involved, since they're really independent and democratic, Spain has been shown to not follow the law and to act incorrectly. Every time. And there's more to come, once other sentences reach UE tribunals too.

What's more: For all the ones that say they defend legality: As per the law, this prisoner should be freed and given access to UE parliament. I'm not going to say all laws are just, because I've previously stated that you should always question them, because dictatorships also have laws. But if you're not hypocrites, now you should defend his liberation, and ask Spain to follow the law. Or ask for the Spanish Government and the Spanish Tribunals to be accused and judged, same way you asked for the Catalan politicians to be judged.

Or you truly, really, believe that Spain is a better democracy with a better judicial system than all the other UE nations combined?

Time for questions

So I haven't written in a while, especially about politics, because mostly the current situation can be summarized by screaming to the void at top volume for 4 hours....but I'd like to try to explain some things.

You probably have seen that the people that organized a referendum in Catalunya have been condemned by Spain to lots of prison years. And that people here got tired of this crap and started to protest in a more hardcore way, blocking roads and stations. And then police started to beat people up, and people responded by barricading and setting things on fire, and we're still in this situation.

So, let's start by saying that Barcelona is not a war zone, you can live perfectly well here unless you're right next to some  very conflictive point. So, yeah, newspapers are exaggerating the situation to make it look so much worse than it is.

However, it's bad what's happening yeah. And it's bad only when police act. Otherwise, there are no issues. So, police is doing a horrible job, because they're supposed to keep the peace, but instead they're guaranteeing there's problems and chaos. Police is used as a punishment for protesters instead of trying to establish normality, and it shows.

Anyway, I'd like to try to explain that what is happening should horrify a lot more people than it does, and why.

So, let's say you're not pro-independence. That is fine, each person can have their opinions. You feel that Spain is a nice country, or you feel that Catalunya will do better with Spain, or you're against Spain losing Catalunya. Or some other reason like that. That's fine, I repeat. But even then, there are things that I believe concern you.

The Spanish government and judicial system condemned people to lots of years for organizing a vote,  debating it in parliament, trying to organize a protest and declaring "independence" without any real chance to back it up for real, kind of symbolically. That's it. That's the summary.

Now, you may say, "oh no, but the vote was illegal/declaring independence was illegal". Well, first of all, that's debatable, Spanish laws could be interpreted either way about this. Second of all, laws are not pillars of morality. Laws are rules written by governments. Dictatorships have plenty of laws. If something is illegal, sometimes it's good to also ask yourself, why is that, and if it really should be. As mentioned before in other posts, to assume all laws are just and good is dangerous, submissive and can give birth to horrible monsters like Nazism and Stalinism. And well, when is a vote something that should not happen, really? Why voting is so bad? Could you ask yourselves that? You may say that all of Spain should vote, which is fine, but then why not get the region's opinion first since we're at it? Doesn't it sound...fishy, that you cannot even vote? Today it's this topic, but tomorrow it can be another important one (like reducing CO2 emissions or transitioning to green energies) and the result may be the same, "oh it's illegal to vote about this!". This is a slippery slope, really. It's ok to vote but only if you like it? That's the thing here?

Then you could say it was not the vote, that it was the independence declaration. Only thing, it was symbolic. No administrations changed control. No infrastructures were taken. No efforts were made to change taxation mechanisms nor implement any type of real independence. The declaration was made and then nothing was done to implement it. While I could accept that declaring independence is illegal under the current constitution, the point is that it was not implemented. So, with no effort to do it properly, they should be condemned to lots of years just because they said it?

Then you could say it was the protest a few days before where some police cars were vandalized. Which is true, but the people condemned didn't personally do it either, and they asked for tranquility and peaceful protesting at all times.

Then on the trial, the main argument about violence happening in Catalunya was to say that 1-Screams and looks of the people were "violent" and 2-that the police brutality was the cause of organizing the vote. The first argument means that "violence" can be anything now, as long as the people in power decide something is violent. So you cannot protest against anything that you consider unjust, because it's "violent. The second point is the same defense rapists use, "she was asking for it".

Also on the trial, it was not allowed to use videos or images that contradicted the witnesses statements. They were shown later. So no witness could be considered false and to be removed from  the trial during the trial itself. And there's a lot other things that happened during it that plenty of international organisations have condemned, saying that it didn't guarantee proper rights. I mean, I understand you may be against independence and you didn't like the fact that people tried to vote about it, but isn't it...troubling, how forceful it was? The Spanish government disagreed with the idea, accused people and then proceed to not follow their own laws and checks and balances to make sure these people would be condemned. Isn't it worrying this can happen, regardless of who's being tried and for what?

This was a vengeance, plain and simple, not really a justice matter. Isn't that something that should not happen at this levels, inside the justice system, regardless of your political believes?

Then there's the matter of  the following protests. Of course there has been protests, and there's been people organizing them. They have been disruptive, they have been intense and they have been a lot of them. Well, guess what, that's how all protest that achieved something have worked. That's how we got the 8-hours workday. That's how some other regions and colonies gained independence. So, that's how protests work, they're disruptive or they're useless. Did they put bombs or killed people? No. Did they use firearms? No. Did they enter into direct fights with the authorities? Well, some people have, but the vast majority haven't, and the ones that have are mostly using it as defensive strategies. There has been burnings and fires, yes, and it's not good they happened, but not with the intention to harm others, just to protect from police charges. The thrown objects are bad, ok, but again, these things have been more as defense from charges.

Well, this is now being considered terrorism (not a joke). And again, let's say you agree, those stupid pro-independence bastards are bothering you. Thing is, next time you want to protest because you have a shit salary and rent is being controlled by investment funds that want to make you pay a lot more? Forget about protesting. Any demonstration, any type of road blocking, any type of disruptive action can and will be considered terrorism. Don't you think this is worrisome? That it's establishing precedents? That real democracies should not consider this terrorism?

Let's also talk about the police charges. You can also say that police tell protesters to leave and if they don't they should be hit and arrested because they're not following the law. But then, police are hitting people on the head, on the neck, on other areas where it's clear in their procedures that they cannot hit. Isn't it a problem that the law doesn't apply to them then? Isn't it curious that rubber balls are banned in Catalunya and police used them anyway? Doesn't make you wonder,  that police can arrest anyone in the street,beat them up, jump on top of them, touch them (to women usually), and that's all fine? Is police above the law? And then, why is wrong to defend from them also not following the law? Are you ok with all this because "they would never do this to me, why would they?". Because this is for protesting, for demonstrating, with ideas that are not the officially approved ones. Should you be hit in the head for not running away fast enough when police charges to make people move? Is this proportional? Is ok to beat anyone in the area just in case, even people that are leaving?

And following also this topic, isn't it weird that fascist have been running around Barcelona and beating people up, and in these cases there has never been police beating them or stopping them? Or that when unionist, let's say, have slapped pro-independence people in front of police, police did nothing whatsoever? Isn't it a problem how friendly police is with fascists? And also the same fascist, how friendly they are always judged when they beat someone up and such things? Similarly when it's about rapists that belong to police forces, as shown in La Manada?

Then, considering all this, and consider how the Spanish government refuses to talk. About anything, really. Isn't it strange that no one on the Spanish side is willing to sit down with no pre-conditions, and try to see what can be agreed on or what can be done to improve the situation? Not saying agreeing to anything, I'm just saying to talk.

I will also add for those that put both sides at the same level, do you think it's the same to hit someone and to defend yourself from someone hitting you? Is it the same to control police charges than to have some people among thousands that do fight back? And even then, do you think it's at the same level, police charging and people protesting? An organised force beating civilians is the same that a few disorganized violent groups? And given the last images, is it ok that police infiltrators are trying to rile up these people so there is some fights and some chaos? Do you think it's the same to organize a voting and send police to beat people up? Do you think it's the other's side fault when, during a negotiation, one side just says "No" without further comments and proposals?

Also, consider this: It has been proven that the Spanish government, in the past, has used police to try and incriminate people, accuse them, make sure that minimum you get big news about it by filtering information to the press, prepare charges, etc. Doesn't this concern you a bit? Doesn't this makes you doubt the whole judicial process?

I keep adding: Spanish tribunals are usually decided by the two main parties that are in charge of all this repression and that have alternated ruling the country for the last 40 years. A lot of these judges have been members of the party "in the past". A lot of these judges have clear preference with a certain political spectrum. There's even some that are the same ones that were ruling during Franco's dictatorship, they never moved or were never removed from the position. Isn't that something to make you wonder about the quality of Spanish judicial system?

Just to finish, there's Catalan politicians that left the country and are staying in Europe to internationalize the conflict. Spain has send extradition orders to several of them. Don't you find it curious that Germany and UK and Belgium have, in general, ruled that the detention orders were wrong/didn't apply? Don't you find it disturbing that, in places where there should be separation of powers, the Spanish government is threatening diplomatically other governments about the outcome of a trial in their respective country, which is made by the separated judicial power? Do you think it's normal that the Spanish judges have only asked for the detention of certain people, and that they have withdrawn the petition depending on the political moment?

Now that there's other protests in the world at the same time: do you trust China's and Chile's Governments regarding their actions and declarations with their respective protests? Whatever are your thoughts about independence, don't you see parallelisms between all three cases and how police and governments are acting? Do you disagree with how Hong Kong people is being treated when they protest certain laws? Do you like that Chile protesters have been shot?

Do you still think independence is the problem here? Do you still think it doesn't apply to you? Do you still think Spain is being fair and just with their reaction? Do you still think that, when the time comes, your protests will be treated differently because yours will be just and necessary?

Do not defend independence. If you don't want it, that's ok. However, wonder what is at stake here, because it ain't about the independentists.

No good deed goes unpunished

I finished Life is Strange a while ago,  although I spoiled myself about lots of details of the game before that. Anyway, I wanted to comment on it....

I really like this game and liked playing it. However, after finishing chapter 3, I encountered something that bothers me a bit.

Without going into much detail, at the end of this section you discover you can go back in time lots of years to certain moments if you have a picture of it, and you use that to save someone's life.

Of course, the moment you do, someone else's life in that family gets completely screwed and ends up in a wheelchair.

This bothers me in some games and stories. I understand that stories were everybody is always happy are boring and you need some type of tension or drama...but in some stories it seems some people are predestined to have shitty lives and they can only choose between shitty outcomes...that's especially true in time-travelling stories. In reality, most time travelling stories should be boring because you can just jump back and forth until you fix all the little details, but plenty of such stories don't do that, even if it makes no sense...most of them just jump between drama 1 and drama 2...Stein's Gate is another good example, I loved the anime but the predetermination was very annoying because it made no fucking sense.

If your time travel story is fixed and you cannot change facts, that's fine. It gets annoying when you can actually change facts but there's personal people that get screwed always no matter what.

I mean, if the point was to stop a war (the let's kill Hitler scenario), I understand a certain predestination level because such things are never caused by single events, it is an accumulation  of them...but someone getting killed or in an accident? not that many variables...

Seems to me a lot of time-travel stories have these lazy moments where something "cannot be changed" and everything is like "dramatic" and "sad" and all this.....and well, it sounds ridiculous because as said, usually the solution is stupidly easy and it's so clear this is done for the drama of it, it takes away value in the end. 

Then there's the other type of stories that abuse the drama and bad things happening, the superhero stories where they are responsible for the well being of everyone (I'm remembering daredevil first seasons). The moment they deviate from this or decide to take a day off, the evil guys rape all their family, kill their dogs, behead their romantic interest and make them to be fired from their normal job because they failed to protect everyone by taking just a few moments to actually rest (which is something necessary for people not to go insane). Everything is overly dramatic and grey morality gets punished instantly in some cases (i'm also remembering Spiderman and uncle Ben,  of course).

Regarding indie games, I read an article a while ago where it was mentioned the overly dramatic tone plenty of them have, and I have to agree on that....again, I understand the need to have plot by having struggles and dramatic things happening....but come on,some of them are so over-the-top that it ends being comical sometimes, like that joke of a story where a girlfriend without ovaries gets a transplant from her boyfriend that ends with "share if you cry every time".

I´ve played What remains of Edith Finch recently too, and that's another example. I mean, the premise of the game is based on that, that everyone in that family died too soon with different type of causes. You get to experience all the ways in which this happens. Some are dramatic, some are funny with their black-humour, some are deep, some are nonsensical, but in the end it´s a bit...I don´t know, it leaves you with a feeling that nothing matters much because the characters will suffer regardless.

I read this sentence recently, I believe from Terry Pratchett now that I think of, saying that you can make your characters suffer and go though gruesome ordeals, but you must have hope, there should be hope for a better world, or people will just go numb and not care anymore.

Indie films, indie games, and other artsy things tend to abuse on the drama sometimes to the point of nonsensical, and at the end it feels like bad world-building, in my case it removes interest in the story. I would say that if you set up a situation that is dramatic, no matter how unlikely, as a start, that's ok, you need conflict of some kind to make stories interesting. But if you compound it by adding more and more drama, it becomes ridiculous. It moves the narrative from "this people have problems" to "this people are basically cursed". I don't know if you remember Police Squad! movies, but one of the gags was always an exaggeration of bad things happening to some character, they don't only get shot a thousand times, they get hit in the head, put their foot into a bear trap, bang their fingers against a table, catch fire, and drown. So you have the dramatic unlikely event, getting shot, and you add all the other things and the unlikeness of it just makes it funny. Same applies for content that is supposed to be serious, if it starts resembling a Police Squad! gag of bad things happening, it gets ridiculous to the point of taking your attention out of the content....   

A Story worth Playing

A while ago I mentioned that I started playing Pillars of Eternity(PoE) and I liked it, but that it was very story-based. Well, this is true, and I just finished it recently actually because it required some commitment to follow all the quests and explanations and all that.

It was an amazing experience and I want to review it.

As I mentioned before, Pillars of Eternity is an old-fashion RPG with isometric perspective like Baldur´s Gate. You have a main character, that you can customise at will, and you can get a number of companions with different personalities that assist you in your quests and travels. If you´re not convinced with the named companions, you are free to hire random Adventurers that fill the space and help you with fights and such things, but I'd say it's really worth to travel with characters that have their own plots and personalities.

The game is similar to D&D but uses its own classes, lore, skills and rules for combats and interactions. And it's based around quests. You see, killing enemies in PoE doesn't give you experience, so there´s no grinding possible, you only advance by making quests. There´s lots of them, and they're quite varied and with lots of options and possible resolutions, really using the different skills that you may have. Not many require to kill enemies, and the ones that do tend to be about one single big enemy, no need to bring back 10 wolf pelts and similar stuff.

From the start, you can feel the game is heavily story-based. Shortly after beginning, you find a moment where the game explains a situation with narration and text, where you can choose a course of action, but where your skills points and previous experience can change the outcome or the options. This is really immersive and opens thousands of possibilities outside the normal game mechanics, where having high intelligence or good athleticism does matter and can get you the best results. For example, you find some kind of mechanism next to a closed door. If you have good strength, you can break the mechanism. If you have good mechanics, you understand how it works and operate it. If you have a high intelligence, maybe you recall a previous mural and understand the steps to use it. All are different options that result in the same, opening the door, but unless you have the required attribute they will not even appear to you, or will fail if you try them. This moulds your character a lot more than what I´ve seen in other games.

Similarly, the concept of morality, good or bad, has been developed here much further than other rpgs. Things are not as simple as good or evil, with good points or evil points. Here you have reputation. And reputation includes lots of things. You may have a reputation from being clever, diplomatic, honest, cruel, violent, benevolent, tricky, misleading, rational, etc. This depends on your conversations, on what you say and on what you do, and having a high reputation in one of those aspects does not mean you cannot use a completely different action in a certain situation....but it also opens chances to use this reputation for your advantage. For example, being honest allows people to trust you at your word. Then again, because people trust you on your word, if in certain moments you lie people don't expect it and trust you anyway. Or if you´re rather diplomatic, then new conversation options will show up that will help you resolve conflicts differently. Or if a certain town or faction has a good impression of you, their interactions will change. You may get more rewards, more information, better prices, etc....At the same time you can gain bad reputation with cities, factions, etc. At some point of the game, for example, you need to choose between some factions, and good reputation in one will probably be obtained because you will get bad reputation with another.

In general these details add a big layer of complexity to the gameplay when you interact with others, and allows you to really shape your character. You´re not limited to the goody two-shoes or the evil psychopath with more moderate behaviours being punished by not having special interactions. Here you can develop a benevolent character that lies and still will fight at the drop of a hat. Or you can be cruel but honest. In general, you can really, really personalise the way your character is perceived and interacts with others, and there's no out-of-character, you could be honest most of the time and still trick people sometimes, or be diplomatic and once or twice straight up murder someone who´s being  a total idiot. The level of flexibility you have in this is amazing, rewarding and really interesting. And this same reputation changes conversation options and also these scripted-text only interactions where you choose different actions, so it manages to expand your choices and the way you resolve problems.

The story itself is rich and detailed. PoE creates a different world, with lots of races, factions and interests, that sometimes it's a bit hard to follow from scratch. It immerses you in a complicated zone with conflicts and troubles, where a plague is making children to be born without a soul, not dead but not moving or reacting to anything. In this world souls can be fragmented, used, reborn, split and manipulated, they can be ripped apart or be eroded, and a big part of the lore is around these things. There are gods that oversee the world with different skills and responsibilities, but they seem far from the daily lives (at least in the beginning). All the world has also ruins of some ancient civilisation that manipulated souls at will, with strange machines of unclear purpose that can provide light and power or just as easily convert to dust all the people nearby. As the main character, from an initial moment where you don´t have any clear purposes, you get inflicted with what seems to be some curse/blessing that may drive you mad, and in your travel you're searching for a solution to your problem, while helping others, influencing the local politics and trying to find clues about the plague that the region is suffering. Things start slow but turn into epic proportions after a while, unravelling a complex plot and discovering several refreshing takes on the fantasy genre.

The named companions you can get help you along the way but also have their own motives and stories, and you can help them resolve their issues and know them better, gaining their trust and learning about them. There's also a sense of familiarity created as you travel with them and they talk with each other and interact also with people you talk with. Some of them are less interesting or do not fit quite as well with your style, but all of them are worth exploring, and most of their quests are really interesting, although sometimes you need to wait to advance a lot in the game to complete them. The shame is that you're limited to 5 of them, and also that, of course, they need to adapt to your class to combine well as a party, so you usually have a strong core of characters that must be with you at all times and then one or two slots where you can change things and explore different options.

Apart from the stories and conversations, there's combat of course. The fights can be challenging and intense, with a lot of micromanagement needed to succeed, but also very rewarding. You can also keep doing quests, go up levels and make your life easier by reaching top levels early on, and this way have a kind of god-like strength. Combat is based on endurance, which indicates how tired you are, and once you run out of it you pass out. This means you can still win the combat with other characters, or even restore yourself with some healing skill. However you will be hurt and will need to rest afterwards to recover. You also have life, which cannot be restored really except with one or two excepcional skills, so when  it's low you also need to rest. Characters that run out of life are dead for real and cannot be recovered, and if your main character dies or all your party becomes unconscious, it's game over. However there's lots of autosaves every time you enter a map, so you're never that far behind after this happens. Even with top level, some fights are really really hard, but also some of those have Pacific ways to resolve the issue or avoid conflict, although it may depend in a lot of other factors.

I played the main game and 2 expansions, and made sure to left the end boss for last.  All the storylines were really great and it was extremely satisfying to reach the last boss extremely overpowered and manage to defeat them with ease, by that point you're really involved and want to finish them. I played as mostly good, and I'd like to try the opposite in another playthrough, but I dont know if i'll do that or just play the second part that seems also very very nice.

All in all a great experience, really immersive and interesting, and I highly recommend it.

Repeating Andorra and Amsterdam

So in December, thanks to the holidays, shifts and vacation days I could not take before, I didn't work at all.

Since December 1st until January 7th I had vacations. So that was very nice.

I spent most of it in Barcelona with a close friend that was visiting, and it was pretty awesome. However, I did a couple of trips worth mentioning.

First, during the first week, we all went to Andorra. Not sure if I mentioned before, but Andorra is this little country on the Pirinees, quite isolated, where people go to ski in winter mostly. Other seasons it has amazing trails and mountains, but in winter it's like a huge ski resort. So we went to spend some time there.

The place was nice and we had fun, but the previous time I had visited was in summer and it was soo much better, because of the lack of people. Andorra is pretty tiny and in the middle of huge mountains, so the cities, the streets, the roads, etc, are rather small. The main road has one lane in plenty of sections. The towns are narrow and steep. So, the moment it's a bit overcrowded, massive lines are formed everywhere and it's really hard to move, to park, to do anything really...

The place we were staying in was really good, and what we visited was nice, but as a driver the feeling I got was that for most of the trip I was stuck in the car or having to keep controlling the gears and waiting for cars to move, in steep narrow roads. It was a bit stressful.

We did manage to ski, and this time I tried skis. The snowboard last time was a bit frustrating, I didn't manage to control it at all, so this time I tried the skis, with no class or anything just to see how it was. After the experience I can say that it's harder to brake, which means it's more dangerous, but at the same time it was easier to grasp some basics and I managed to go down with them as I wanted, so that was really good. I have to say though that the boots were horrible and hurt a lot, but oh well. Actually after this trip I went back to another mountain and finally managed to control better the snowboard, and I think using skis also helped to understand better how to move around snow in general.

The tracks were pretty amazing, and the mountains looked really pretty, but also it was not that cold nor there was a lot of snow, which is normal for the time of the year.

Apart from skiing we visited the towns, went to caldea (the local spa, very nice ) and enjoyed our time there, it's just that we spent a lot of it on the car.

Special mention to the trip back, which was nightmarish thanks to stupid Spanish border control just allowing one lane to go out, which means a big big traffic jam before reaching that point, for kilometers and kilometers.

So, after Andorra, which was more like a family trip, I went to Amsterdam (which was not).

I've been to Amsterdam 2 times before this one. The first one was with my high school and it was a...mind-opening trip, let's say. It was really awesome and we had tons of fun. Also, the high school banned trips to Amsterdam afterwards, a clear sign of a good trip :p . After this one, I went back there with some Erasmus people while I was in Sweden, and at that time it felt weird and not as fun, but it was ok.

Anyway Amsterdam always felt really beautiful, really friendly and with a special magic atmosphere of freedom somehow, so when deciding what to visit someone proposed this city and I loved the idea.

It was my third time and I was not disappointed. The streets and channels, the little houses that cannot be made very tall, the Christmas lights, the atmosphere, it was beautiful. We just walked around without visiting anything special, and just enjoying  the city, and it was pretty awesome. We were staying in a very centric and cosy place, and we ate and drank and just relaxed, without hurries. It was really cold though, but its normal for these dates too.

One of the nights we went out with a local friend and it was one of the best nights I've had in a long time. We first spend time at his place, then a little walk on the red light district (he lives there so we just walked around his house), and then went to a weird club that had an underground area, dark and foggy and with threatening electronic music...the visuals were like something out of Silent Hill, and the music was electronic but dark and heavy and thick. It was spectacular and we had a lot of fun. We left late, and just then it started snowing, adding to this eerie feeling that was great

It was so good that we'd definitely like to go back (but when it's warmer please).

Exploring Buenos Aires

I have some trips in the backlog, so I'll start with this one that I did in September/October. I was in Argentina in the Iguazu area only, so I consider this to be the first time I really visited.

This time I went to Buenos Aires, for a month, to help with the Youth Olympics.

For starters, in this trip I was working, and because there were not enough people I worked a lot. I only had 1 single free day every 4 or 5, which means that this free day you need to do a lot of things together that you could distribute better if you had a full “weekend” or 2 days in a row. Also, this meant I would only visit the city, a trip further away would be complicated. And there was one more thing, one of my best friends was working there and I was going to visit her too and do things together, which means less time overall to do touristic things.

Nevertheless, I managed to get some impressions from this city and country and to see a bit of the things that were around me.

Buenos Aires seems…European. Maybe it´s the architecture or how the streets are organised, but the centre of the city reminded me of Madrid, or Paris a bit maybe, and also some Eastern European cities. It looked very different from Rio, but then again, I did not visit any other big city in Brazil, so maybe it´s not that different. The only thing is that you do notice the poverty, in the fact that buildings and streets look dirtier, more abandoned, less maintained.

I was staying in the centre of the city, in a massive square that contained the parliament, and where there were daily protests for any topic. However, this was the norm, so I never felt the protests were a problem or disturbed me. The hotel itself was like 2 minutes from work, which was great because I had morning shifts starting at 6:30. However at this day and age, there´s a thing that any hotel that wants to be respected must have: good internet coverage while in the room, be it cable or wifi. Sadly, my room didn’t have. The wifi lost signal plenty of times or it was too weak to use, to the point of not being able to send whatsapp messages. Especially when travelling this is a big deal breaker, and even after warning about it they said they could not do anything.

Anyway, being so centric allowed me to be near several nice spots, one of them being the same square I mentioned. It was big and usually sunny and felt quite relaxing. I also was at walking distance from the Obelisk, a big monument in the centre where there was celebrations and protests, and that looked nice too.

Apart from those scenic places, I did the tourism I enjoy more, which is to just randomly walk around and get a feel of the city.

As I said the centre reminded me of certain cities in Europe, but there was a lot more poverty, and you could see clearly homeless people. However, you didn’t feel the insecurity of Rio. Later I learned that this might have been not entirely correct (I heard shootings, twice, once right next to the office while we were on the roof of the building and some coworkers saw the shooter shoot against a house and leave), but in Rio a lot of the homeless people looked like on drugs, while here they just looked homeless.

Close to this hotel there was a big street filled with theatres. A friend that also lived in the city meet with me one day and showed me this area, and it was shocking the amount of shows and actors and events that were on display. I had heard lots of Spanish actors and musicians toured south-america in general a lot more than Spain, but before seeing this I may not have understood the true scope of such things in Argentina at least. Maybe in Barcelona or Madrid there are as many theatres, but in here the way they accumulated so many in such a small area was quite surprising. A bit further there was another beautiful section, Puerto Madero, next to the sea. I saw it at night, and with the lights it had it was very nice. 

My friend lived in an area called Palermo, so when we coincided we walked around there too. This felt more similar to Ipanema actually, had amazing restaurants and bars and was less centric-looking and more relaxed, very nice. We went a couple of times to a nearby restaurant strip that had very nice food and amazing cocktails, and we could see the night atmosphere, with people ready to go out. However, with the limited time we had, we didn’t really go out while in there, or at least no to clubs: It seems most places in Argentina were just playing “cumbia” music, and after seeing some examples we agreed we both despised it, especially her considering she had spent there some months already before me. Only one night we tried to go out, and the place we tried was busy with a private event and told us anyway we had to dress up more nicely, meaning a suit and a dress (and after that we hated it and would not like to go back there).

We worked too much these days to do much more, but we did have the chance to use a bit the fact that we work for such events, and we visited several stadiums around the Sarmiento park and Tecnopolis. This area was used to hold several competitions, and it looked curious. I'm unsure how Tecnopolis is used normally, seemed to me some type of science museum/exposition area, but it had funny statues and structures. Of course we had full access and we skipped queues and restricted areas, which makes you feel a bit special and good^^. This event is smaller than a normal Olympic of course, but it was organised in a way that there were plenty of people following the different competitions and it had a very nice and friendly atmosphere.

All in all, the month passed too fast because of work, and didn't get to see much, but what I saw was nice. It did had its problems though, of bad service sometimes, bad taxi drivers, massification in the centre, poverty, some lack of general maintenance of public things and other issues, but for a visit it felt like a relaxed place and I enjoyed it (when I had free time).

Ah! I cannot finish without mentioning a couple of things: Yes, the food was...weird. The beef they have there is really really good, but the cooking style is a bit weird, a bit too well-done for my taste. And they have a lot of fat food, heavy, with butter and sauces and oil. Or sweet, that's the other thing, they eat a lot of sweet things in the morning (facturas), and the alfajores and dulce de leche are awesome but they're digestive bombs (that didn't stop me from coming back with close to 6kg of the things). And the last thing: Argentina and elevators had a weird relationship. Lots of them are old, badly maintained and fragile-looking. I was stuck in an elevator, twice, in this month. It has never happened before in my life I think and here it happened twice. One of the times we even had to get out forcing the doors open while it was stuck between two floors, which was a bit scary but also a bit funny.

It was a short and busy visit overall, but I'd be curious to see more some other time if there's another chance. 

Intolerance is the way

Lately I keep seeing posts and comments,  especially on facebook, about respecting all ideas and positions.

Fuck that.

Let me elaborate: Karl Poppe indicated that there is a paradox on tolerance. The idea is that a society that is tolerant of intolerance has the risk of becoming intolerant, since the intolerants can become majority and destroy this tolerance.

I'm not an expert on all the nuances here, but I agree with the general principle. The idea is that there are positions that are not defensible, and that if there's people that won't consider rationality at all, their positions should not be allowed as viable.

The thing here is about extremes of course, and I would say that a good indication  is any position that ask for repression, internment or death of any group of innocent people.

So,for example, in lots of areas of the world there's this growth of extreme right wing supporters. Bolsonario in Brazil, Trump and the Alt right in USA, lots of different parties in Europe, etc. (Spain doesn't count, the 2 main right wing parties are directly fascists, so extremism didn't grow, it just never left after the dictatorship. Fascists won and conquered Spain and until it is taken from their hands and they're properly defeated, we'll have this issue).

These parties and people are the type that, for example, defend that LGTBs cannot marry, makes laws that are bad for them and allows discrimination as a "right" they have of not liking them. They are also very anti-immigrant and racist, anti-women and anti-cultures that are not the state-approved ones. They´re very conservative and plenty of times religious, but only of their religion of course.

So in these cases, the "I don't agree with you but will defend your right to say it" does not apply. There's no "need to accept all different opinions". It´s not a matter of "subjectivity". It´s not about "agree to disagree" and leave it at that.

Nazism and fascism needs just one answer, which is brutal repression, intolerance to such ideas and no apology for hating extreme right bastards. In Germany, for example,  doing the nazi salute gets you arrested. I fully agree with this.

What some people that try to be moderate and reasonable fail to see is two main points in here. The first one is that this is a tactic from the extreme right. When establishing your position, if you know most people that consider themselves moderate will try a compromise, if you´re inflexible and extreme, the middle ground will become a lot more to the right than what should be allowed. If your standard position is "kill all gays", for example, a moderate might feel that a balanced outcome is to allow not hiring gay people at work or not providing services to gay people. The extreme right, and the right in general actually, have been moving the extreme more and more to the right for years. The result is that "moderate" ideas now are actually clearly from the right. So the right answer when someone says "kill or imprison all gays" (or something to that effect), after maybe spending a few seconds trying to reason and double-checking the mental sanity, is to ban the bastard from participating in politics and conversations, and arresting them for good measure.

The second point that "moderates" fail to see is that the two positions are not equal. When a politician says that "women should stay at home and in the kitchen", to put another example, being against this is not "subjective". You see, in this point you can agree, or don´t. The thing is agreeing to this limits the freedom of women and represses them, so if women call the person on their misogynistic bullshit, you cannot say it´s just another point of view: This will directly harm women. Therefore, it is perfectly valid to not allow this type of ideas in political discourse, any party that defends this should be just banned and be done with it. Again, it's not a matter of opinion, one side gets harmed with this position while the other does not: when this happens, the side not harmed has no right to defend this opinion. And this is in no way the same as some religious bastard saying that it "harms" their idea of religion. It´s the basic difference between victim and oppressor, between attacking a person or defending yourself. A person defending themselves does not share the same level of guilt as the person attacking, doesn't matter the outcome. And it's impossible to be moderate and reach a middle ground when one side wants to exist and the other side wants to basically kill you or deny the fact that you exist.

Related to that, being indifferent to such behaviour and ideas is also not acceptable. If someone is an abuser, an homophobe, a violent person, supporting them means that even if you're not these things actively, you think it's fine or not a big deal. So accepting an homophobe as a candidate or voting for them makes you one too,even if you would not directly do something else homophobic. Again, fascism was, and is,a problem not becasue of the minority that is directly violent, but because there was a silent majority that accepted those things and considered it the new normal. 

So, summarizing, fuck that. Fuck fascists, and fuck dictators. It is perfectly reasonable to try and not allow such options to even exists in politics,and to confront anyone defending such ideas and trying to be moderate or defending it as "just another opinion". To put it bluntly so it gets into the skull of some people , would you consider it just "another opinion" if i'd vote for the party that wants to straight-up murder your family? 

So no, not all opinions should be tolerated.

Looking at you, Brazil.

New President

Time for a bit of a political rant. Haven't commented on the latest developments in a while...

So, to sum it up, after referendum, the Catalan government didn't really have a plan and after messing with different options and waiting to see if Spain wanted to negotiate, they declared independence but were unable to actually implement it. Right afterwards, the Spanish government suspended the Catalan autonomy as per article 155 of the Constitution, but actually didn't implement it as it was written and just did as they pleased, mentioning that what was done before was unconstitutional while not following it themselves. They also started to arrest these politicians on charges of violent revolt and other such bullshit (the violence came from the Spanish police, ordered to do so). Some people went to prison, some people ran away to some other European countries.

The Spanish government sent arrest warrants for the people living in Europe, and for the moment European countries have looked at them and correctly indicated that the charge makes no sense, there's no equivalent charge on their countries and let the people go free. Spanish "patriots" have accused Europe of lack of collaboration, but basically the rest of Europe has a better grasp of what a democracy means and how powers need to be separated. Also it seems Europe made Spain control a bit more what they were doing with the article 155 and forced new Catalan elections instead of ruling Catalunya indefinitely.

Catalan parties had a lot of infighting, elections happened, pro-independence candidates still won the majority of the parliament, nothing was solved whatsoever apart from repressing conversations about independence and Spain and their fascist groups starting an escalation of repression, accusing anyone who criticised for example the behaviour of policemen during the referendum as supporting terrorism and hate speech.

In general, it was shitty. Spain did what was expected by many (but surprisingly enough, not expected by Catalan rulers) and devolved into a totalitarian cesspit regarding this matter, and Catalunya did nothing whatsoever and just complied.

The Spanish government also launched an offensive against free speech and separation of powers, accusing and condemning with jail singers, artists or people that made any criticisms to the king and so on.

Here we need to clarify again the parties involved in all this:

PP: The Spanish right-extreme right, heirs of fascism (really. Their founder was a minister during the fascist dictatorship. Most party members are sons and daughters of fascist politicians. Some current members voted and talked against the Spanish constitution), supporters of fascist behaviour and repression, very corrupt, very conservative party. When all this happened, they were the government.

PSOE: The Spanish fake left, actually moderate right/centre. Quite corrupt and old-fashioned, defends some leftist ideas (same-sex marriage, abortion, a bit less repression....) while being completely pro-capitalism and free market, and controlled by the major Spanish corporations. They supported PP without doubts regarding how to act in Catalunya and how to repress people, and didn't criticise this.

Ciudadanos: PP version 2, new party even more to the right of PP, based on hating Catalunya and Catalan culture while defending "Spain's sacred unity" and also saying PP is too nice with the workers and we should have even less rights and more privatisations. While not evidently corrupt yet, they have protected PP and PSOE in the most corrupt areas that the old parties controlled, and while having a belligerent discourse with PP, they have been their main supporters during these years of government. They're also controlled by the major corporations and most Spanish press also supports them shamelessly, since it's the major corporation's solution to clean the right of evident corruption by moving votes from PP to Ciudadanos and not losing control of Spain. Their only complaint regarding what has been done in Catalunya by PP is that repression hasn't been hard enough. They tell evident lies with a straight face and have a neo-fascist rhetoric.

Podemos/Comuns/Izquierda unida: New parties created from the Spanish protests against the corrupt system plus the old communist party. They defend good ideas and present a lot of nice initiatives to the parliament. However, they have done mistakes and judgement errors, while also not being consequent with their words sometimes, although they have a much higher moral ground than the other 3 previous parties. Regarding Catalunya, they didn't understand properly the situation nor the problem nor the origin of the independence movement. Since the independent movement includes one party from the right that is also corrupt and has done plenty of shitty things, they tend to attack independence from this angle as if it was only this party's idea and also accusing the other independence parties of joining and helping this corrupt party. Their public position is that independence parties did something as bad as the repressive forces (PP, PSOE, Ciudadanos), and even accused them of "awakening" the dormant Spanish fascism (same argument as saying the woman in a rape is at fault for dressing slutty). However, they're the only ones with a decent program that could improve things in Spain at this point. The cities ruled by them (Madrid and Barcelona for example) have managed to reduce their debt greatly, reduce the power of the bigger companies and lobbies, reduce corruption and increase the budgets dedicated to social help.

Rest of the parties: Here we include independence parties, basc country parties and other more regional parties from other sections of Spain.

Now, back to the explanation....

During all this repression, PP Ciutadans and PSOE were applying the article 155 where they dissolved Catalunya's autonomy and repressed people and ideas. Because of last election, these 3 parties together control more than half of the parliament, and the other parties did not have decisive influence.

However, in other topics, it was harder to agree. PP was ruling but didn't have enough representatives to rule alone. Adding Ciutadans, they still fell short of absolute majority, and there were several topics that they had to pact with other right-wing formations from the rest of the parties, and also rely on PSOE maybe not voting with them bus abstaining to vote. I mention this to indicate that they were being maintained in a position of power by  Ciutadans and PSOE too.

While all this happened, every day new people from PP were being accused and arrested regarding corruption charges. This had not impacted PP much actually, but  one of these cases was rather big, the Gurtel case, a corruption case involving several high members of PP. PP manoeuvred from the government to move judges that were more neutral away from this case and put judges that had participated or supported PP in the past, quite like a mafia. Still it seems it was not enough, and the final verdict was taken last week. The verdict condemned several high positions inside PP, but also officially condemned PP as a whole, as a party, as a criminal organisation kind of, as having reaped the economic benefits of this corruption.

In any other country with democratic tradition, PP members would have resigned already long before this from all the corruption cases and irregular financing that were open against them. However that's not the Spanish way, and even after this verdict, nobody resigned.

Still, the scandal was too big. Ciutadans wanted to retire support and request new elections, knowing they were stealing votes form PP and they would have more representatives this time. PSOE instead directly opened a no-confidence motion, proposing to remove the current PP Spanish president and put a PSOE president and government. Ciutadans didn't agree to that and did not support it, but Podemos went with it unconditionally, because they though removing PP from power was a priority. However, even with Podemos support, the number of representatives between these two was also not enough on their own and they needed the smaller parties too.

The doubt was about the rest of the parties, which includes independence parties. They had been mistreated by PSOE too. Some people even said that PSOE was counting on not getting their support, so nothing happened while pretending to do something. However, almost everyone agreed, PP was much, much worse. So these parties voted to put the PSOE leader as the new Spanish president.

PSOE is still an old party. PSOE is still corrupt. PSOE is still in favour of how article 155 was applied. PSOE is still controlled by the big corporations. Podemos doesn't forget that, or at least some of its people do not. The independence parties do not forget that.

However, PSOE is not PP. PSOE is not Ciudadanos. PSOE is a stepping stone into a path to move to a more progressive situation.

PSOE will be forced, in order to keep votes, to agree with progressive proposals made by Podemos. PSOE will be forced, in order to pass laws, to talk with independence parties sometimes. And also very important, PP, PSOE and Ciudadanos, the parties of repressions, of the article 155, the parties against voting (not even independence, just against voting), the parties that are trying to keep the current Spanish corrupt repressive status quo, are infighting, fucking each other and disagreeing.

So, PSOE is not good. PSOE is not a beacon of hope. PSOE  will not regenerate anything or allow progress to happen.....on its own.

However, in this situation, PSOE is good news. For the moment.

100 times better than PP or Ciutadans, that's for sure.

Relaxing in Gold Coast

After Korea, I worked for a month more or less in Gold Coast, Australia, for the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

Gold Coast is a coastal city in east Australia, close enough to the equator that it has tropical weather and with what is basically a huge continuous beach all along the coast. I went there at the end of "Summer"/beginning of "Autumn", which means it was hot and sunny and also rainy sometimes, but like in brutally intense and short showers.

What I mean is that after a cold long Korean winter, it was paradise. It was warm, calm, beautiful, and also very much occidental. It had it's peculiarities and it was not perfect, but it felt pretty much great.

We were staying in this area of tourist apartments, that had a nice pool and sun. The apartments were quite good and we were close to the tourist going out area, Surfer's Paradise (that's how the neighbourhood is called). This area was also next to the beach, although there were nicer beach sections further away.

Work-wise, we were busy and doing things, but because of the scope of the project and the previous work done for Pyeongchang, it was a lot less tense, the workload was smaller and we didn't have to do night shifts, just afternoon shifts. This means there was a lot of time to visit, enjoy the sun and relax before and after work.

The city has a region called Surfer's paradise because the whole region is ideal for surfing. There are very strong and big waves all across the coast, and inside the water the current is crazy strong. I swam several times in the sea and it was really funny, I always kept myself in areas where I touched the ground but it was fun to let waves crash against you and push you away, or notice how the current was also almost making you fall. The only thing is that the allowed swimming areas were very small, marked between two special flags. This was to avoid surfers hitting you and have a very clear supervised area, where you could be very safe. However it felt sometimes like a waste, to have so much beach unattended just for surfers.

This area might have sharks and other dangerous animals, and we were told not to swim at dawn nor on sunset, but the reality was that it was pretty safe and most people mentioned it had been decades since last time someone had been bitten. We still didn't swim outside the morning and early afternoon, but also because it was the period when the sun was bright and nice, of course. There were jellyfish and some people that I was with got stung by them, once right next to me, but I was lucky and escaped without touching one^^.

The area had also other curious animals, like ibis, big birds with big curvy beaks, or flying foxes at night (which were quite impressive since it's basically a very very big bat). We visited a local zoo (it's called wildlife sanctuary but it felt like a zoo, which can be pitiful), where you could see kangaroos and koalas (they're from this region) and other local animals. Koalas looked really cute of course, while kangaroos where actually in some open area just sunbathing and you could get close to them and even feed them. I did not see any giant spider, but I did have a green jumping spider in my kitchen for some time (it was brightly green and I checked what could it be. The bite is supposed to be painful like a bee sting but that was it, and this spider was just on my ceiling and not bothering, so I left it there)

One thing I enjoyed very much was the possibility, finally, to have fresh orange juices in bars and cafes, while being for example next to a beach area with sun and some fresh air. I did not drink this in a long time since in Korea fruits are scarce, expensive and not juicy, and then it was not that common to have a good natural juice.

I also tried some local things, like the famous vegemite (which is weird as hell and I'm not sure I like) and I had some burgers and good meat, plus I tried kangaroo sausages (and they were really tasty and apparently rather healthy). Around the city there were some public barbecues and you could cook food in there in a park or next to the beach, which was really really nice, and I ate barbecue a couple of times, even if I'm not that fond of it.

I met with friends and other people and went out or visited different places with them, like Coolangatta (an extremely beautiful and calm beach), Snapper Rocks (natural sea pools made by rocks, quite fun to notice the waves arriving in them), Burleigh Heads (another beautiful beach), Broadbeach and Mermaid Beach, some small natural park north of Surfer's Paradise and other such places. The city had newly-installed bikes that you could get an app to unblock them and use them, like Barcelona's bicing or the Itau bikes in Rio, but available to anyone for quite a low price, and we did several small trips around with them, which was quite a good way to see around and visit nearby places.

Another place that was impressive was the SkyPoint Observation Deck, the tallest building of the city that had a floor where you could check the views from up there and had an activity where you actually went outside with a security belt that tied you to the building. It was really beautiful and I was lucky to do it during a clear day, allowing for great sunny pictures and also letting me see extremely far away all around the building, checking the huge beach and seeing the waves and the currents underneath it, hypnotically moving far below.

We also went out, mostly around Surfer's Paradise. The area has a very British approach to bars and alcohol, and places were asking for an ID where it was clear what was your date of birth, sometimes only allowing it if you had your passport since others were not in english.  The process was very uncomfortable and sometimes ridiculous, because even if you went out for a smoke and they saw you, they had to check again. Related to that, one night in particular got me really really angry: Good Friday, the Friday that is a holiday during Easter. That day, bars and restaurants were only serving alcohol if you were eating, by law, and places that did not serve food (like clubs) were directly closed until the end of the day, 12 at night. I found this to be ridiculous, to implement such a religious law for everybody instead of letting you do whatever you wanted. I knew Australia had problems regarding racism and immigration and that it was a very conservative place, but this stupid limitation forced upon everyone really pissed me off and was a big stain in my opinion of the place, which was rather good with no complaints until that point, even with the ID controls they were implementing.

Of course since it has British culture, it was normal to have dinner early, drink early and go out until rather early, so even when we went out we didn't stay until very late, and then several days we could visit things the next day or even go to work if we had an afternoon shift. There were a few exceptions to closing early though, and one of them was the Casino that we visited last day. Usually I would not go to a casino, but the locals insisted it was a known and common place to go out at night without worrying about closing times since it was always open. The day I visited I saw this was the case, but still felt a bit surreal and strange, to have like a "club" area next to betting and slot machine areas.

All in all, I really enjoyed the experience and loved the place, and it was quite a necessary relaxation after Korea's project. I didn't get to visit places a bit further away from there, like Byron bay or the great barrier reef, but I'm still very happy with the trip^^.