Gemini Radio v0.2

A Game Ronin in Europe, part two: Geneva

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Switzerland! The answer is Switzerland. Nothing against all those possible destinations in France, but I decided I wanted to see the Alps, and Chamonix’s remote location would have necessitated an 8 hour round trip by train. Geneve, by contrast, took half the time to get to and from, a quick hop one city over. It was a perfect training wheels day trip to practice the essentials of touring Europe: getting oriented, scouring Lonely Planet to plan the visit, acquiring the right map… It was another foreign country, another currency, yet they still speak French. But at the time I was deeply impressed with my own derring-do. Holy shit! I’m going to Switzerland! Can I just do that? Do I have to tell anybody first, tell them when I’m going to be back? The answer was: no, you really are on your own, Mister Smith. If your train was to jump the tracks along the way, no one would have a way to know you had been on it, excepting your conspicuously timed absence from work and perhaps some dental records. And I had never thought of going to Switzerland before, why would I? Prior to that Saturday night, doing my research into potential day trips, I didn’t even know it bordered France, but there it was, all wrapped up in France on 3 sides. Shit, I didn’t really know Germany bordered France either. I looked at that and thought “that’s gonna cause some tension.” I’ve learned a lot about geography and history on this trip, lemme tell ya.

Back in the office the next day:
Raf: “So did you go somewhere yesterday?”
Randy: “Yup, I went to Switzerland.”
Raf: *mind explodes*.
Randy: *flings Raf’s mind off his overcoat with a deft snap of the lapels*

Raf’s the kind of guy who goes to another country for a conference and spends all night in his hotel watching TV. The RW just isn’t interesting enough to bother with for one such as him.

A Game Ronin in Europe, part one: Lyon

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So, it’s crazy. I’m a contract game developer now. A masterless designer for hire, I wander the earth working on video games for weeks at a time, getting paid lucratively to fund my travels. This is the rock star dream of the digital nerd set, and I couldn’t have written it under “aspirations” in my high school yearbook if I’d spent that last semester Senior year trying to dream up the most fantastically unlikely thing. I think I’d still rather be a real rock star, but I’m not complaining about this arrangement.

The current gig’s like this: I fly into Paris on a Sunday, on Monday I work with the publisher who hired me, then I take the train down to Lyon to work with the developer for most of 2 weeks, then back up to Paris again to meet with the publisher for one last recap day. This post is the story of those 2 weeks, most of which was spent in Lyon. I got this gig in Austin, thanks to Harvey who redirected it my way, one of the most common ways for me to land status and job opps these days (thanks, H-dawg!). A French dude named Raf, a guy I know from conferences and such, was in town and wanted to hang out, so I biked down to South Congress and had some coffee with him at Jo’s. After showing me the demo video for his latest project, he asked if I’d be interested in working on it. In France. Shit, yeah!! That’s serendipity for ya. I had wanted to travel abroad and was planning on consulting eventually anyway. Fastforward through a couple passes of tedious contract negotiation and an overnight flight, and here I am.

East coast tour, part five: Boston

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(all 15 of them, most of which aren’t actually of Boston)

8/15/04, 2:00 pm – Zach and Randy drive north from NYC towards Boston. Randy navigates and struggles to remain alert.

8/15/04, 3:00 pm – Feeling like a bad passenger, Randy endeavors to engage Zach in a conversation about religion’s promise of the afterlife, popes who literally channel the Word of God, and the history of Catholicism relative to other religions it conquered. Zach tells Randy a story about a weird cult of Texas skinheads who attempted to recruit him and his friends by luring them out into the dark wilderness to an abandoned bridge.

8/15/04, 3:30 pm – Giving up on consciousness, Randy leaves Zach with navigation instructions and falls asleep to Queen and Yes with 2 hoodies draped over him.

8/15/04, 5:30 pm – Zach wakes Randy up just as I-90 E disappears under Boston. Randy improvises a new route which gets them hopelessly lost in the Watertown, MA, area until it magically deposits them directly in front of Terri and Eric’s house.

8/15/04, 6:00 pm – Arrival at the house of Terri, Eric, and Madeline. Introductions.

8/15/04, 6:30 pm – Zach and Randy leave to forage for food at Trader Joe’s. Options are limited, and they are forced to buy too much produce of questionable quality due to T.Joe’s clever bundling sales technique. Randy accidentally buys the raspberry flavor of Emergen-C, which never dissolves completely, much to his ire. Randy permanently crosses T.Joe off the list of proprietors whose stores he will patronize outside of duress.

8/15/04, 7:30 pm – Zach leaves Terri and Eric’s to go out drinking by himself with a hand-drawn map of the Red Line T, some vague instructions on how to find Alewife Station, and a short list of fun places to look for in Davis and Central Squares.

8/15/04, 8:00 pm – Randy falls asleep.

8/16/04, midnight – Zach returns unimpressed with his Sunday night excursion into Cambridge and Somerville, having seen more of the Boston area this evening than Randy will see all week. Randy continues sleeping restlessly.

8/16/04, 8:00 am – Randy wakes up, not at all feeling entirely recovered and healed like he had hoped.

East coast tour, part four: more New York City

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Click here for NYC architecture photos

Thursday morning I woke early, packed up, and departed Tyler’s place to move into Souris and Silvio’s, walking through the rain, sans breakfast, carrying bags, getting off at the wrong stop, being disoriented, arriving wet, hot, a little miserable, and 20 minutes later than intended. That’s the best of New York for ya. I met Wayne, friends of S&S, who turned out after some research to be a member of the buddies club that Lulu is now penetrating in San Fran, and who was the impetus for the museum day trip that we were about to go on. Zach was still back at Tyler’s, slumbering peacefully, no doubt half-consciously humping the futon with his morning wood. He spent the day skating around the city, uninterested as he was in paying for stuff, such as art, when free stuff, such as skating, was to be had, but I on the other hand wanted to spend some more time with my soon-to-be hosts who I still barely knew, so mysterious were they.