Helsinki, I wanted to like you. I really did. You're the birthplace of Linux. And the MUD where I wasted countless hours in college lived on a computer in your borders. I tried logging back on there, and it was just like I remembered.
For anyone who plays World Of Warcraft, let me tell you about the good old days of BatMUD...
You saw me dying to a pigeon there? That's BatMUD in a nutshell. Think World of Warcraft, but no graphics and the most sadistic game designers ever. You think bossfights are tough in World of Warcraft? Has a boss ever summoned your healers back so he could kill them after the party fled in ignomious defeat? Did he wait an hour until you all had started another quest to do it? Did he shout to the whole game so that everyone could hear about how badly you were getting trounced? Not the whole zone; the whole game.
Did you ever get a 5th level power that, if misused, summoned a rampaging monster that slaughtered everyone who wandered into the room with it, including the highest level players on the server that came to save you? Of course, we were warned. "Holy Mole: Summons a small pet mole. Warning: Don't run out of mana." Of course, every time you did anything with the mole it cost you mana.
On WoW, can friendly players fumble their hits during a fight, and accidentally start a fight with you instead? Would this happen while you were walking past players 40 levels higher than you, who could accidentally kill you in a single hit?
Of course, it wasn't all salt and vinegar. Ask me about the hacks that the top players got the coders to customize their characters with. There was one monk who got his character recoded to do asphyxiation type damage with his hands. Nothing resisted asphyxiation type damage. Or there was that time that Netrunner pissed off Ceridwen, so Ceridwen found the one buggy item that forced a reincarnate when used on a corpse, and caught Netrunner coming out of the new-character room 20 times in a row. This was epic because everyone hated Netrunner, and because every time you got reincarnated, you made your character from scratch, losing 35% of your total accumulated XP for the chance. And Netrunner had probably spent a year of real world time getting his player to that point. And he deserved it. Or the PVP guild wars. Those were epic.
But that's the problem. I wanted us to get together, and let nerdy rejoicing commence. But it seems here that the same as everywhere else the nerds are tucked up in their apartments and not coming out.
And the food. Let's talk about food for a moment, Helsinki. The sell by dates on milk? Those are there for a reason. And I don't even know how you got yogurt to spoil. And the furry grapes? Yuck. I'll forgive you the piima. Hey, it said "sour milk" right there on the carton in plain Finnish.
Getting past that, Helsinki, you seem like your basic european capital. There's all the varieties of cathedrals you host, from the basic...
...to the blinged out...
,,,to the well armed.
And I don't want to dismiss the good times we had together on Soumenlinna.
But seriously, Food. When it's good, life is so much better. Try it some time, Helsinki.
On an unrelated note:
Dangers of Travel #48: Catchy Pop Music You Would Not Have Otherwise Been Exposed To
Yeah I don't know I've never had anything like this before, I guess it started as a UI and has spread to my kidneys :-( Hopefully these antibiotics will sort it out in the next few days. Ah damn you are in Helsinki and I'm in bed with a kidney infection, cruel world!! Although it doesn't sound like you're enjoying it quite as much as some of the other places...
