I went to Sichuan for a 2-week trip during mid to late March 2024. Here are some notes which may be useful for other travellers.
These are based on my personal observations for time and area below and may be outdated or not applicable elsewhere.
For the Nth time since the Old Testament era, the Middle-East is caught in a tribal war again. I guess nothing much has changed in the past 3000 years except for the weapons used.
Recently, I encountered God-botherers going around Singapore recruiting new followers. I strongly feel that their Deity should fix the problems in his own homeland first, instead of trying to drag faraway pagans into the mess.
The fact that this powerful and benevolent Deity has let the tribal conflict fester for thousands of years greatly deters me from joining any religion associated with this Deity.
Obviously AI-generated Marina Square Chinese New Year promotional image with numerous errors.
You can expect majority of promo/advertising graphics this year to be AI-generated, and most companies won’t even bother to get them manually edited. Looks like professional graphic artists/editors going to be an endangered species soon.
Marina Square 商场今年的春节宣传图很明显的是AI设计的，还充满各种错误：
今年大部分宣传图应该都会是AI设计的吧，多数公司也不愿意花人力修正。专业设计师应该很快会成为濒危物种了。
This is the second time in 2023 that a limited-time escape/puzzle/mystery event was bad. My luck this year really sucks.
Summary: Rating 2/5. To draw an analogy, it’s like I paid for a buffet, but only managed to eat a few mouthfuls of food. Too many players, too much time wasted walking between stations and waiting in queues. It was a 3-hour session, but less than half the time was spent playing the game. If you really want to experience a proper murder mystery LARP or 剧本杀, just book a one-group indoor session where you spend the full 3 hours playing the game.
Continue readingMobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury was apparently based on a few elements from witch trials in the early modern period, but so far those bits of the series have been very forced/contrived. Apart from calling people involved with GUND-format tech “witches”, and a few trial/interrogation scenes, there isn’t really any theme of social hysteria or scapegoating going on.
Besides the “witch hunt” theme, a few Christian references like Cathedra (cathedral), Dominicus (Dominus/Lord), Michaelis (archangel Michael) have popped up. Again, these seem to be just theme-naming rather than actual fanatical anti-GUNDAM crusaders.
More interesting are the 2 recently-introduced Earthian Gundam pilots, Sophie and Norea. Since they appear together, it is probable that those names are a reference to Gnosticism: Sophia (wisdom) and Norea.
We’ll see if the writer/s do anything interesting with the Gnostic theme, but I’m not too hopeful on that point, as the plot twists have been very “Gundam-ish” so far.
As for Shakespeare references, his play The Tempest features Prospero, a sorcerer who lives in exile with his only child (a daughter), and commands a magical spirit named Ariel. That describes Prospera Mercury and Gundam Aerial quite well too, doesn’t it?
Mad Science Laboratory 