Jason Hutchens: letter two

So many things have happened since the last time I wrote, so expect a long letter. You might want to go and make yourself a cup of tea before you start! Sitting comfortably? Well, here we go!

I last spoke to you in early January, just before I was due to start work. It's now been a month, and I must say that the work has been absolutely sensational. In case you haven't heard, I'm working at Lionhead Studios on a computer game called Black&White. If you have access to the Web, you might want to go to www.lionhead.com, where you can find out more about the game. If you don't, I'll try to give you a quick summary.

In Black&White you play a God, and you inhabit a beautiful world, complete with oceans, resplendant mountains, rivers, trees and so forth. At the beginning of the game, however, you are not a very influential God, as without belief a God has no power, and you have no one to worship you. And so it begins. You first task is to increase your power by making people believe in you, and you can do that by good or evil means (hence the name of the game). Provide starving villagers with food or strike them down with lightening, it's your choice. Once you start going down the path of good or evil, though, you'll find the environment changing to suit your temperment. Your hand will change in appearance too.

That's one thing I haven't mentioned yet; your hand. Your hand is in fact the only means by which you can control the game. You move around the world by placing your hand on the ground and pulling it toward you; it's that simple. You can pick up objects (rocks, trees, villagers, cows) and drop them again, or throw them into the sea, or whatever you like. You cast spells by waving your hand in a particular pattern. It's lots of fun!

If you're one of my grandparents and you're reading a copy of this letter which has been printed out by my brother and passed from family to family, you might like to note that I'm not talking about your real hand, but an artificial hand, which you actually control with the mouse. It's the mouse which you control with your real hand. See, Nanna, I told you computers were simple!

Once you reach a certain level of power, you can cast a special spell on any animal in the world, and turn it into your creature. The creature will learn by observing the things you do, and effectively becomes a personification of you in the world. You can reinforce good behaviour by patting it, and inhibit bad behaviour by slapping it around. The creature will fight with, or make friends with, other creatures it meets (in the multiplayer or online versions of the game). You can even teach it to dance the music you play!

My work at Lionhead is divided between writing a "challenge" mechanism for the game, giving the player a number of tasks to complete, and implementing the part of the game which will enable your creature to learn to talk based upon what you say to it.

My days generally run as follows. I catch the tube to Waterloo station, riding with D. for some of the way. Once at Waterloo, I get myself a bagel and a double espresso for brekky, and catch a train down to Guildford. The train ride lasts for about thirty minutes, giving me time to read (Tommo&Hawk and Catch-22 have been knocked off this way) or to work on the laptop which Amristar kindly lent me (hence the extra long email). Once in Guildford it's a twenty minute walk to the office if the weather's fine, or a bus ride if it isn't. The weather usually is fine, but extremely cold at the same time, with ice a common theme. I then sit at a computer and tap the keys, occasionally getting out of my chair to put liquid into my body or let liquid out of my body, until about 6:15, at which time I reverse the process (the train thing, not the liquid thing), meeting D. at Pimlico station, and walking home with her. We get home at about 8:00.

Anyway, enough of my job. Let me now tell you about all of the things D. and I have been doing since my last letter, beginning with our trip to Amsterdam. Lisa, our landlady, works in Amsterdam, and has an apartment in the heart of town, which she vacates on weekends when she returns to England to go sailing. She offered us the place, and we jumped at the chance to have free accomodation.

The problem with Amsterdam is that it is well known for two things. And, no, I'm not referring to clogs and windmills. Anyone who has watched Pulp Fiction will know what I mean---drugs and prostitution. I can tell you that it's not even worth trying to convince your work colleagues that your intentions are pure... tell them you're off to Amsterdam for the weekend and forever they'll assume you're that "sex-crazed, drug addicted Aussie".

Segue time methinks. I'm the only Australian in the office, and very few of the guys have been to Australia at all. I don't consider myself to be too ocker, and my accent is pretty subtle, but I do find myself constantly saying things which they find highly amusing. You're average Brit, for example, has no idea what the phrase "I've got to bail" means, and "same diff" is Greek to them. I find myself saying "g'day" whenever I'm introduced to someone, and I didn't think I normally said "g'day" that often. I think I'm trying to be _more_ Australian than usual, for some reason. The worst thing that could possibly happen happened just the other day. I was working with Jonty (the Brits shorten Jonathon for Jonty for some reason), and we were about to perform some test or other, when nature called and I let him know that "I've just gotta go to the dunny." "Hey everybody", yelled Jonty. "Jason's just got to go to the dunny! The dunny! He's off to the dunny!"

Anyway, back to Amsterdam. Actually getting into the country in the first place was quite tough, as poor D.'s passport apparently looks like a poorly forged document, and she was detained for quite some time by a whole regiment of Dutch airport police. We did eventually make it through, and caught a taxi to our apartment. The first thing that strikes you about Amsterdam is that it's a very pituresque city. Canals run through the city, with narrow roads on either side of them, with bridges spanning the gap between. Most people ride bicycles around, with the result that just wandering around the streets is an extremely pleasant way to spend a few hours.

Apparently the reason why bicycle riding is so prevalent in Amsterdam is due to the fact that the city introduced the concept of free bikes for all, whereby thousands of bikes are made available to the public, and the general idea is that you ride a bike from A to B where you dump it for someone else to use. The scheme backfired when people decided that _any_ bike was free for the taking, even if it happened to be securely chained up and locked. The net result is that thousands of crappy bikes are now chained and locked everywhere, and bicycle theft is an incredibly common occurrence.

Amsterdam is home of the Vincent van Gogh museum, which has some huge number of his paintings, sketches, letters and severed body parts. It's great getting a chance to see so many of his paintings. They had one of the sunflowers there. The highlight for me though was the paintings by Monet, whom I consider to be an altogether better impressionist, especially if you're talking landscapes and gardens. But I'm just a pleb, so what would I know?

Let's get to the seedy side of Amsterdam, beginning at the flower market, which sold lots of marijuana seeds and home growing kits. It's weird to see such things at flower markets, especially when the clientele consists mostly of little old ladies and tourists who haven't managed to find the drug dealers and prostitutes yet. Newsagents stock all sorts of drug-related merchandise, and pornographic postcards as well. I was sorely tempted to post some of the latter back home, but I fear that Australia Post would have launched an investigation against my parents, so I chose one of the canals instead.

Coffee shops line the streets of Amsterdam, and it is in these that you can go if you'd like to sample some of the green stuff. I won't try to convince you that we didn't actually do this... make up your own mind. Generally you can get all sorts of cakes and cookies which contain a bit of leaf, and there's the odd coffee shop which goes a step further, such as the one which sold fine boxes of chocolates laced with the drug. Actually getting a coffee is a bit more difficult, and getting a beer is impossible, as it's actually against the law for the coffee shops to sell both marijuana and beer. I guess the two mustn't mix too well...

Speaking of chocolates, we found a sensational chocolate shop which sold the most delicious nougat I've ever eaten. A box of twelve nougat squares cost about a dollar, and we bought four boxes. They didn't last nearly long enough.

One night we decided to bite the bullet and visit the red light district, as all of the tourists do. When I say "we" I refer to our group of four... Cathy and Vincent and D. and me. The first thing you notice about the red light district is that the stores which sell adult merchandise openly flaunt the fact, and display their wares in rather garish window displays. No need to dash inside to see what all the fuss is about at all. At first I thought we'd taken a wrong turning and ended up in a street of German butchers, but a closer inspection revealed that the fine sausages hanging in the window weren't meant to be eaten.

As another example of the prevalence of drugs in Amsterdam, we walked past street vendors who loudly announced what they were selling to all passers by. "Cocaine! Ecstasy! Cocaine! Ecstacy!" Quite bizarre.

Eventually we found the main drag, and were amused to see that the prostitutes actually rent out small rooms, and stand behind the front windows, doing their utmost to attract business. I don't think I've seen a crowd of men enjoying window shopping as much! Although the red light district is quite seedy, it's touristy enough to be safe and interesting, although there weren't too many women around who weren't there to make a buck.

Before this letter degenerates into a sordid tale of sleaze, allow me to segue and save us all the embarrassment. D. and I were both working the week we returned from Amsterdam, and have been ever since, so not much happened from Monday to Friday. We went out to dinner three times, visited a pub on Friday night, and watched Fantasia 2000, a Disney animation, at one of the IMAX cinemas over here. I can heartily recommend this movie; it's absolutely sensational. The basic premise is that pieces of animation are set to classical music, and it is done incredibly well. The cartoon set in New York to Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" is just fantastic. See it if you get the chance.

The following weekend saw Ram come and stay with us. Ram is a Uni chum of mine, and is doing post-doc biomedical research in Oxford. A group of us went to Viet Hoa on Saturday night for dinner (I can't keep D. away from that place; refer to my previous letter if you don't know what I'm talking about). The next day we walked around the streets of London, and returned home for afternoon tea with the gang. This involved me making mum's world-famous scones, and they went down a treat. Although I made whipped cream (and later whipped it some more, finding out about curds and whey in the process), everyone seemed to prefer clotted cream, which I'd never seen before, and which is basically of the same consistency as butter, with the exception that it's white and tastes like cream.

The following week we went to see Art, a play which is basically about how the friendship between three middle-aged men degenerates when one of them purchases an abstract painting. The play is dialogue driven; there is no fancy theatrics or sets to speak of, and it is in this that it excels. The highlight is when the weedier of the characters bursts into the room, having escaped from a night of hell at home with his fiancee, his mother and his mother-in-law to be arguing about the wedding arrangements, and delivers a monolugue which lasts for about ten minutes, during which time he takes nary a breath and slowly goes from anger to fatigue, passing through numerous other emotions on the way.

The following weekend was my birthday. Thank-you to everyone who wished me well, by the way, it was much appreciated! And a pox on those who didn't! D. got me a rocket for my birthday! In the toy stores over here they actually sell rocket kits. Mine is a metre tall, and is able to climb to an altitude of 800 feet, which is rougly 250 metres, before descending to earth on a parachute. I've got 24 engines, which are basically explosive charges, and a Star Wars electronic launching pad. Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but you'll be the first to know when I do... just keep your eyes on the international section of the West Australian!

D. and I went to a fantastic Tapas bar for dinner on the night of my birthday, and had the downstairs restaurant to ourselves for most of the meal. Tapas is the Spanish equivalent of Antipasto; we had about seven dishes ranging from sausages stewed in red wine and marinated garlic mushrooms to lamb cutlets and a seafood platter, with plenty of bread and olives, and two bottles of amontillado Sherry. After dinner we caught "Three Seasons", a Vietnamese movie featuring Harvey Kietel. D. was able to understand everything, of course, but I made do with the sub-titles, as, apart from "Hello", "Thank-you" and "I'm hungry, please feed me", my Vietnamese is abysmal. I reckon those three phrases are pretty much all I need to know, though!

On Sunday we visited the Cambden markets, where we bought a cribbage set for three people, which we still haven't played. Before the markets we made pancakes for brekky, and D. proved herself to be an expert flipper, coaxing the pancake to perform the most amazing spins, flips and twirls before landing back in the frypan. I think skillful people should be more humble, and just get down to the nitty gritty of cooking us poor unskilled layabouts our breakfast instead of flaunting their talents so unashamedly. They'd get more food cooked more quickly that way for a start. On an unrelated note, I have noticed a circular wet patch on the kitchen ceiling which I'm getting slightly suspicious about...

We returned from the markets in time to cook a roast chicken for Sunday dinner. I'd never cooked a roast before, and by the time I'd finished with the chicken it was well and truly stuffed. A bottle of fine wine came to the rescue; all food is better with a glass of wine, and we ate our roast chicken with pride. The carcass made a sensational stock for canh chua, a Vietnamese hot and sour soup, which D. promised to cook during the week, and never did.

Australia Day passed without a hiccough for me, while the rest of the gang sang Aussie songs in a pub, and persistently phoned me up to sing them at me and have unintelligible conversations, for I was at home polishing up my entry to the Loebner Contest, which I enter every year. I spent days and days polishing my entry, and the stupid contest organisers never ended up using it, for reasons unknown to me. To say I was extremely pissed off would be an understatement, and I had to vent my rage by behaving normally and not saying anything, which is my usual outlet when I'm angry or stressed.

We saw Starlight Express the next day. I nearly didn't make it to the show on time, having to run from train to tube to tube to theatre only to arrive as the doors were about to be closed. Starlight Express is an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about toy trains which a young boy is playing with, and the trains are played by people on roller skates. The set is massive, with the performers skating all over the place, several stories high at times. Think of a cross between Rollerball, Thomas the Tank Engine and Cats. Then question the sanity of Andrew Lloyd Webber. With such touching songs as "Freight is Great" how can you go wrong? Seriously, it was a great experience, and we're still singing the songs ten days later.

On the weekend the entire gang of us caught a bus to Oxford, and we spent the day looking around the various colleges there. We lunched in the very pub where C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkein and Lewis Carrol used to meet to read their stories to one another, although I daresay the atmosphere was a bit more conducive to reading books in the old days. After lunch we browsed around one of the extremely massive bookshops in Oxford before going to evensong at one of the chapels to see a choir sing, and then repairing to a lively pub where we tasted the local ales, ate lamb pies and watched Oxford students in tweed suits and enormous fake comedic breasts drink half a nip of whisky and before being violently ill in the rubbish bins outside.

D. and I visited the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square the following day, where we saw yet more art. We started off in the 1500's, and were disappointed to find that people hadn't learned to paint landscapes yet, with even full-length portraits being a rarity. We hurried to more modern hallways, and enjoyed a variety of paintings by lots of famous arty farty types. I was particularly enamoured with small, detailed paintings of towns and buildings in provincial Italy by some bloke whose name I forget.