Vacation's end
10 August 2024My three-week vacation is almost at its end, and I’m going back to work on Monday. Of course, I do feel a bit sad about it, just like I often do on Sunday evenings, or on the final day of summer vacation when I was younger. That said, I don’t dread it that much. I do like my job, even if some projects are less fun than others, and for the last few months, I’ve been working on a very fun project. I hope I’ll get to tell you all about it later, but the world of game translation is a strange place.
And, of course, rather than being sad about my vacation being almost over, I’d prefer being happy about the memories of it – and I want to share them with you! It was a pretty great three weeks, after all.
I kicked my vacation off by heading for Gothenburg to meet a few friends. Ever since 2022, I’ve visited Gothenburg for a few days every summer, and I see no reason to stop doing it. It’s a lovely city, and if I had to move from Linköping, I’d probably choose Gothenburg.
(The weather was great that day, and I just think the buildings here look neat.)
It was a lovely weekend! We had lots of fun together, ate some really nice food, played some fun board games and all in all, we had a great time. I also bought myself a few books I’ve been curious about reading (Kallocain, Snow Crash and Final Fantasy XIV: Eorzea Academy) and some nice licorice at a specialty shop. Looking back at it, I should probably have bought more, because I found myself absolutely devouring one of the licorices I bought – and that was the one I was expecting to like the least! I also wrote a review of Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail at my hotel and at a nice café at near Gothenburg’s central station. I really like sitting down at cafés and writing, so maybe I should do that more often.
When I got back to Linköping, I planned to have a week of doing absolutely nothing. I had been busy with stuff pretty much every weekend since the beginning of June, and I thought I’d spend some time relaxing at home. However, like every time I’ve thought that over the last few months, things quickly started happening. A friend asked me if I wanted to go to the art exhibit Van Gogh Alive, which is currently being displayed in Linköping, and I thought that sounded interesting. I don’t go to a lot of art exhibits, but I usually enjoy it when I do, so that’s also something I should do more often.
(As part of the exhibition, van Gogh’s “Bedroom in Arles” had been recreated as a physical space you could step into. I thought that was cool.)
(I’ve kept thinking about this quote ever since. It’s tragic, given how underappreciated van Gogh was during his life and how his works didn’t sell well until after his tragic death – but I also find it heartwarming and inspiring now that he’s recognized as one of the greatest painters of all time.)
The exhibit, pictured above, was rather interesting. You basically walked into a big room full of screens that various van Gogh paintings were projected, and it was basically like watching an art film. Sometimes, the paintings were projected as they were, but sometimes, they were given life through animation, and as you looked at them, they also played music and released various scents in the room to make it a “multi-sensory experience”. It was a pretty nice experience, even if I thought the price was a little too steep. Nonetheless, I enjoyed it!
Every summer, the nerd convention NärCon is hosted in Linköping, pretty close to where I live. At first, I wasn’t planning to go. I’ve been there a few times before, and while it was fun, I thought those times were enough. But then, two things happened.
The first one was that an acquaintance I’ve known over Discord for a few years, but never met in real life, was planning to attend, so I thought “It could be fun to meet him, so maybe I’ll swing by”, so I decided to check NärCon’s schedule to see what other events were taking place at the convention, to help me choose which day to go. As I scrolled through the schedule, I read the words “Q&A: Erika Harlacher”, and then I knew I had to go.
For those of you who don’t know, Erika Harlacher is a voice actress who’s played many roles in anime dubs and video games – Ann Takamaki in Persona 5, Kaede Akamatsu and Kyoko Kirigiri in the Danganronpa series, Aiba in AI: The Somnium Files and Raging Bull in Ys IX: Monstrum Nox, just to name a few. She’s voiced many characters I really like, and I thought it could be fun to meet her. And it was!
(I always look a bit awkward when posing for pictures, and I never know what I should do, so when I saw her throw up a peace sign, I did too. Not sure if that made it less awkward.)
She was incredibly nice and loads of fun to talk to, and she had lots of fun stories from her career. All in all, it was a great experience, and it was wonderful to meet the woman who brought a few of my absolute favorite characters to life. Good thing I didn’t just go “I’m not going to NärCon this year” as I first planned. I’d definitely have regretted it, so there’s a good lesson in doing research before you decide on something. You never know what you might miss!
(Persona 5 is one of my favorite games of all time, and Ann Takamaki, codename Panther, is my favorite character in it. She’s very cool, very kind, very funny and generally great. I just had to get myself a signed print.)
(I thought these papercraft figures I walked past during NärCon were really cool! It must take some serious skill to make all of this out of paper, and he had made many more than just these!)
After this, I don’t have a lot of pictures to show from the rest of my vacation, but I had a great time nonetheless. I did get to spend some time doing nothing special, during which I caught up on some games I had been wanting to play and podcasts I had been wanting to listen to, hung out with some friends and other fairly “normal” stuff. That was great in its own way, of course.
I also visited my parents for a few days, and that was very nice too. I had coffee with some of my parents’ friends, celebrated my 27th birthday with some really nice food at a nice restaurant, met my grandparents – and spent a lot of time building this website! It’s probably never going to be “finished”, and while writing this blog post, I’ve disccovered several things that could be improved, but… well, one thing at a time.
Of course, these things aren’t everything I did, so here’s a few more:
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I played lots of good games: I finished the wonderful The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky Second Chapter, which is a very well-written JRPG with lovable characters and great music, and some really frustrating bosses. I also beat a true gaming classic, namely Metal Gear Solid, a game that had aged surprisingly well and holds up pretty well even today. It definitely deserves all the praise it’s gotten. It’s full of iconic moments and characters, the gameplay and level design is pretty good (though the controls are a bit clunky by today’s standards) and had I been a teenager when it first came out, I’d have thought it was the coolest game ever. I also played through the incredibly silly but surprisingly good Goat Simulator 3, which was a gift from a friend. I reached level 100 with my White Mage in Final Fantasy XIV, which was a nice way to catch up on podcasts, and I’ll do the same with my Paladin. A friend and I also played a few rounds of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and I keep forgetting how much fun it is when playing with other people. I’ve played a bunch of other games too, but these are the highlights.
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I watched a bunch of stuff: I don’t watch a lot of movies or television in general – gaming, various hobby projects and reading take up a lot of my free time. While visiting my parents, we watched the first 45 minutes or so of Citizen Kane, and while I thought it was interesting (even if I don’t quite understand why it’s considered the greatest movie ever, but maybe I’ll do so when I’ve finished it), my parents didn’t like it, and so we didn’t finish it. I’ll just have to watch it on my own later. We watched a few episodes of Midsomer Murders, though, and while I’ve heard that series mentioned here and there pretty much all my life, I hadn’t actually seen anything from it until now. It was a bit darker than I had expected (murder isn’t exactly a light-hearted topic, admittedly, but some murder mysteries are lighter than others), and a fun watch. When I got back to Linköping, a friend and I rewatched Dr. Strangelove, which is an absolutely brilliant movie and a true classic. If you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend it.
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I got to work on improving my apartment: I moved into this apartment about three and a half years ago (time flies, huh?) and while I like it, there are some areas that can definitely be improved, such as putting up some pictures I’ve had laying around and making various improvements in my bathroom. For some reason, I hadn’t gotten around to it until now, but better late than never. I’ll go more into detail about this in future blog posts.
All in all, it was a great vacation, and it’s not quite over yet. I’ve got plans for tomorrow, but I’m not sure what I’ll do for the rest of the day. The rain just cleared up, so perhaps I’ll take a walk and enjoy the nice weather, and then perhaps keep leveling my Paladin in Final Fantasy XIV, or get to work on building the Gundam model kit I bought at NärCon. I guess I’ll find out soon.
And of course, even though my vacation ends soon, there are still many fun things coming up, and perhaps I’ll share a few of them here once the time comes.