Thoughts on Finding Paradise (PC game)

On the surface, this post is just my ramblings about an excellent computer game that I recently played, Finding Paradise, by Kan Gao. It's a sequel to an equally great To the Moon which at the time made a really big splash, and thus I've also waited a long time for this next installment.

Beyond the surface, though, this post deals about the human concept of regret through the interesting framework that Gao's games posit. Surely not a spoiler, the main plot device for both games revolves around a very scifi-ish memory technology commercialized by one Sigmund Corp and operated by the protagonist duo, company employees Dr Eva Rosalene and Dr Neil Watts. Both player avatars have the most wonderful characters ever in any video game or fictitious work. Especially Watts is one of my all-time favorites. But I digress...

Seat Buddy Profiles: Meet Heli, Venla, and Ying

Hello guys and gals! To my potentially huge audience (probably not even one), it's been a while. Since my last update, I have changed employment which has led to drastically fewer intercontinental trips and chances to have interesting discussions with seat buddies.

I'm still living in Shanghai and luckily about a month back I had an opportunity to visit Finland after what seemed like an eternity (a little over a year). It's a long time and lots of things can happen. For example, I stayed touch with Xavier from my previous post and we became badminton buddies. Unfortunately a few months back he moved away from Shanghai.

This time, however, I also met quite interesting people, on both ways.

Seat Buddy Profiles: Meet Jinzhao, aka Xavier

My luck with the Chinese seat buddies seem to continue on my way back from Finland. His business card has the name Xavier, but for all intents and purposes, he's a Chinese guy. So we call him Jinzhao (金昭) as it is his real first name.

The first impression I got from him was that he's intense. Waiting for our plane to take off, he was constantly writing stuff on his iPad Air. It was only after the plane was taking off and he had to put the tablet away that I ventured to strike a conversation with him, so as to not disturb his note-taking. At first I thought it was some kind of diary of a journey, but he said it was work-related. Who the hell writes work notes on an iPad anyway, before take-off? And I would think he's got a laptop for this kind of stuff.

Well, guess what, Jinzhao is not only an entrepreneur but a young one: he's just 27 years old, two years younger than me.

Seat Buddy Profiles: Meet Yanwen and Mingjian

This is exciting. Since the beginning of my Seat Buddy Profiles series, I've yet been able to write a profile on Chinese travelers. I've had seat buddies who are Chinese, obviously, but last time it was a middle-aged guy who was mostly concerned in sleeping throughout the flight, and before that I did have a very interesting discussion with a Chinese tour guide, but it was long before I started this project and I'd mostly forgotten what we talked about.

This time was also a bit different because I flew via Moscow, because the non-stop between Shanghai and Helsinki by Finnair was simply overbooked and thus too expensive. Yay Aeroflot for: 1) better in-flight film and entertainment selection, 2) little luxury such as slippers and eye-shades (yes, even in economy!), but nay for the lagged-behind luggage due to extreme short layover time in Moscow, which in turn was because of the first flight being delayed... Well, I could consider myself lucky that the luggage arrived the next day and didn't get lost, for example.

Anyway, you probably came here to read about Yanwen and Mingjian, and not hear about my rambles about airlines.

Seat Buddy Profiles: Meet Ari

Well, looks like after a longer hiatus, these profiles just keep on piling up. This will also be my first one on a Shanghai-bound flight from Helsinki, so switching maybe the perspective just a little bit - or not. We'll see.

First of all, a PSA: row 54, middle seats. For reasons unbeknownst to mankind, the Finnair A340s only have two seats in the middle on this row. But the real meat of the deal was the surprise extra space. There is just a little bit more distance to the row in front of you, and it makes all the difference in terms of comfort. The previous encounter I wrote about happened actually on the row behind it, and as I couldn't get any better seats this time around either (i.e. "exit seats" with additional legroom due to door positions,) I tried to experiment with some minor tweaks. Apparently, it paid off.