I had recently landed back in Taitung and I was making my way back to our farm. My dad and a couple family friends were clearing the tall grass that had covered up the road leading home. I mused about the nature of aesthetics and accountability.

I with my parents in an airport terminal and my mom went to check out a game store. Inside the store were various booths where you could play games for free. The selection was reminiscent of old flash games and you could pay a small fee to have them loaded onto your phone. My mother went up to the counter to buy a game but came back looking disheartened. Apparently the cashier had called her “white blooded”, which was supposed to be some kind of pejorative for someone who was unpatriotic.

I could feel someone trying to shake me awake by adjusting my seat height. I looked up bleary eyed as I was told that my brother was going to be joining our office. He was assigned to sit next to me despite our manager being unaware of our relationship.

I had to pay cash for some tea flavored edibles but the transaction took so long that by the time I stepped out of the store it was already dark. I had a feeling that I was too tired to make it back home in one piece.

I was playing a superhero themed 4-player co-op beat’em up with my friends. Most of the enemies and the stage were in silhouette while the player characters were defined by their red, blue, green, or yellow highlights streaking behind their movements. The level design was very linear and resembled a side scroller, despite the fact that it was a 3D game. It was kind of hard to control my character as I kept overshooting where I was trying to go. I also didn’t seem to be able to consistently land any attacks as even the most basic moves seemed to be very context dependent. My friend called the game “a kind of slop” and “Food Launcher”-like, which I took to be the name of a recently popular game that kickstarted a fad.

I was playing an elemental Sorceress build in Path of Exile 2 with many different skills and summoned minions. However I wasn’t sure if all of that effort was actually worth it as orbs of many different colors and glowing spirits filled my screen.

I was playing as the Spy from Team Fortress 2 and was still getting healed despite making multiple backstabs in a row. I was wondering what it would be like to have a knife that instantly triggered invisibility after a backstab but figured it would likely be too overpowered. I saw a friend approaching the base with his girlfriend but thought it was probably too mean to go for the stab.

Someone had posted an image of a steak they were having in the Discord server when a friend pointed out that it looked like it was taken in a McDonalds they’d been to. Apparently the location did in fact used to be a McDonalds and was turned into another restaurant with minimal renovations. They even had angry reviews online commenting on this fact, calling it “a disgrace.”

It was time to go home after a long trip and our driver asked me if I wanted to join the rest of the group for some noodles. I thought it would be awkward to dip out early so I came along despite the fact that my home was on the way to the restaurant. I ordered some chilled noodles for myself before taking a seat. I got a message from a friend saying that he finally understood how people can sit and watch YouTube videos all day. It made him “feel productive” he said.

I walked backstage and announced that I planned to ruin the show by exposing something one of the performers had said in the past. The performance wasn’t scheduled to start for a few more hours. I sat down in the unlit room and turned on the computer.