I once got food poisoning in the Hong Kong airport from eating a danish with some fruit on it that must have gone bad. I was waiting in Korea to go through passport control, feeling sicker and sicker the whole time. When it was my time, I rushed through, pushed my passport at the officer…
Tag: conflict
Muse on Monday – August 10, 2026
It takes a special type of temperament to fix something broken. I suppose that’s what the best doctors and mechanics have. It can take a lot of patience and skill, no matter what is involved. There is a lot of conflict involved in how to fix something and ultimately, deciding if it’s possible and worthwhile…
Muse on Monday – May 18, 2026
Games are kind of like stories. There is a point of conflict (everyone is trying to win), a climax (the end of the game or round) and stakes (bragging rights, if nothing else, unless you’re playing for money). Some games, like Clue, have actual stories inside them, where the game is about a group of…
Muse on Monday – April 13, 2026
I think everyone should travel to a foreign country where people don’t speak your language. If nothing else, it gives you a lot of empathy when working with people who are learning your language, but it can be a great learning experience as well. However, it is undeniably a stressful situation with lots of opportunities…
Muse on Monday – March 23, 2026
If you’ve ever lain in bed trying to get to sleep, you know the battle that this can be. It’s also a vicious cycle of not being asleep, then being frustrated you’re not asleep, which wakes you up more. On the other hand, there are times when you are fighting not to fall asleep (such…
Muse on Monday – March 16, 2026
Human interaction makes up a huge part of the conflict in stories. After all, as humans, we are the most interesting subject for our stories. This conflict could come from having different values, misunderstandings from language and culture, competition for resources or lots of other reasons. It’s hard enough to negotiate with someone in good…
Strategic
Strategic Jenny and I stepped out of Giordano’s Pizza near Willis Tower, and the air shook. The top of the tower was a fireball. 9/11 flashbacks flooded me. We ran. “Who would do this?” Jenny had her phone open. “The news says it was Zimbabwe.” “Zimbabwe? Why?” Where even was Zimbabwe? “They hate our government….
Muse on Monday – December 22, 2025
A lot of interesting stuff happens on the border between two things. That’s because there is inherent tension between the stuff on one side and the stuff on the other. Borders could either be in time or space. We are coming up on a border in time between 2025 and 2026, although this is arbitrary…
Muse on Monday – December 15, 2025
Don’t you love Christmas? What, you don’t? A lot of us have a love-hate relationship with the holidays: love, because it is supposed to be a great time of celebration with family and friends; hate, because it is often filled with stress over expectations and sadness that things aren’t the way they should be. With…
Muse on Monday – December 8, 2025
For most of my life, I haven’t really known my neighbors. We might say hi in passing but nothing more. I do know the neighbors on both sides of us where we are currently and we get along well, so that’s a blessing. Bad neighbors, on the other hand, are a nightmare since there is…
The Green-Walled Treehouse 