Travel [Mowgli]

I've been out of touch for the last few days b/c I've been up in the mountains, about six hours from where I live. I stayed with a bunch of friends at this place that's normally a subscription club med sort of thing, but that rents out its open rooms too. The place was pretty nice, but the scenery was incredible. Going to the top of the nearest mountain and back from above the hotel took about 2.5 hours, but the view up there was amazing. Hopefully I'll get some pics from a woman who was part of the group to post. Besides the amazing view, there was the usual entertainment of traveling in India. There were exciting places along the way, like Hotel Wyne 'n' Dyne, and the Highway Toddy Bar. The hotel we stayed at also had an arcade/game room, with table tennis and pool and a bunch of antique arcade games. They had a few driving games, although the only one with a working system link crashed when the right console tried to shift gears, and a side scroller that proclaimed itself to be "Act-Fancer Cybernetik Hyper Weapon". The real prize though was a battered machine. After crushing the few people who played 2d fighters that came along tho, it wasn't much fun, since many of the buttons had been slain by generations of button mashers. Speaking of button mashers, I recently came face to face with a supreme example of the noobery I learned gaming around. A friend of mine recently anounced that he was a SoulCalibur 2 god. Since we don't have a system, and I was really curious, I managed to gather the following nuggets of wisdom via conversation: "I don't bother trying to parry, it's too hard", "I don't throw, it's too risky", and, in reference to Cervantes' psycho crusher thing, "everyone falls for it". It's like there's a philosophy of trained inferiority that deliberately shuns competence and valid tactics. FARK. It made my nascent gaming soul cringe to listen to him.
I'll post more about the trip, with pics if I can get them, later. Until then...

-Mowgli