Not being a gamer myself for lack of both inclination and aptitude, I have always been fascinated by those have a lot of both.
For a few months soon after graduating from engineering school I worked for a team of game developers as a tester. Towards the end of the assignment I was elevated to the rank of a junior programmer. The lead on the project was an absolute whiz and also anal retentive.
He would go through my code with a fine toothed comb, expressing shock and disbelief at my appalling programming skills. The little fun I had as a game tester was now replaced by endless re-writes of a few hundred lines of code until "He" deemed it integration worthy. While, I learnt valuable lessons in programming style and practice, I was completely weaned off gaming.
Reading about the how computer gaming could do everything from meeting our emotional needs to spreading democracy makes me wonder if I am not missing out on something quite fabulous.
An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t
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this is rain. yeah i dont understand the fascination for gaming either, but i am curious about exactly what charms it holds for those who do.