Facebook Hiatus

I promised Stephanie I'd mention her in my next entry, so there. I just did.

She claims to have sent me a Valentine, but I refuse to believe her until it gets in my mailbox. I hope it comes. =)

Honestly, this is my first Valentine's Day where I find myself not pursuing a valentine since I was in 8th grade. I'm not saying this for any particular purpose other than the observation that I think it's actually quite nice. The majority of my day was spent studying, without any internet connection, as is the tradition in the Nguyen household.

When school is in session, the internet is subject to a chaotic and varied schedule. In short, the schedule-maker (or "Father" as some call him) decides on whim when to disconnect it and reconnect it. I actually am able to understand the topological concept of homeomorphism better than I can understand daddy's whims.

So yes, although not necessarily my original plan, I spent the day alone. Valentine's Day was actually nice, knowing that it wasn't any special day at all. In fact, all holidays are human devices, and there is no significance to any particular day...

So, Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

I hope you're all lonely.


The other day, I challenged Quyen in Word Challenge. As some of you know, the WC application on Facebook allows you to duel your friends in a Mano Mano sense. However, although I had been actively participating in challenges from Quyen and to Quyen, this particular challenge was different.

For starters, this challenge did not involve the the "Challenge!" part of the application. It in fact involved the personal, original portion of the game, your personal High Score.

Let me set this up.

Quyen and I have faced each other on the Word Field (as I like to call it) many times before. And while I consider her my protege of sorts, I still refuse to show her mercy. I made that mistake one time already, when distracted by the inescapable allure of Skype conference calls. I had stopped playing around the minute mark, believing my modest score of 19,000 would be sufficient. However, to my utter dismay, Quyen was able to beat me by 2,000.

I didn't make that mistake again. She did, however, eventually beat me one more time, by 200. However, since I have won the majority of the challenges, I wanted a more competitive battlefield. So this happened:

After a particularly pathetic few scores, none of which I lost, fortunately, I told Quyen that I would challenge her once more and get 40,000 points. I called it, and I did it, eclipsing the 41K mark. She responded to the challenge accordingly, and to my utter shock, she got 39K.

This is impressive on two levels. Firstly, her previous high score ever was around 28K. Furthermore, she achieved this noteworthy score of 39K on a challenge. Not only that, 39K is well above my normal average, so on almost all the other challenges, she would have beaten me...except this one. Only Quyen can tell you the extent of her anger.

Then, I proposed a real challenge. I said to her, "Why don't we play for something?"
To which she replied, "Like what? -_-" still obviously depressed about her recent loss.
"I'm not sure," I thought aloud. "How about I have to get 50K and you have to get 35K in real mode before the end of the week?"

It was an equal challenge, I argued, for both. She had only passed the 35K mark once and I had only passed the 50K mark once. My highest score ever was 54K, so it's not easy for me.

She agreed, and we set the terms. If I lost, I had to tell her the secret to the Cereal Box Game, which, as I recall, only Loc, Bethany, Harry, Anna and I know. Oh, and probably Matt. Quyen REALLY wanted to know.

If she lost, however, meaning 1. I eclipsed 50K and she didn't get higher than 35K or 2. I got over 50K more than she got over 35K, then she would have to send me a work of poetry she wrote. She never told me she wrote any, but I assumed she did. I think I'm right.

That night, while "studying" at the library, I logged onto Facebook to get higher than 50K. While in the middle of a game, I realized how stupid this was, how I was going to fail school spending hours and hours playing this stupid game, for this stupid bet. I didn't mind losing. I just wanted to stop.

So I planned to end my Facebook addiction by giving my password to Sean. He changed it like a good friend would. And with that, my FB minutes were cut off.

However, before I logged off, I wanted to play one more game, just to see what would happen. I had already given up, in essence. I just wanted one last taste of Word Challenge before my Facebook Hiatus.



And I got 64,000.


GG.