Wednesday, March 23, 2022
On March 2, I finally attended my first concert since COVID. Lmao. The waifu and I had bought tickets for the Final Fantasy 7 Remake World Orchestra, conducted by the famed Arnie Roth. That was back in late 2019. As we were expectantly waiting our turn in Toronto, we slowly got notices of cancellations and delays in different cities until we finally hit the hard lockdowns all over Canada (and the world).
I still remember the (naive) expectations that it would all blow over by April and things would be back to normal. Lol, hilarious in hindsight. Anyhoo, after 2 years and loosening restrictions, we finally attended our show! First time since childhood going into the Roy Thompson Hall, and we had decent seats.
And what a wonderful experience it was! The waifu (not Tifa) calls me an FF7 fanboy, and I'm not going to deny that charge, lol. It was my first ever Final Fantasy concert, and it's nice that it was solely for my favourite mainline game, not denigrating the other game entries and Distant Worlds concerts. But hearing the orchestra play several classic tracks in Remake style was awesome, and hearing it live is much more awesome than hearing it on a playlist.
To say I teared up would be a huge exaggeration, but I did feel emotional. I didn't have the childhood a lot of people did with FF7. My time spent "playing" it was at my neighbour's house whenever I visited back in One Park Lane, watching the older brother, Jones, play it and occasionally play a bit myself. So it was very scattered but still left a deep impression on me. After watching Advent Children in Singapore and understanding more of the lore, it also added. I only properly played FF7 in full, by myself, in 2018 after Onion and I had come back to Canada, on a PS1 emulator, so I sort of went in half blind. Aware of the general story and what went on, but deeply unaware of gameplay mechanics and other smaller, minor details. So that was a fresh experience, and experiencing it at 30 probably gave me more nuance than I would have if I had played it 20 years prior. Considering I played FF7R only 3 years after freshly finishing FF7, it was still clearer in my mind. Anyhoo, like I said, hearing the orchestra play it was amazing, and it was a great experience. I hope to attend more Distant Worlds or other FF concerts in the future with the waifu.
My friend Jimmy dropped by one of the weekends to have dinner at our place. Had Jollibee and a good conversation, plus playing Radlands until the waifu got offended by something he said, and it became awkward for the remainder of the night. Lol, not going into detail here.
Oh, Onion has started getting into 3D printing, and she just 3D printed her first box! It was for the board game Glenmore II, to store the meeples. She started watching tutorials and measuring the inserts, and we tested the first box with the 3D printer from the Toronto Public Library. It's such a great service they have. The quality of the box is pretty good and I was honestly impressed. She suggested I try it out and I just created my first 3D model on Tinkercad. It's a Magic: The Gathering deck box. I've etched the Swamp skull logo on it, but I'm looking to jazz it up a bit more. Especially in light of seeing how sturdy Onion's meeple box is. I'll see what to do. When we walked to the library to get the 3D printed box done, we also took Toshi out, who's not been out since last summer. As usual, she got plenty of "awwws" on the street. Pfft, celebrity.
Speaking of Toshi, funny thing happened last night. We were watching Downton Abbey and I had just finished rendering and uploading the recorded church services on their social media platforms, so I left my laptop and mouse next to me. She became hyper all of a sudden and jumped through the cables, pulling down the mouse and dropping the PS4 controller with a really loud bang. I instinctively went "TOSHI!" and she cowered away, knowing she was in trouble. The waifu was like "Don't worry Toshi, it's okay." I also calmed down, knowing it was just an accident. Interestingly enough, she cautiously approached us after hearing our calming voices. I scritched her cheeks to calm her down before picking her up to "punish" her, by hugging her tightly with the waifu. Then I carried her on my shoulder as extra punishment while I cleaned up and put away the laptop and stuff, just to annoy her =).
Chronicled
5:26 PM