People and places and fun things

So, its been a while since I've made a post. Not many people read this I am sure - I think my sister does but she is probably the only one. I decided to post tonight after having spent the entire night not playing DAOC (because Mythic screwed up something and the servers were down) but talking to my French Canadian buddies - here after referred to as simply French. I can't just say Canadian because people with think they are English and they aren't, and there IS a difference between the two.

Web cams are a wonderful thing. I think when people think about web cams they think sex and stuff, unless you are like a mom/dad or girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife/family member of someone in military then yea web cam is something different. Well I use a web cam like they would; clean, innocent, putting a face to the person kinda fun. How is this related to the rest of the blog.. well hold your horses you will find out. Not like its really exciting or anything but I wanted to put it down in writing because its fun for me.

First person I used web cam with was Max -



He's a dear sweet guy and hes an incredibly smart man with an amazing sense of humor in both his own language and mine. He has two small children, a job with a telephone company and a serious gaming addiction! We have been communicating regularly for over 6 months. LOL the only time I don't have an msn message from him waiting to be read is when we are both sound asleep - and we spend a fair amount of time using web cam - he is fairly shy about it, I never ask, he always initiates it and I let him do that because of his shy nature. When you begin to see the people on the other side of the camera a whole new world opens up - you become somewhat involved with their life, because all of the sudden it becomes visible. The pictures of their children on the wall behind them, their favorite drawing on the table kind of behind them and even just the color of their furniture starts to just blend with this person who you've been chatting to for sometime.. I ask to see the picture a bit closer, they get it off the wall and show it to me - then I get to know the story behind it. All of this started pretty much with Max.

I have other friends besides him though and tonight I got an insight into another persons life. Stephane was first captured on web cam this weekend while he was visiting Max. Both of these guys had told me what they were up to this weekend and when and all the details - which of course involved 24 hour gaming with the occasional break to fix a network issue - which they never did get resolved because of the gaming part ;)



Those two were just clowns on the web cam - they just left the thing running and went on thier business. I had it open on my secondary machine so I would look over every once in a while to see what was happening. This went on for a few nights and then Steph went home.
Tonight, like I said, DAOC was down -so Steph sent out the invite for web cam and I accepted and turned mine on - Oh yea I look awesome with my messy hair etc but these guys don't seem to care - another reason why I simply adore them all. I got a small look at Steph's life within his house. His kitty - puepue - named because thats the noise he makes, was hamming it up on Stephs desk while he was trying to type lol then runs off making all sorts of wierd noises and crashing onto the furniture much to my delight! That man adores that cat, it was so sweet to watch him interact with that animal. Steph is 6 foot 1 and weighs a lot. He is a big man with this little cat all curled up in his arms! Made me just smile :)
I come to find out this guy has served some 22 years in the Canadian military - because I see a picture of a person in uniform with flags behind him - Oh that was a fun and interesting conversation. He was a medic, loved that part of his life.. lived that life until this past December! What does he do now? he carves tombstones. .What an interesting career change huh? He works with his dad who is training him to take over the buisness. He told me he had to go to bed early because he has to drive a lot tommorow; he makes frequent trips between Ontario and Quebec City.
He showed me his medals, his hat, a close up of that picture - he explained what all the medals were and told me a lot about what he did and why he left. I am really fond of this picture:



These are friendships that will last a lifetime - and will be real life friendships. I have singled out these two fine men because they are both incredibly special to me because of who they are inside. You just never know who you are going to meet on the internet. It really isn't a scary place and there really are REAL people behind the words - I hope everyone that may happen across this page and reads as far as this realizes that fact. And never forget - for all the lousy people in the world there are the same amount of good decent folk, they just don't stand out as well. Sadly the good people don't get the attention the deserve.

Soon, I will meet Max and Stephane in real life. This July will have ONE good memory in it.

Fun French stuff :)
Current mood: content

So y'all know me. I play Daoc. A LOT. duh. Now I've been playing this freaking game since it came out and boy have I met a lot of folks. The good, the bad and the just plain NASTY. Now since the world appears to be full of so much negativity I thought I'd throw this positive light into at least, the gaming world. I went back to my home server, oh not to to long ago. I didn't know anyone really. Dragon raids were the IN thing. - for those NON geeks - a dragon raid is where you slay (oh listen to my language) a BIG UGLY GONNA STOMP ON YOUR HEAD monster. A dragon. Its a beast and it has good loot. Yeah.

Now, since this creature is the fiercest in the land (oh lord help me, I've lost my nut) it takes a great many people to kill. like 16-24 to be comfortable (are the men in white coats here yet?), so anyway you get to meet all these other people out here that you might not get to meet anywhere else, and thats what happened to me. Of course, as is typical for me, I didn't just meet english speaking people.. I met french speaking people. It turns out though, that these french Canadian folks turned out to be exactly the right kind of people I wanted to be playing with at this point in my life. Kind, considerate (ok, the men in white coats can go away now that I'm not talking about fire breathing mythical creatures anymore) and helpful folk.
So we befriended each other and off I go to join up with them and thier guild on a couple of my toons. Now here is where I guess the average English speaking not used to foreigners or foreign languages or different cultures or any of that kinda stuff, might actually think I have lost my mind. But alas, I haven't, I assure you. I not only am the only "English" in the guild, I have the privledge of listening in on thier vent conversations (Another non geek note- ventrillo is a voice communication software. ever so useful). Now of course, being that they are all French with varying degrees of English abilities, this proved to be rather fun and interesting and to a point, frustrating for me. So it's been about a week of non stop French vent and French guild chat. I didn't know a bloody word of French. oh well maybe I knew two or three but certainly not enough to string a sentence together LOL.

So anyway after this week (or week and a half maybe?) I've reached a conclusion - This is pretty freaking cool.
Not only was I accepted without question to this tight knit group - they have also taken me in and are teaching me how to communicate with them. Of course they can't do this if I was unwilling, so it worked out well. I can now understand a lot of typed French with some help - vent is still proving an issue because omg they speak fast! And of course, I am teaching them English - which they all happy about. Isn't that amazing how that works out?

I guess the point of this rambling on is that an open mind is a wonderful thing. It is just simply amazing what you can learn if you just let yourself go and be a part of it. If you just sit there and listen and ask you can learn everything in the world.

A shout out to my new friends in that guild.. even though only one is on myspace - Nadia, Bruno, Max, Marc and Matt and the others that I can't remember their names yet. Thanks for this really unique opportunity to explore your world. /Salute.

There are good people in this world.. sometimes you find them, and sometimes they find you. Life is good.