Living a Death...
Hi,
Woah it's been YONKS since I wrote here. I thought I was the only one these days so I decided to start my own blog - only so I didn't clog-the-blog with my issues - but I'm glad Shez has started again on here again.
Anyways...back to the post I was going to write about.
Lately I've been playing Battlefield Vietnam - it's a First Person Shooter. Basically, you can choose to be a specific type of soldier and you go around the "battlefield" killing your enemies (depending on who you are - the Americans/South Vietnamese Army OR North Vietnamese Army (N.V.A)) for control points (spawn areas). Please bear with me - this post is not really about computer games as much as it seems to be.
So there I was playing an American soldier fighting the N.V.A. just like my daddy did when he was my age although he did it for real - and I'm just controlling bits of colour on a monitor. I was doing pretty well in the game and hadn't got killed for awhile (which is really really good). Anyways I finally made a break through to one of the control points - killing 5 enemies single handedly (hahaha), only to get picked off by a stupid sniper in the hills. Then it suddenly struck me about the realities of war - the same war which my own father was a part of. I was so wrapped up in the game - I almost thought I was there and the sudden death of my digital self made me realise just how fast you can lose your life in battle. It made me think about my dad and how lucky he was to survive all his naval patrols and about his brother, my uncle who never made it out of the jungles of Vietnam alive or in one piece - he was younger than I am now when he died trying to save his commanding officer. Sometimes I still see myself as a kid and I forget that if I was born 50 years earlier - I might have had to fight in that tragic war. Although dad does have a lot of cool stories to tell - stories that have always inspired me about the human spirit, love and what inner strength people really have when they are pushed to their limits. Who would've thought ... a computer game provoking that much thought :) hehehe...
Woah it's been YONKS since I wrote here. I thought I was the only one these days so I decided to start my own blog - only so I didn't clog-the-blog with my issues - but I'm glad Shez has started again on here again.
Anyways...back to the post I was going to write about.
Lately I've been playing Battlefield Vietnam - it's a First Person Shooter. Basically, you can choose to be a specific type of soldier and you go around the "battlefield" killing your enemies (depending on who you are - the Americans/South Vietnamese Army OR North Vietnamese Army (N.V.A)) for control points (spawn areas). Please bear with me - this post is not really about computer games as much as it seems to be.
So there I was playing an American soldier fighting the N.V.A. just like my daddy did when he was my age although he did it for real - and I'm just controlling bits of colour on a monitor. I was doing pretty well in the game and hadn't got killed for awhile (which is really really good). Anyways I finally made a break through to one of the control points - killing 5 enemies single handedly (hahaha), only to get picked off by a stupid sniper in the hills. Then it suddenly struck me about the realities of war - the same war which my own father was a part of. I was so wrapped up in the game - I almost thought I was there and the sudden death of my digital self made me realise just how fast you can lose your life in battle. It made me think about my dad and how lucky he was to survive all his naval patrols and about his brother, my uncle who never made it out of the jungles of Vietnam alive or in one piece - he was younger than I am now when he died trying to save his commanding officer. Sometimes I still see myself as a kid and I forget that if I was born 50 years earlier - I might have had to fight in that tragic war. Although dad does have a lot of cool stories to tell - stories that have always inspired me about the human spirit, love and what inner strength people really have when they are pushed to their limits. Who would've thought ... a computer game provoking that much thought :) hehehe...
