Tag Archives: Concert

Something old, something new

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It’s really funny how I can be totally engrossed in other people’s blogs and their gaming stories and then feel like whatever I write up will never come anywhere near to that and I possibly can’t be that interesting to follow. I do have a steady amount of visitors on my blog every day though so I assume that whatever I write up must be interesting to some people atleast.

I had an awesome night last night to kick off my vacation with. I’ve recently discovered the joys of film and game themes being played live by orchestras and have had the privilege to attend Star Wars and Final Fantasy themed concerts so far. However yesterday was even better. Yesterday I went to see Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back at the Dutch Concertbuilding in Amsterdam. Basically it’s the Star Wars movie being played with the soundtrack replaced by a live orchestra and honestly I don’t think I can ever watch any movie again without a live orchestra now. The sound was simply amazing, the atmosphere was great and I have to say it was money well spent. Next year they will do Episode VI and I will definitely attend again. In the meantime I will keep an eye on the concert agenda for more movie and game related stuff that they may do that I want to attend.

In Final Fantasy XIV I’m still hammering away at leveling various jobs. My Summoner/Scholar is sitting at level 75 as of this morning after doing a few roulettes and grinding out some FATEs in Rak’tika Greatwood. I happened to stumble on the big FATE chain that eventually leads to the FATE achievement for the zone and decided to sit that one through to the end. I love how those FATE chains all tell a story one way or another and seeing as how most people are still actively doing FATEs right now I figured I would take advantage of that fact and just try to get all of the achievement ones done. So now I’m only missing the one in the Tempest which is of the same calibre as Ixion/Foxy Lady. I’ve not seen it spawn yet but I may just take a bit of time, now that I have time off, to hang around in the zone in the hopes stuff will spawn. As added bonus you can get a pet and a costume from killing the big boss FATE because it drops tokens and I’m eyeing the pet atleast. As far as the Kholusia one goes.. I managed to kill it once, earning me enough tokens to get the pet. If I want the mount however I need to go back and do it two more times.. Something I’m not really sure of if I want to do just that.

On the Gatherer/Crafter side I’ve been making some way on my Miner, Goldsmith and Alchemist. Doing the Namazu and Moogle beast tribe dailies take little to no time at all so I’m happy to just get those done. I’m leveling up my Miner with levequests though and that is going a bit slower. I hit level 73 this morning which means I’m only one level behind Botanist right now. I’m hoping I can get to 74 somewhere this weekend and then swap gear sets so I can start tackling the level 74+ levequests with a bit more success at gathering. Another reason I’m leveling up Miner and Botanist simultaneously is that apparently you need both at some point to make your way through the Crystarium hand-in quests.. So I might aswell bite the bullet and level both classes at the same time. I’ve not really touched any of my level 70 crafters to level yet (although that’s only Weaver and Carpenter for now) seeing as I want to focus on getting everything else to 70 first before submitting myself to the torture that is craftiong levequests.

Finally I’ve hit the part on my White Mage where I’m steamrolling through dungeons with even mediocre tanks. Unlike many people I know I don’t actually mind running Duty Finder groups, especially as healer. I know that I can keep people alive 99% of the time and now that I have decent gear it’s even less of an issue. Even so some people seem to just make things difficult which in turn can lead to hilarious situations.
Like me rescuing a tank out of the lasers on the last boss of the Twinning only for him to run away and get hit by them anyway. Left me speechless that one. Luckily he didn’t actually die from them but I had to powerheal him up before the next auto-attack would kill him. Keeps me on my toes, stuff like that.

For the rest of the weekend I’m going to try to get a kill on Innocence Ex and grind out some treasure maps with people from my FC. Let’s hope I get some shiny stuff!

Common Cold

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Zurvan

Seems like I captured the Zurvan fight at just the right time. I always like the intermezzos that Square Enix builds into their trial fights and Zurvan is on the more epic side of said trials. I opted to not main tank this fight though since I’m not really familiar with it plus the other tank had like 10k HP more than I have (Warriors are filthy cheaters I tell you).
The progress on leveling Paladin has been slow but steady. I hit 68 tonight which means I should be 70 on Friday night and tick it off as another class done! In the meantime I’m enjoying tanking on Paladin a lot again, post 50 the job has gotten much more interesting with many more buttons to press than previously.

Being knocked down by a cold this week I didn’t really feel like doing much of anything. However yesterday during the afternoon I attended my very first live orchestra performance in the Concert building in Amsterdam. It was an orchestra plus choir from Eastern Europe and they performed music from various movies with the final hour being dedicated to music from Star Wars alone. It was a magnificent thing to attend and while I don’t necessarily enjoy classical music in general hearing an orchestra perform songs I know was something I felt I needed to experience. Even though when I came home I had a fever flaring up I’m happy I went. This did result in me calling in sick to work today after barely sleeping last night and dealing with all the discomforts that the common cold brings. I’ve thus recovered enough to try to attend work again tomorrow, even if it’s only for a part of the day. Despite the setback of falling ill, experiencing the live orchestra has sparked my interest in music again. Perhaps during my recovery time, I’ll explore other musical pursuits, such as online piano lessons, to further enrich my appreciation for music.

Other than my cold and the concert I don’t really have much to tell right now. Being unwell kind of makes your days boring and mostly spent in bed. I’ve been in too much of a funk to really game a lot so apart from the progress on my Paladin I’ve not really touched anything else. I am planning to play a bit more Pokémon LetsGO as I start feeling better, and to change from playing FFXIV only to also playing a single player game on the side.

Exhausting Days

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The past week has been slightly crazy for me. I’ve had a lot of IRL obligations, that were all fun, and worked for four days non stop. Right now I’m looking back and wondering how the hell I managed to get through all of it. Even now I still feel tired, even though I have had today off. I haven’t done much besides lying on bed, drifting to sleep every  now and then and just feel tired and slightly miserable in general.

All in all I did have an awesome week though. Monday was mostly a blur since I slept badly due to still having some pain in my toe. I could walk, but not that fast, and I was happy to be home and go to bed super early. I don’t think I’ve been to bed at 21.00 in a very long time, but boy it did wonders for my mood on Tuesday.
Which was very necessary since on Tuesday I attended an Ellie Goulding concert, one I had been looking forward to for a few months. I went with one of my best friends, who had never been to a concert before, and we had a ton of fun. I walked a lot that day and that was very noticeable on Wednesday as I got up to get to work. Due to getting home late after the concert and my foot/toe acting up again I really had a shitty day at work. And again I went to bed very early, at 22.00 this time.

Party Hardy
Yesterday evening was almost the culmination of my week though. One of my coworkers is getting married and since she is of Turkish origin she is celebrating it Turkish style. This means that there is a “henna” evening which is women only. It’s almost like a bachelorette party, but much more official with some traditions and lots of dancing. This night was yesterday and I attended with all of my other coworkers… And it was an absolute blast. We danced, we ate good food, we saw our colleague looking beautiful in her dress and took a few really cool pictures in the process.
Tomorrow (saturday) will be the actual wedding party and I’ve been warned already that I need to prepare… Because she is expecting about a thousand guests. This is a scale that is seriously unheard of in most Dutch weddings, so I hope I can cope with all the people there. Luckily we have a table reserved for us, so atleast we will be sure we can sit down during the night. I’m really curious and very excited to be part of this all, it’s probably something you only live once in a lifetime if you’re not from that culture.

Games?
I haven’t really felt motivated to do any games at all the past week. After I’ve come home from work I either went straight to bed or was out of the house for the rest of the evening. Even on my day off today I barely touched any game, except for some games of Hearthstone to secure my January card back. And honestly I have no idea or motivation what game to play at all right now. Due to me not really logging onto Diablo for a while I’ve fallen behind on all my friends. In FFXIV I don’t really have a goal except level my Bard and Botanist and work on my Anima relic. In WoW I logged in briefly today to do some Garrison stuff and I’m half planning to do the Timewalking event over the weekend… But that’s mostly it. I’m staring at my games on Steam and the ones lying infront of my on my PS4 and just really don’t feel like playing anything at all right now. This will probably change tomorrow or Sunday when I don’t feel like I’ve walked a marathon anymore. But for now I think I’m just gonna watch some League of Legends and relax.