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My story of The Legend of Zelda.

So this is a topic inspired by a recent event where I found myself crying at something that triggered some very deep emotions. To be honest I never realized how important this was to me until I recently had this surge of feelings wash over me. It was in fact the 25th year Anniversary of the Legend of Zelda game universe last year, 2011. And if you think about it, I'm only a year older than that game franchise, so that thing has quite literally been with me my entire life.

Watching this right here still makes me tear up even today.

First off though, I would like to avoid anyone thinking "awwww" or "loser fishing for sympathy" because quite honestly, I accept the way things worked out and even if it wasn't necessarily an overly happy childhood, as a result it is what has made me the person I am today, as a good example we have the fact that all those movies and all that tv has made me get a pretty near perfect English. Most people think it's because I am English, but I lived in Norway all my life growing up so yeah. Also my parents always spoke Norwegian to me.

Anyways, so I was a relatively unpopular guy growing up, I didn't have many friends, I was bullied in school, and the highlight of my day was actually coming home from school, sitting down watching tv shows, movies and playing videogames on our Nintendo. At this point we only had the original Mario, eventually super mario and a few other games. So most of my days were spent watching tv/movies/playing nintendo.

You get the picture.
Skip forward a few years here and I had gotten quite comfortable in my "miserable" existence.
I had a good life outside of school. I had a few friends I visited ever so often, mostly to play games with because we didn't have that much money growing up so we couldn't afford many new games, which ties in to the next part of my story.

So my mother at some point eventually buckled under the pressure of us kids harassing her for a Nintendo 64. We were tasked with finding a cheap one, used. And we being extremely motivated did indeed find a local girl that was selling her N64 plus one game, Yoshi, My sister especially loved this. She played for many many hours. Now keep in mind this was at the time the only game we had on the N64. Eventually we managed to harass our mother into buying a few more games for the system. My mother, brother and sister went to the shopping mall without me and came home with 007 Goldeneye and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (OOT).

I hadn't ever heard of Zelda before so I kindoff got pissed at the fact that they didn't get the game we had previously agreed on. Honestly I can't even remember what game that was now. Regardless, I thought 007 Goldeneye was AWESOME. I mean you were an AGENT and you had all kinds of awesome GUNS and Gadgets like the laser watch-thingy! I played it for many, many, many hours and completed the campaign a whole bunch of times. I played so much multiplayer with my brother and friends that they all eventually got tired of me beating them all the time.

Keep in mind that all this is what made me happy, beating other people in 007 Goldeneye was a very good feeling for me. At this time I didn't really have much of anything, if anything that made me feel good about myself except this, right? I went to school, came home and just sat in playing games. I really didn't have much of a life outside of the pixels.

So as the story goes, I eventually started playing OOT progressively more and more, I remember thinking it was a cool fun game, but at this point I hadn't even finished the Deku Tree (first dungeon). I remember being stuck at one point in the game, where at the bottom of said dungeon there was a huge cobweb covering a hole in the ground down the center of the tree which you couldn't get through. But at the top of the tree there were these jumping platforms, type of diving boards. So eventually I figured out that if you took a running jump off of one of these platforms you would fall down on to the cobwebs and break it, unlocking the downstairs area of the dungeon.

As I fell down and fell into a puddle of water I found an entire new area, and in this place there wasn't much of anything. There was a door covered in cobwebs that I quite honestly must have spent well over a week trying to figure out how to get past. I slashed it with a sword from every angle, I rolled into it, I smacked this wooden stick I had at it, threw deku nuts and shot it with a slingshot, nothing worked at freaking all. I got frustrated and gave up. So a few days later I was at a store, I remember specifically it was this video-rent store that my friends family ran and they had these huge collections of videogame magazines, all glossy and fancy, cost a freaking fortune for poor little me, and you know on the top row you had these fancy glossy magazines with interesting stuff on the cover with these nice big ..letters. If you know what I mean ;)

Anyways, I took a look at these gaming magazines and saw that one of them had a The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time Strategy guide. I almost jizzed in my pants as I saw that but then immediately got super sad because I had no money to get it. Anyways, I picked it up, and remember this was all covered in this plastic so I couldn't open it. But I picked it up, and looked on the back, and you know what I saw?
I saw Link (the main character in the Zelda games) holding one of those wooden sticks with flames at the tip of it. And then it dawned on me, how the freaking hell could I have been so stupid? There was a brazier/torch thingy in that room on the other platform!

So I immediately ran home, got out my Deku Stick and put the tip of it to the flame.
It caught fire. I was ecstatic!
I jumped across the little platforms and climbed on to the one with the cobwebbed door, put the fiery end of the stick to the cobwebs and watched the flames engulf that horrible cobweb I had been struggling with for like 10 freaking days! Now I had never before played a Zelda game, and I can imagine since this was the first 3D Zelda game I can imagine I'm not the only one not used to thinking in this way. But after that single revelation I pretty much finished the entire game singlehandedly. I just needed to learn how to think and what to look for.

But I'm skipping ahead here.

So I finished up the Deku Tree (first dungeon) got the first magical stone thingy.
I left the first area and came in to a hallway type of thing.
Out of nowhere an Owl started taking to me, sitting just on the edge of this next area.
Man, that freaking Owl. NO I do not want to hear all that again. Freaking Owl.
If you don't get that inside gag, try looking it up if you're interested.

So, I finished up talking to that owl after failing like, 3 times in a row and getting slightly annoyed. I walked forward and the camera panned up and gave me a view of the entire Hyrule Field. It played the Hyrule Field theme epically loud and I just sat there gaping. I swear. I could feel my jaw hitting the floor in pure awe. This was unlike anything I had ever even dreamed of before. This game was so massively huge. I was guided to the Map Screen and I could see how huge this world really was.
I hadn't looked in my inventory status screen much before now but there I could clearly see that I had one stone out of the three I needed. I could also see that I would eventually have to collect a whole freaking ton of these Medallion thingies that I would get one from each dungeon. There were 6 of them, in addition to the three stones. I also saw there were three different types of Tunics (clothes), shields, gloves, accessories out the wazoo and other cool items. This game was HUGE. each single item had at least 4 different types of uses.

This game had such a huge amount of items, secrets, people to talk to, quests to do and a seemingly endless world to explore.
I mean, I dreamed of Zelda. I spent hours looking at a specific puzzle trying to figure out how to open up that damned door. I spent hours just looking around that room, trying out any combination of items on pretty much everything that looked like it was of importance.
I would sometimes even spend days at school just thinking out ways to try to solve certain puzzles. I would come up with a couple different things and tactics that I wanted to try once I got home and I would hurry home after school and try out those new ideas I had.
What I'm trying to say here is that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is one of the most important parts of my entire growing up. I really spent about 2-3 years playing that game. Back to back over and over and I would still find secrets I had missed the first times.

I'm just trying to illustrate how important this game was to me.

This videogame was my entire motivation for getting up in the morning for a long period of my life.

One of my greatest wishes in life is to go see PLAY! A Videogame Symphony perform the Legend of Zelda theme live. I would not be able to contain my emotions at such a time.

My year, 2011

2011 has been a year of many ups and downs.
As you can see in my overview down below I've had very slow periods during which all I did was work and general life-stuff. And there have been periods during which I really had lots of fun.


- January -

- February -

- March -

- April -
Got single.
Ended my current job.
Started drinking alcohol.
Went to Sensation White - Oslo.

- May -
Started to hang out with the awesome people of "Fergemanns-gjengen"
Shaved my head completely for the first time.
Sister got married.

- June -
Started my blog.
Started uploading YouTube videos.
Had a fantastic summer with lots of bathing late at night and hanging with friends.

- July -
Awesome Roadtrip and Air Festival in Sundsvall - Sweeden.
The 2011 Norway Attacks - Utøya

- August -

- September -

- October -
Started actively using Twitter.

- November -
Met the girls of "Honninghuset."

- December -

Project Beardlog / Prosjekt Skjegglogg.

So in the past I've always been telling people that my facial hair growth is pretty fast. And I decided that once and for all that I wanted to document this.
I hate having to do a clean shave, but I decided that if I did it a week before Christmas I was certain it would have grown back out by then.

So here it is, a visual log over my beard growth over the course of 7 days.
Not counting the day I do a complete clean shave. It can't exactly have grown much in those minutes from the shave to the pictures.

So that is one week from complete shave until a full beard again.

Also, all the pictures were taken around the same time each day (18:00ish)

"Do yourself a favor, don't fall for me."

I pride myself in my ability to make others feel good about themselves.
Sometimes, unfortunately, it seems some miss interpret my well meaning friendly gestures as something more, and start getting feelings for me. Unfounded feelings.
This is why I have a phrase I quite often say when ever I get to know someone new, and that is "Do yourself a favor, don't fall for me." This is something I've been saying, and meaning for many years now.

Now some might read this and think "man this guy is a douchebag for believing everyone falls for him." Well, I can quite literally off the top of my head mention 14 seperate cases over the past 6 years where this exact thing has happened, so my saying this is quite well founded.

Regardless, when ever this happens, most of the time it ends up with someone getting hurt because I quite honestly don't feel the same way as they apparently feel for me.
This again makes me feel bad because I have to say let these people know that I don't feel the same way, and that in turn hurts their feelings. And I hate having to hurt someones feelings.

I can't say I don't enjoy it. I mean I enjoy the feeling of having someone else feel good about themselves because of something I say/do. This is for instance why I love giving gifts that are special and bring up memories that me and that person have in common. Something personal.

Is this selfish behaviour, I am starting to wonder?
It's definitely not selfless behaviour. I do gain something from it, right, so does that mean it's selfish of me to give compliments and generally be nice to someone?

It's not like I don't warn them.
It's often one of the first things I say to pretty much anyone.
Then again, perhaps me saying "do yourself a favor and don't fall for me" is the exact reason why they do? Some kind of bizzare reverse psychology. I don't know. I really have no idea.

Sometimes, though, I do get to know these people more intimately and I sometimes develope feelings for them as well. But is this because of the returned well meaning friendly gestures or are these feelings truly founded in something more?

I wish I knew where the line is supposed to be drawn.
Not out of the desire to avoid stepping over it accidentaly.
But because I in certain cases wish I could do it, just to see their reactions when they knew I had stepped over the line. To me that would be a more clearly defined indication of whether or not the feelings are well founded or if they are fleeting.

One of the biggest issues is the fact that I'm actually not that nice of a person once you get to know me, and the fact is that most of the time they fall for the "Idea" of Alex rather than the actual person Alex.
I try to tell them this but, that rarely really sticks. Bah.

Just one of those days..

I came home from work around 04:00 last night. I put on an episode of Stargate Universe (S01E03) and watched that while winding down from a long, tiresome day at work. One of the last segments of that episode contained a song which I looked up and found, I listened to it a few times as I was falling asleep. 06:00ish.

I woke up around 12:00 today, and the first thing I did after the obligatory social media sites check was to listen to that song again, which kind of set the mood for the rest of the day.

After having spent a few hours just browsing the internet listening to that song I expanded and found a few more songs of the same artist and I ported them over to my phone. Then, music in my ears, I went out for a long walk in the windy, autumn weather just being a hairs width from breaking into tears as I was walking, looking up at the clouded sky, at the crows soaring above, finding profoundness in almost anything I saw.

I walked to my mother's gallery where I sat for 30 minutes talking to her and a friend of hers. I just want to say that I love my mother so much, even though she'll never read this. Cowardice.
After spending some time there, she was closing up the gallery and I headed back home. I spent some time taking the long route back before I went by a shop and bought some stuff for dinner.

The time is now around 16:00

At home I walk into the kitchen, music still in my ears, turn on the lights and the light bulb blows out.
Typical. So I light up a whole lot of candles and place around the kitchen.
I continue to cook up a nice dinner, then I move the candles over to my room and set up a couple episodes of SG:U. I eat, I watch them. This is the first moment of the day I wasn't listening to that music.

The episodes play.
I get a few texts roll in, I talk to a few people and someone commented that I seemed quiet today.
I answered by saying "it's just one of those days". That show is truly beautiful by the way.

The episodes end.
I turn the music back on.
Check Facebook again. Answer a few YouTube comments. respond to texts and Facebook chat.

The time is now about 19:00.
I lay down in bed, music playing, surrounded by candles and I just stay there, listening, thinking, watching as the candles flicker out one by one.

I post on Facebook using my phone that it's "one of those days where I just really need a hug".
Shortly after I get lots of comments, Facebook chatter, text messages and steam PM's letting me know that they're there for me, giving me hugs.
And for the first time today, I smiled.. and cried.

Just one of those days..

I sometimes wish I was the kind of person that took advantage of situations.

I sometimes wish I was the kind of person that took advantage of situations.
A lot of situations would be simpler and more straightforward if I was.
I would possibly have made quicker moves with a potential certain someone if I was, but I just hope people are able to see me for the fact that I don't do that kind of stuff, and hopefully they won't give up on me because I'm slow, and they assume I'm not interested because I haven't made any moves.

Let me explain. Lately I've been getting it more and more proven to me that I am in fact an "eligible bachelor", something I have a hard time believing myself.
But the facts speak, I say without going too much further into specifics.

So recently I ended up at a party where there were a few girls, and a great deal of them all seemed to be rather interested in me, something I'm absolutely not used to for one, believe it or not.

So anyways, I ended up at this party, and got attention from pretty much all of them. This might feel like bragging, but I'm making a point here.
I know for a fact that I could have taken any one of those girls with me home that night, but I didn't.

I don't like to toot my own horn or lay it on thick about how bad my life has been, because all things considering, I don't feel it has. Despite the fact that I have actually been through a lot of crap growing up. More than even my own family knows about.
But I must be allowed to make a strong point out of what kind of effect that life has had on me.
It has made me a humble man. an example is the fact that I don't like to take home girls that have been drinking because I feel it's taking advantage and possibly having them do things they will regret later. So I just don't do it, never did, never will. Even if you're all thinking "oh but Alex, you have full control over your actions even if you've been drinking". It doesn't change the fact that I feel it's bad. Oh and trust me, I work at a bar, and I know that you have a greatly reduced control during inebriation.

I find it very funny how now that I'm actually getting some attention from the female form everybody starts assuming I'm the kind of guy that brings home girls every weekend. If only they knew that I only recently started drinking and going out to parties, and that I had approximately zero self-esteem up until a short few years ago.

I'm just saying that even with this new-found self esteem I'm still that shy guy I used to be back in the day, and all my crap during the years has only gone to make me a more humble person. I just wish people would see that before they automatically brand me an asshole for getting attention from other women.
Even if I could fork anyone, I would still not do it because I just felt like getting my DW. Especially not if I have a good eye for someone else. Even if I knew that would probably never happen either, I would just not do anything to jeopardize those chances.