Behold Edinburgh part 2

Friday (or How I Gained Tons of Experience Points)

Google Maps is a great tool, particularly the street level, which, I am told, has inadvertently allowed certain persons (not mentioning any names, but his initials are JDD) to view people in their underwear through street-facing windows. While I have not personally had this dubious honor, I nevertheless have found Google Maps to be an indispensable tool in preparing me for walking around Edinburgh. After a day and a half of walking through Old Town and some of the surrounding areas, I feel exceptionally comfortable and familiar. I have been able to navigate by landmarks in a city I had never before visited: there's the Starbucks I saw online, and there's that Greyfriars Bobby pub, and there's that Pizza/Kebab place. Now, some might for some reason think it's funny that my landmarks tend to be food-related. Yes, I like food. There's nothing wrong with that. And yes, I have tried two of the three previously mentioned landmarks already.

What Google Maps doesn't show you, even at street level, is that the city was apparently built on an earthquake and designed by Escher. I'm talking about the elevation variances, so we've had to learn the hard way that High Street is actually high, that walking the royal mile is like traveling from Jericho to Jerusalem, and that some roads run underneath others, instead of intersecting them. This can create a problem when you are trying to reach a destination that is supposed to be at a particular corner, only the corner is about 150 feet above you (now where did I put that tourist's grappling hook?).

We've had quite a bit of walking to do, because today (Friday the 25th) was supposed to be our day to find a flat. Yeah. We struck out. Of the three that we were supposed to see today, one we were late to because I misjudged how long it would take to walk there, one was let yesterday to someone else, and one ended up being too expensive. For Lara, this felt like a total waste of time. No dragons were slain, their rotting carcasses burned, and their bejeweled scales harvested for trophies of her valor (we did register me, which took all of 15 minutes – if you've ever registered at a University, you now envy me, heh heh). That's the way Lara looks at things. That's the particular angle she has on goal orientation. Establish a goal, then seek and destroy. That's also why she gets so much done.

I, on the other hand, while being similarly goal oriented, look at goals differently. Yes, I want to accomplish them, but the process of accomplishing carries with it its own rewards. I approach life more like the way I play a Final Fantasy game. While my brother would rush through the game as quickly as possible and then struggle to beat the last boss because his levels were too low, I fight endlessly to gain levels. I never equip the relic or drink the potion that makes random battles happen less frequently. I often do the opposite. Why? Because it makes me stronger. I gain valuable experience points and max out levels, acquiring the mightiest spells, the coolest blitz techniques, and the most expensive or rarest weapons and armor. It is my endeavor in such games to find every last magical item and thus establish my name in the annals of RPG fame! HAHAHAHAHA!

This is the way I look at life. So today was actually rather satisfying for me, because I felt like, even though we didn't make a decision about a flat, we learned valuable things today and thereby came closer to a good decision. Also, we walked around for miles, so my athletics skill jumped like three levels.

My coin accounting skill must be increasing like crazy, too. The UK has 40,000,000 different coins! I'm trying to learn them all, but so far I know them as the heavy one, the one that looks like a penny, the big single color one, the big two color one, the heptagonal one (yes, it has seven sides), the 3.26 pence one ... okay, maybe not the last one. And the paper money isn't much help either. After my first ATM withdrawal I was okay because all the bills came out looking the same. This would simple to learn, I thought. Only the bills from the second ATM withdrawal came out looking different, but they were the same denomination – Anglican. I've gotten some change, too, that looks a little different. Lara observed that the US has different looking bills, especially recently. But at least a five always has honest Abe on it. I have had at least two, if not three, differently colored 10 pound notes with different people on them. All in all, my various skill levels are definitely increasing, and I think I may max out my character in three months.