Robots, Armor, Vehicles, and an Unusual Form of Racism

After a month of being overseas I won’t deny that it is good to be home. The only thing that is a real downer for me is that once again I have to look for work. I am rather disappointed about this fact, but there is the opportunity for me to do a few things that I was hoping to do. Here in Canada you need a class 3 license to drive a larger truck, such as a dump-truck or anything with airbrakes. And if you want to drive things like ambulances, buses, taxis, that sort of thing you need a class 4.

I’m probably going to get both while I am on the hunt for work. It will open more doors, especially in the oil-field, which will mean a great deal more cash for me.

Being 46, my opportunities are starting to close down. It will end up getting more and more difficult for me to find good paying jobs and even though the Canadian economy is not as bad off as it is in the states, it’s still not going to be easy the older I get.

So it typically takes me about 2-6 weeks to get work and I’ll be putting my nose to the grinder tomorrow and start looking. I do have quite a few places that I would like to apply for though so it should not take long. And there is the fact that I have pretty good experience now when it comes to several different careers.

Anyhow, those of you who read my blog don’t read it for stuff like what I just typed. You read it for more important things, like the projects I’m working on.

I have not had much time to work on the Powered Armor book this week as I spent 34 hours in transit and layovers before I returned home on Thursday. So I have been pretty tired the past few days. Unlike my wife and son, I get over the jet-lag rather quickly.

This week I will continue to work on my Powered Armor book, and that will tie into the Robots and Vehicles. Yes I intend on working on all three and see what I can do about getting them finished.

I would really like to work on my next novel, but until I have an idea when ‘Sword of Kos: Dark Inheritance’ will be published, it is kind of pointless working on my next book. Although I should finish writing the last two short stories for the series I have been so diligently plugging away on for the past six or so months.

The end result is that for the time being I guess I’ll work on those three long overdue sourcebooks.

Hey at least with the Harvesting series I worked on in the Philippines will cover nearly a half-years’ worth of issues for Wisdom from the Wastelands! Although it would not surprise me in the least if I am inspired to write up more. After all I would like to do a follow-up issue on Weapon Modifications.

And maybe I’ll see about getting involved with another episode or two of D-Infinity live. I tried while I was overseas, but the internet connection was so horrid it turned out to be a bust.

Oh and I have every intention of writing up more conversions – both mutants and weapons for the site. I just needed a little time to recover from the jet-lag. Maybe I’ll get a weapon up tonight or tomorrow. I am not promising anything however.

For those of you who are wondering about the Power Armor, Robots and Vehicles, here is a brief rundown on what they will consist of.

Power Armor will cover not only that, but regular armor, shields and helmets. There will be a massive amount of accessories, as well as alternate construction material. I will be including a lot of per-generated armor as well, including many that were inspired by video games and other sources. I’m probably going to incorporate a lot of weapon systems as well.

Robots will cover ‘Hacking’ which is for all intent and purposes mental mutations for robots, as well as accessories, weapons, alternate construction materials and the like. I’m not sure if I’m going to include new robots or not, more than likely I will.

Vehicles will cover combat, driving, and construction. It will incorporate all the material that I have come up with in the previously mentioned books. I’m probably going to include a lot of accessories and the like, and it will be fairly easy to use in even the most bare-bones basic Mutant Future game.

Last week on the flight I finished ‘Alien: Sea of Sorrow’. If you don’t want to see any spoilers, skip over the rest of this paragraph. Overall it was not a bad book. The action was pretty good but one thing that has bothered me when it came this book was that the main character was a descendent of Ripley. I don’t really know if they explained how this came to be, since her daughter died of old age and had no children at the beginning of ‘Aliens’. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, watch the director’s cut of the flick. Anyhow, the aliens had a serious hate-on for him and he also turned out to be a fairly strong empathy, so he was kind of a living ‘motion detector’. It wasn’t the best book I’ve read, but it certainly beat the shit out of most of the Aliens novels that I read which were put out by Dark Horse over the years.

Time for a little cultural observation from my last days in the Philippines. And a bit of a reverse racism story as well.

Why do I call it reverse racism? Simple. White people are well known for being racists towards others. When I am in the Philippines, most people see a white person and they automatically assume that you’re rich.  Quite a few people out there will want to try and take advantage of you. They will automatically drastically increase the price of merchandise and food IF it is not clearly marked.

When we were boarding our flight from Iloilo city to Manila we were about 2/3rds of the way in line. We were watching as people carrying sometimes as many as three pieces of luggage (1 carryon and personal items) were boarding. When it came to Gary and myself, they pulled us aside and demanded that we turn over our carryon. When we asked why they said that it was because we had two pieces each. In my case a small carryon and my laptop case and same with Gary. They totally ignored Rose (my wife who is Pilipino). When we pointed out in a matter of a few seconds over a dozen who were carrying more they still insisted that we give up our carry on.

It wasn’t until I lost my temper and demanded right then and there that we speak to their supervisor about this that they relented and dropped it. Especially when we pointed out the fact that we were the only people that they were stopping and demanding this from.

You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that they had less than honorable intentions when it came to our luggage. Fuck that.

It is very strange dealing with a different form of racism when you’re in another country like this. It’s not the same as minorities deal with when they are in the states or Canada – not at all. We are exposed to people who want to get as much money as they can from us, or in the case of the airport workers, they want to outright steal from us.

And that’s pretty much it for this week.

As I do every week, I would like to invite my readers to like my personal Facebook page, as well as follow me on Twitter.

Until next week, peace!

Chris Van Deelen is the author of the Skirmisher Publishing LLC sourcebook Creatures of the Tropical Wastes sourcebook, co-author of its Wisdom from the Wastelands game supplement and contributor to the 'Sword of Kos: Hekaton' Anthology.