TOC

• The World

• My Week

• Media Diet

• Reading

• Watching

• Gaming

• Steam Deck

• Walking and Health and the Weather

• Site Updates

• Looking Forward

It is November! Time marches forward.

The World

Trump has had quite a few weeks. The Gaza ceasefire appears to be holding, albeit a bit shakily. Then he demolished the White House (part of it) made a trade deal with China, and threatens to start a war with Venezuela (probably for oil?!?) and now with Nigeria for some reason (do they also have oil?!?).

Over here, it is Undas weekend, which meant a long holiday weekend for us. Nothing new is happening on the anti-corruption front, which is sad but also unsurprising.

My Week

• My dad loves reading the morning paper, a habit he’s had all my life. Which is why I was surprised when this past week he asked our newspaper delivery guy to reduce deliveries to three times a week instead, saying he gets a lot of his news from TV and Youtube these days. We were already one of the very few households still buying newspapers on a regular basis! It’s kind of a sad indicator of the status of print journalism.
• Last weekend we had a staycation at a new hotel on the other side of the metro to celebrate a family event. It was fun and chaos having the pamangkins together and all the swimming and the food.
• When we got back home we found out I had apparently accidentally left the front gate unlocked overnight while we were away. Oops. Luckily nothing happened, as there are further locks inside and the neighborhood is good. I always have anxiety about leaving the house unattended and have implemented some security measures to let me monitor the house remotely, so this kind of boneheaded move is pretty annoying.
• Some more medical errands this past week, then the usual end-of-month stuff: bills, financials tracking and what not.
• On the blog: Wrote a new Complete Marvel Run post about Thor and also a review for BALL X PIT.

Media Diet

Reading

• Comics: Still trying to keep up with newer releases. Also read most of Invincible, will probably write about it at some point. Started my Punisher reading for the next CMR post.
• Books: No new books started yet.

Watching

• Finished: Only Murders In The Building S5.
• Ongoing: Superman The Animated Series, High Potential S2 (currently on midseason break), Ranma 1/2 S2.
• Movies: I watched The Delivery Rider (2025) and The Matrix Resurrections (2021).

Gaming

• Regular ongoing live-service games:

• Magic Arena: Omenpaths quick drafts are back. I am still doing poorly, but I’ve decided to stick with it instead of trying the new Powered Cube. I did manage to finish Mythic in constructed for the month though.

• Eternal Card Game: Doing regular grinding, chapters and achievements.

• Single-player games:

• Finished: BALLxPIT. Review linked above.

• Ongoing: Metaphor: ReFantazio. Starting to really get into it now that BALL X PIT is done.

Steam Deck

I bought a Steam Deck! I ordered just past midnight early on Friday, and was surprised when it was delivered yesterday despite the holiday weekend.

Not really an impulse buy as I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but I went from discussing it with some friends to inquiring at the store to making the online purchase in about a week, which is pretty quick for me, considering this is now the most expensive purchase I’ve made online (previous record holder was the Switch back in 2020). I was hesitant because of the price tag, but I checked my year-to-date logs and expenses have so far been much less compared to 2024 and 2023, so I figured I could splurge a bit on something for myself.

It’s kind of a weird purchase considering I don’t go out on a regular basis (for work or whatever), but I spend a lot of time like waiting in queues or accompanying someone to clinics or checkups where I have to wait a while, this gives me something better to do than just doomscrolling through my phone or reading comics on the tablet. Plus it lets me work on Steam backlog items even while away from the computer, downstairs or whatnot.

A friend asked why not a Switch 2 instead? The answer is I don’t have any games I really wanna play right now on the Switch 2, and even if they announced a new Mario game or Zelda game anytime soon, that would still mean buying a new console with a minimal library that I also have to spend additional money on. The Steam Deck on the other hand, comes with my existing Steam library (which is huge) and that I now have access to on the go. No-brainer really.

After I did the initial setup, I immediately downloaded a number of games on it and have been testing the device since last night. It’s very large, quite a bit heftier than the Nintendo Switch and heavier in hand, but is surprisingly powerful. I think I can also have Magic Arena installed (Tencent distribution agreement means I don’t have Arena on Steam), and might look into some emulators as well. I look forward to writing a more detailed review at some point.

I will admit I am a bit worried this will make me even more unproductive in terms of my other projects though!

Walking and Health and the Weather

Google Fit tells me I walked 61,142 steps over the past week (Sunday to Saturday). Not as high as the past week but still good. Especially considering how busy and exhausted I was at the start of the week. The rains have been a bit sneaky this past week and at one point I found myself stuck outdoors at a Wendy’s after a walk because I wasn’t expecting any rain. Ended up having to buy a small umbrella at a nearby 7-11 to get back home!

Site Updates

• 0 new entries on the link blog (Boo!)
• 3 new entries under the comics collection, mostly to support the new

Looking Forward

November and December look to be busy. We have some extended family members flying in for a few months, so there are a number of planned get-togethers. And then the usual medical stuff to attend to.

Hopefully the trivia team manages to attend a quiz night or two before the year ends.