Hiya! Happy New Year!

I have to ask myself is 2021 was a good year or a bad year. I can’t really answer that because perhaps I just gotten so used to how awful things were during 2020. In the grand scheme of things, nothing much has changed. There have been very incremental improvements but nothing I would say were particularly grand, especially in the Philippines. In fact, I made a list of wishes and dreams I had for the beginning of 2021 and none of them came true! Not a single thing! How sad is that?

*Sigh*

Well, being the lazy pessimist that I am, I am positively miffed none of the things I wanted to happen in 2021 happened but I’m just too sloth-like to really care all that much at the same time. So, rather than focus on the past, I rather make new wishes for 2022. I guess a lot of my previous wishes do carry over but I do have several I’d like to add or modify now.

Just a smidge less vitriol between people with different ways of thinking

I wasn’t a huge fan of Pokemon growing up but I did watch the first movie because everyone was watching it and I didn’t want to be left out. I don’t remember much about the story because, like I said, I wasn’t into Pokemon. However, there was one scene which did stick with me. It’s when Meowth nearly fought against another Meowth but realized, while they were different, they also were a lot alike.

I think this scene means a lot more today because it does seem a lot of us are at each others throats nowadays for sometimes the silliest of reasons. Just looking at the Internet and we can see a lot of bickering and stupid arguments on both sides. It seems anyone who is just a little bit different or diverges in our way of thinking is our mortal enemy and we should give no quarter against them.

So my wish for 2022 if we can take a page from Pokemon and Meowth and not really focus too much on what makes us different but on how we are alike. I know I did wish for this but I see it’s going to be virtually impossible to eradicate it. However, I still hope that, maybe, we can all just keep this in mind so there would be less hatefullness in the world.

Many more places opening up to full capacity

I know we’ve all been living in this topsy-turvy version of the world for a couple of years by now but I’m still not completely adjusted to it. I still find it sad we simply can’t go out to the places we want up to now because of all the restrictions that are being imposed. I will give credit to the businesses who are striving to keep things going up to now. In fact, as of this writing, things are kind of reverting and getting back to the worse scenario as the government is further restricting movement outside as we’re currently in Alert Level 3.

So, on a lark, I do have to wish things actually get back to the things were. More specifically, I wish for business and establishments to be allowed to open things up to full capacity. I can see people in the country ready for this to happen but things are just getting in the way. I’m not even asking for it to happen tomorrow or even this month because I know they can’t just jump from Alert Level 3 to everything being A-Okay. I just want it to happen sometime in 2022 because that’ll signify we’re finally close to or at normalcy already.

A trailer for Street Fighter VI

It does seem like 2022 will be a phenomenal year for fighting games. Right now, there are already 3 fighting games I’m looking forward to getting my hands on. These would be The King of Fighters XV, Project L and DNF Duel. I know I’ll be total crap at King of Fighters and Project L but I have high hopes for DNF Duel because I did try out the demo and I loved how it played. Well, actually, scratch that. I’ll probably be crap at DNF Duel as well because, even though you can execute special moves with a touch of a button, I just know pros and more dedicated gamers will rise above my skill level almost immediately. It won’t matter to me that much, though. DNF Duel still feels and controls really well.

All of these new fighting games does make me wish for actual news of my first love, though. I do want to finally see a trailer, even just a teeny teaser for what Capcom will do for Street Fighter VI.

I know Street Fighter V has basically just ended so the team behind the game are taking a breather and reassessing what worked and what didn’t. They’ll also be looking at the fighters being released and “borrowing” or “taking inspiration” from them as well. Even so, they did give us a glimpse of what the future Street Fighter VI will be like as they purportedly already revealed one of the character that’ll headline the game: Luke.

What I got from that is they already have Street Fighter VI in the works! They’ve been working behind the scenes on things like the mechanics and a partial roster so there’s a slight chance of Capcom actually having something ready in 2022 just to whet our appetite in what the future will bring.

The global chip shortage to ease up

At the start of 2021, one of my wishes was Sony makes the PlayStation 5 more widely available in the Philippines. Obviously that didn’t come true as it’s not just hard to come by in my country but all over the world. I do find it surprising Sony’s biggest competitor, Microsoft, is also having trouble distributing their Xbox Series S console to stores. While it’s easy to blame scalpers for hoarding all the new stock (and they are still partially to blame for all of this), computer parts are simply just hard to come by because of the global chip shortage which is still raging until now.

This has caused a domino effect for not only the manufacture of gaming consoles like the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series S but for everything computerized. This has made a lot of electronics like cellphones more expensive and computer components hard to come by as well.

So I’m basically revising my wish from 2021 wherein I simply wished Sony would do better in getting more PlayStation 5s to the Philippine market. Now, I’m wishing for the global chip shortage to get better. It’s been a year already and I’m betting the various chip manufacturers have come up with solutions for the shortage by now.

I finally learn how to actually cook

I’ve been going on and on about how bleak things look and how I hope things will turn for the better in 2022 and it’s kind of a downer. These wishes are basically all about how bad things are and I want to get back to some sense of normalcy. What makes them doubly depressing is how I don’t have any control over them. So, just to lighten things up and make a wish I can actually do something about, I decided my last wish for 2022 for myself is to learn how to cook.

To be perfectly frank, I do have some baking cooking skills but they’re on a very remedial level. I can fry an egg almost perfectly because I watched my brother play Metal Gear Solid V: Guns of the Patriots and I borrowed Sunny and Naomi’s technique of covering the pan which works extraordinarily well.

Unfortunately, that’s the extent of my cooking skills. I really want to upgrade my skills in the field of culinary arts to something a little more advanced. I’m not looking to make a festive feast or a gourmet meal or anything like that right now. I’m going a little more down-to-earth and just learn a few easy dishes I can prepare all by my lonesome and, at most, create my own signature dish.

At least I can do that in 2022, right?

Byee!

What are your hopes and dreams for 2022? Let me know in the comments section below!