After a year and a half, I am bringing this blog to a close.

I launched Gaming Moments in the December of 2007, in anticipation of my work with BioWare in Edmonton, and in the hopes of providing readers a glimpse into the videogame production process. It became obvious after a few months that my preoccupations were leading me elsewhere.

Reading back the blog’s archives, I can track my mental transformation as Edmonton, and a slow bubbling to the surface of my experience in China, brought my worldview into sharp focus. As a matter of fact, a more appropriate name for this blog would have been Eating Moments.

If you liked what you read here, please follow me on my newest blog, The Backpack Foodie. This is where I will chronicle my trip around the world with Helene, and the food and people we encounter.

Thank you for reading me!

I’ve been holding back this little bit of information for a while… Allow me to make it public now.

Starting in September 2009, Helene and I will leave Canada to travel around the world for a year.

This has been such a major, staggering decision for myself, that just writing it – in bold text, mind you – feels inadequate. It’s the culmination of months of anxious soul-searching, and the consequences of this decision scare me shitless. That’s a good thing, by the way: I don’t think it would be worth doing otherwise. Fear tells me it’s the right thing to do. It’s the same fear I felt, deep in my stomach, when in 2003, I flew to Shanghai to live and work there for a while. And wouldn’t you know, I’ve grown addicted to charging into the unknown.

Living abroad changes you in obvious ways quickly, and in a subtler manner over time. When I returned from Shanghai in 2006, I knew I had been changed; but only this year did I realize how profoundly. I crave the life on the road, the daily challenges of the unknown. The discoveries, and the human connection, far away from my normal life. I thought I could stave it off while I worked for BioWare, one of the best game companies in the world.

I can’t.

And so, in September, Helene and I will board a plane to Indonesia, the first step of our world tour. From there, going against my project manager instincts, we will follow our hearts and walk the road slowly wherever it might take us. I don’t know where we’ll end up… but I have a few ideas: Laos, Vietnam, India, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, maybe even Ethiopia. We’ll see when we get there.

If you feel the need to chasticize me for walking away from a great salary, for spending my savings to sustain a life of poverty and discomfort, for doing so in the midst of a worldwide recession… please don’t. I’ve heard it all before – from myself.

In February, I visited my dear friend John in Vancouver, on the spur of the moment. He had gotten in touch with a Lakota medicine man, with whom we participated in the traditional sweat lodge ceremony. As something of a lark, I went there thinking I would attempt to receive guidance from the ceremony. I was hoping, half-cynical, that I would find an answer as to whether I should make this decision.

Then deep in the lodge, sitting in total darkness, when the time came to raise my voice and put words to my demand, I surprised myself by speaking thus:

“Great Spirit, I come to you today because I have lost my way. I am about to leave the paved road to look for the path again. All I ask is guidance.”

That was my answer: I knew it all along.

I’ve known it for a long time. And now so do you.

I’m not talking of giving to charity, although I fully support this gesture. I personally give to Doctors Without Borders and the Canadian Red Cross, because I think their work is critically important in this world, and they do their work not out of religious obligation (both are secular organisations), but because they must as human beings.

But what I’m talking about is a different compulsion. I want to do Good. I want to leave this world, some day hopefully not-too-soon, and feel I’ve made a positive difference. And with each passing year, this compulsion grows in me.

This, I suspect, is years of travel sinking in. I’ve now seen a few parts of the world where people are much less fortunate than I am. More importantly, I’ve begun realizing how my own little world of comfort is constructed on the backs of people who must suffer for my peace of mind. It’s easier to ignore their pleas when you don’t visit them… But I have. And I can no longer ignore them.

You might think this yearning comes from a religious sentiment. You’d be wrong. If anything, my lack of religion is making the urgency of this desire even more pressing. You see, if there is no Divine Plan, if there is no Divine Justice, and rewards in the Afterlife… Then how can we tolerate what we do to each other? If there are no consequences for the exploitation of the poor, for the suffering of millions while the rich ones dine in peace… How can we stand it?

I would argue that the absence of any higher moral authority and justice means the need to do good is greater and more urgent than anything else.

The question is, then, how does one do Good in this world?

Does it suffice to be yourself, and make every decision according to your nature and in accordance with your sense of responsibility? Or do we not have a moral obligation to reach out and improve the world? Is there anything that matters, ultimately, besides lessening the suffering of your fellow human beings, or even, against all hope, contribute to their happiness and well-being?

I don’t know, and it nags at me. And if anyone has part of the answer, I’d love to hear them out.

Edmonton is really nice, and quite comfortable so far (granted, this is the summer and not the dark end of February.) Montreal was also familiar very quickly when Helene and I went back last year. That’s a good thing, in a sense… But I’m reading about exploring Japan or chatting with a North Korean waitress in Mandarin, and I feel like I left a part of myself in a foreign land.

I’m not saying I want to leave Edmonton right away, or that it was in any way a bad decision to come here… But it feels like I’m gathering myself, here in Western Canada. I’m gathering myself for another jump into the unknown. I don’t think it will be China (although I wouldn’t exclude the possibility), but China is, well… somewhat familiar now. I miss it, for sure, and I want to go back, but the lure I’m talking about is the pure joy and terror of being in a completely alien land again; which China isn’t anymore.

Where to next? I don’t know. I have 2-3 years to think about it. It’d be nice to go somewhere strange again.

That’s it… I’m strangesick.

Our cat, Xishi, had the toughest week of all of us, given that she spent a whole day terrified as movers took away all the furniture, then had to share my parents’ apartment with two cats. And if it weren’t enough, she had to go through a Montreal-Edmonton flight, where she spent six hours in the cargo hold, at a temperature around 9C.

So I felt pretty terrible when I picked her up, but as soon as we put down her cage in our new (temporary) appartment, she got busy exploring the place like nothing happened. I think she’s the most hardcore traveller of the three of us; she did the same thing after an exhausting trip from Shanghai to Montreal.

So anyway, Edmonton, here we are! It’s time to see what we can make of this city. I start at BioWare next Monday, and the time in-between will be dedicated to trying to make ourselves at home here.

A HUGE thanks to my buddy Chris, who welcomed me here with open arms, and had a killer recommendation for late-night pizza!

Well, here we are, Helene and I. Back in hang time.

“Hang time” refers to the moment, in many types of sports, when the athlete seems to be hanging in the air, in a perfect moment of weightlessness. The weightlessness is a lie, in a way: it’s not absence of weight, it’s merely the tipping point between kinetic energy propelling them upwards, and the pull of gravity about to reassert itself.

When Helene and I flew to Shanghai in 2003, it seemed a perfect metaphor to describe that moment of calm between the madness of leaving Montreal, and the dizzying experience awaiting us in Shanghai. And 4 years later, it strikes me: I’m back in hang time.

I’ve been gone from Ubisoft for 20 days now, basically doing nothing, and a whole lot of it. But as the days have been passing by, it slowly dawned on me that I was just about to move to Edmonton. It’s a striking reality now: in less than a week, Helene and I board a plane to Alberta. It’s real.

Tomorrow, movers come to pick up our stuff, and we will be left without a home, and without jobs, with only a few suitcases and our favorite travel companion, our cat Xishi. I’ll be spending a few days at my parents’ home with the cat, while Helene spends time with her best friend.

It will all feel so… weightless. But it’s a lie; gravity is just around the corner. And when we fall on our feet again, we’ll be standing in Edmonton.