I think I would consider this month an unintentional rest month, due to a combination of factors.

Path of Exile 1 3.27.0 update

I’m not sure how many people here have played an ARPG like Path of Exile, the closest comparison would be Diablo and Last Epoch.

Basically, there is a new season that was released on the 1st of November. With the release of a new season, my seasonal characters are not eligible to play in the new season, so I would have to grind again from the beginning (but that is part of the fun for me).

But honestly the league (“season”) ended up being a boring one, with the QoL improvements being the one that hard carried player retention. Even then, the numbers are absolutely horrendous. You can check the player count here. The current league’s keyword is “Keepers”.

I guess thanks to this update being a boring one, PoE1 won’t be on my mind for next month.

My longest acid reflux episode

I think around the 8th of November my stomach started to sting. This is different from my previous acid reflux episodes, because usually those burn my esophagus instead of being a huge discomfort on my abdomen. I ended up going to a general practitioner on the 11th (when it was a weekday again) and got prescribed PPI inhibitors.

It was so bad that I couldn’t do anything but lay in bed while in fetal position. I can’t do anything else because the discomfort on my abdomen was too much to deal with. I also would wake up earlier than usual because of the pain.

Honestly this one was my fault, between eating recklessly (consuming spicy sauces and overeating), eating late, burnout from forcing myself to be a productive individual outside of working hours, and finally stress from ongoing personal problems, it’s no wonder I ended up in this predicament.

I have been feeling a lot better recently, so starting December I will resume exercising & improving myself again.

maimai international version Xaleid◆scopiX release

maimai released a set of boss songs locked behind a game mode called KALEIDXSCOPE. It is similar to maimai FiNALE’s PANDORA BOXX. The final boss song of KALEIDXSCOPE was announced recently, on the 13th of November. The unlock conditions were too strict, but it will be more lenient over time.

I decided that at the end of KALEIDXSCOPE that I would retire from maimai. In Japan there is already a newer maimai version, so this is not the end of maimai, but I am just burned out from the fact that I have plateaued and see no possibility of improvement. I will probably only play maimai to unlock songs in Chunithm that requires me to play maimai.

Chunithm X-Verse and Linked Verse

The newest version of Chunithm, X-Verse, was released on the 20th of November. Since it is their 10th anniversary, they released a game mode called Linked Verse which is a collection of boss songs, just like maimai’s KALEIDXSCOPE and PANDORA BOXX. The boss songs require a lot of grinding, so I guess I will just spend a lot of time and money on the arcade.

Future plans

  • I should recover from my acid reflux episode soon, so I plan on resuming my 10K training plan on December.
  • I want to continue my personal project, Goi (語彙). By the end of December I want to at least have my Spring Boot backend running.
  • I haven’t taken my N3 certificate, so I plan on doing so sometime around December, ideally when there is a gathering in Jakarta with my ex co-workers.
    • I don’t know if my N3 skills have atrophied or not, so maybe I will take a mock exam to see how much knowledge I retained. This should determine if I want to take N2 next year or not.
  • Goodbye maimai, hello Chunithm. Chunithm will be my main arcade rhythm game from now on. I’m still open to play maimai / Pump It Up / Sound Voltex / IIDX though.