Death Trip: Chapter 14

We were done with the necessary side quests and the time had come to continue our journey; we finally sat down on the grass in the shade like we had done so many times before in a circle with notes and books in front of us but this time it were our weapons and ammunition that we had piled up. The landline connections were dead so there wasn’t anyway left to tell our parents when to expect us; thinking about it now felt strange that we were taking a leap of faith without even know if we will survive the trip; we were no longer on the run driving on the highways, we were in the most populous cities in the whole country where there was no telling how much of the population had been turned into a mindless drone hunting for the next meal but against all odds the instinct to be with the ones we hold most dearest to us was pervading all other emotion and logic.

We were low on resources and the further the campus had to send a party to find food the more risk they were taking that the party will never make it back. After the last encounter we were shaken up and decided not to leave it all on luck or God even though we immensely needed both. We had spent most of our ammo in the last encounter, the pile in front of us was nothing like the one we had in Gilgit. I had my two side arms with a magazine each and my submachine gun was completely empty. Nadeem was also in a similar position, Rehman had quite a few shells left and Yahya only had two magazines for his own sidearm; his AK-47 had served us well and so did Nadeem’s scoped rifle but both would be useless piece of metal if we chose to carry them.

“This isn’t enough to get you guys home.” Hussain declared.

How to Memorize and Retain

No matter how much higher up we move in academia, there is always something that we need to just cram and recall during the exam. It can start from little mathematical formulae to a list of tests in chemistry; in management they can be principles that need to be the base of our answer and so on. Psychologists have done well enough to discover the patterns we use for learning but what I’m going to discuss here is some of the methods that are tried and tested by me or my college mates during our professional education and took me a lot of years to discover which one works best for me.

Make a story for a list of things

Being a fan of fiction I’m good at making up random stories and that’s what I do best to cram a list of points. Let’s say you want to memorize the following list for your software engineering class:

1. Gather Requirements
2. Develop Software Architecture
3. Coding and Development
4. Testing
5. Release and Maintenance

This list is way too easy if software engineering or computer science is the discipline of your study but let’s stick with it as an example. Now relax and let a story flow in your head: you are sitting in your cubicle at the office where the project manager is talking to a guy in a business suit who hands him a couple of diagrams and explains that his team needs to make the Matrix; this part is "Gather Requirements" step. The project manager gives the requirements to Leonardo Dicaprio (the dream architect from inception) who sitting in front of him huge table with very complex diagrams is working (Develop Software Architecture). Leonardo then approaches you handing the architecture and the plans while you sleep in your cubicle while you’re dreaming (or are you?). You are the master programmer and operator of the matrix who works on it (Coding and Development). Later Morpheus enters the system you have develop and tests it with Neo (Testing) and finally the roof of the building is torn apart and the machines and robots steal the Matrix (Release and maintenance).

If you’re scratching your head now thinking: “Is this guy insane?” then this method probably doesn’t work for you, on the other hand, if you have faith in this system then make up a few stories of your course, doesn’t matter what they are, they just need to be personal and imaginative.

Top 10 PC Games – Best Storyline

Putting games even from a single platform in order is too difficult. PC games have come a long way in terms of storylines. It seems like decades ago that the only thing players looked at was graphics, the puzzles or the senseless violence in the first person shooters. A lot of game series will be missed out from the list like Portal, Oblivion, Resident Evil, The Longest Journey, Fallout; it’s not that they aren’t good, it’s just that this is a top 10 list and it’s way too knotty to scrutinize and place them all in order so forgive my forgetfulness if your favorites aren’t in the list.

10. Tomb Raider
It came out to be the first third person shooter of its type, a strong independent orphan exploring historical locations and unraveling mythical artifacts and creatures. It used to be all about shooting and solving the puzzles with a hint of storyline to develop the Lara Croft character. Ever since Tomb Raider: Anniversary, the game packed in a huge element of Lara’s past, the clues his father left behind on his lifetime quest to search his wife, Lara’s mother. The story keeps on unveiling and ends at Tomb Raider: Underworld which is a sad end to the father-daughter’s quest; in parallel, Lara’s trusty butler and weapon handler also play an important part guiding her remotely from the mansion. I have been fairly surprised that the Tomb Raider series has still been underrated after refining the gameplay, storyline and graphics to a laudable level.