It was an exception back than as well already. I lived in Uilenstede at the time, in Amstelveen on the border with Amsterdam. It's a student campus where I lived on the 12th floor with 14 others sharing the same kitchen. The room was 3x4 meters, with a hallway and your own bathroom.

Six of us got together to get ADSL internet in 1999 and install LAN network on our floor so we were sharing internet and playing games together in LAN. No wonder I didn't want to leave and so much better than dial up was lol. That dial up fiasco was actually in the last year I lived there. The old subscription was up, something went wrong in their system while getting a new subscription and KPN told me they couldn't 'fix' it for a year until their billing cycle had come around. Customer service in The Netherlands was (is?) a joke, getting to Canada was a revelation in that regards. So I switched back to dial-up for the last year (2001) I lived there.

Another reason to stay there was my love for movies at cinema volume. Living underneath the runway approach for Schiphol with other students that generally didn't complain about noise was the perfect excuse to crank the volume up. Twister with speakers meant for much bigger rooms on a 150 watt 7 channel amplifier was awesome!

The alternative was finding a place in Amsterdam where I got an offer to buy a loft for 450K Euros in Amsterdam Zuid or rent a small apartment for 800-900 Euros a month. So I just stuck it out in Uilenstede while saving up my money to buy a house in Canada. CAD 130K was what my first house cost us (about 94K Euros) and good thing I had saved up because I didn't have any credit score here yet so we had to pay 1/3rd up front as down payment to get a mortgage. Just under 35K Euros. Ah my first house, still looks pretty much the same

I bought a house before getting a car lol. Coming from Amsterdam and living across from a supermarket, I just used my bike to get around. My wife (then engaged) borrowed her parent's car until we could comfortably afford our own car a few years later. I never liked debts so we paid the house of as fast as we could, using the max yearly extra payments we could do. (Mortgage is not tax deductable in Canada like it is in The Netherlands, which imo is why the house prices got so out of hand in The Netherlands)

Sweeeeeeeet! I mean about your setup and the peeps still keeping such a cool tradition alive (), not the expense, fucking yikes!! I could never have afforded that in my life. I guess the sales tax here feels pricey to me 'cause I don't really make that much money and because it just seems unnecessary. Why not a system of progressive taxation that's rooted in people's ability to pay? Well, public policy opinions aside, I actually wound up getting most of my Super NES (and also Genesis, Neo Geo, Jaguar CD, and 3DO, old NES, and other games of this general era) games in a single clearance sale at a FuncoLand that went on for months from 2002 well into '03. It was the closeout period before their full rebranding as Game Stop. They massively discounted a ridiculously extensive library of classics for all kinds of older systems that they had left over to the point where you could acquire all but the rarest and most prized of titles for like $10 or less. Thinking I might never get another chance like this, I shot the wad on my first sighting of the clearance tables. Fortunately, the sale continued for many more months and I was able to repeat visits. By the time it was all over and Game Stop in that area was officially born, I'd acquired just about everything I'd ever wanted before from that era in gaming. One of the smartest investments I ever made!

First time I played EverQuest, which was also in '99, I enjoyed the miracle of a DSL connection which...just YaY for that! Even more luckily, I was still 17 at the time, so the basic cost of living was still being covered by my parents. I was working though and had my own income, to that end.

Oh Persona 3, 4, and 5 are all masterpieces, in my mind! Those rank high on any sane person's list of most and moving JRPGs ever made. For me, Persona 4 in particular.

Anyway, as to your question, at first I took FF6's story at face value until she and Locke spoke at the Returner's hideout. Their exchange was brief and to the point and didn't overstay its welcome, but something about it really got to me. Terra was talking about how there are no loved ones in her life to care about like the others around her do, seeming to just feel lost in the world, wondering what to live for. Then Locke reassures her that yes, she is capable of loving other people and that must be others who care for her. It was far from the conclusion of her character arc (closer to the beginning, in fact), but somehow it felt like, in that moment, Locke was talking to me. That's when I started to feel a special connection to Terra as a character and to Locke as well in a different way.

Maybe it's just me and the way my brain processes shit. I'm told I'm a sensitive person. Specifically, I'm told I'm too sensitive a lot. Many of the exchanges between the characters in FF6 made me tear up even back then. Even things like Cyan chasing the Phantom Train as it carries the spirits of his wife and son away that don't always get to just everyone.

As to Kefka's fate...

So kind of in summary, I'd say about maybe 40% or half of what I see in the game now thematically I understood at the time. I feel like my understanding has evolved over time on many repeat plays over the decades, but there was always a foundational connection that I felt had on some level or other to Terra and Kefka in particular in different ways.

Do replay it. Your sensibilities and sensitivities are likely different at this point in life.

In hindsight 450k in Amsterdam Zuid might've been a good investment depending on things, but I get what you mean lol. And yeah customer service for those type of companies is still a joke. Nowadays if you call or write the biggest telecommunications operator here, called Ziggo, about some issue with tv or internet, their standard response is basically always that there must be something wrong with your cables.

Hmm not so sure, I see 51 m2 for 400K, 53 m2 475K 60 m2 for 550K. That top floor for 450K wasn't much bigger, but definitely wouldn't have lost money on it. The house we live in now has doubled in price already, there's a housing shortage in Ontario and prices have been going up a lot here. Still nothing compared to Amsterdam, but Toronto is also insane now for housing prices.

Here you call and they can have a technician over the next day, or go to the nearest store and exchange the box, or pick up new remotes for free. And they'll put new cables down as well if it's a problem with the cable. We had an issue with our cable after sewer repairs. They tore the cable up, spliced it back together but it wasn't a good splice. Technician came over to measure the signal levels, found a short and replaced the cable to the house as well as replaced the amplifier and splitter junction box inside for free. They should since Internet is expensive here! "Ignite Internet_TM with download and upload speeds up to 8 gigabits per second is now available, starting at $399.99/mo!" tax not included in that lol. We pay CAD 107 tax included (75 Euros) a month for up to 150 mbps down (15 mbps up)

Ha, I just checked my old address on Ziggo "We zijn druk bezig met de aansluiting naar je woning." jeez, still not available there. Anyway I see 52 Euros a month for 400 mbps down / 40 mbps up. It's mostly for my kids though, I still stick to physical as much as possible, including (4K) blu-ray and even CDs. And Sony's download speeds are usually a lot less anyway for the odd digital game download. I did max out our connection in FS2020, photogrammetry data over London and Amsterdam is a lot of data, got to fly slow for streaming to keep up.


Did I ever think in 1994 that this would be possible in a flight sim, heck no!