Reflecting on an encounter with a Warhammer enthusiast on the road
The piece below is a version of a post that appeared in my Facebook page on December 13, 2023. I remembered it recently as I was thinking of the interesting people I have encountered in the course of my travels.
I am not normally a chatty person and I generally tend to leave people alone, especially when I find them beside me on a plane or at a nearby table in a crowded cafe. But this person was carrying delicate cargo that was screaming “Look at me!” and I could not help but gawk, so I started a conversation.
We learn so many new things from meeting people. And from sharing such encounters with friends on social media we also discover another side to our friends too.
I also realized that Covid may have warped my sense of time, like a card dealer riffling through a deck of cards, and shuffling them out of order. I kept searching for this post in pre-Covid years when travel was not yet restricted, insisting to myself it happened before the lockdown, only to realize this encounter took place much later. I mixed up my years.
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I struck up a conversation with a young man in the next table at a small coffee shop at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) in Manila while waiting for my flight to Davao City. What caught my attention was his army of miniatures from the series Warhammer, the soldiers he called chaos space mariners (I had to Google them later to make sure I heard right). They’re figures and a video game series from the 1980s, he said.
He has been creating these miniatures the past year, buying the parts and the paint, and putting the figurines together and painting them, a (not cheap) hobby he said helps calm his mind. He was carrying them in a glass box, each with a magnet standing atop a metal plate so they don’t fall over each other.
He is a college student, majoring in Psychology, with a minor in creative writing, and for his thesis, he is writing a book on Southern Philippine mythology. He is focusing on the psych aspect, he explained to me, about the role that myths play in everyday life (or something like that). He also showed me sketches of creatures he encountered in his research, which will also go into his book.
As it turns out, he is a graduating student whose teachers I know. One of these teacher-friends of mine teaches a class he said he loved.
Our conversation went from Warhammer to family and illness, the Philippine health insurance system and out-of-pocket expenses, biking, traffic and air pollution in Katipunan Avenue, where the university is located. And as it turned out again, we were taking the same flight. He was on his way home to spend the holidays with family; I was meeting up with other journalists for a work-related event.
I learned so much from that brief encounter, about how profound and focused young people can be if given the opportunity and resources. Hopefully he gives back by helping develop a culture of wellness-awareness among Filipinos, especially those not as privileged as he.
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There’s a lesson to be learned from this young man, and that is to pursue your passion if you can, if you have the resources, stamina and determination to do. If you do it often enough and make it part of who you are, you’ll find this passion seeping into other parts of your life. You’ll find it serving like a shield or even a home, I would dare say. It is where you are most comfortable and at ease, a refuge from the overwhelming world, sometimes even a source of ideas and inspiration.
I got the impression that he derived the inspiration for his thesis from his passion for Warhammer miniatures, which gave him a unique project that I can imagine stood out from those of his peers.
In case you’re interested to know more about Warhammer, here’s the official website as well as a a blog that provides a brief summary of what it is all about.
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On the road 