Being social

I was actually out on two different social events this Saturday--pretty unusual for my life up here in Waterloo. Before you bother asking: no, hooking up with cute Canadian women was not involved. Probably because (1) This is me we're talking about, (2) No single women were at these events, and (3) Duh, this is me we're talking about.

This morning was dim sum with Dan and Daniel, over at Cameron Chinese in Kitchener. That was great... the company was lots of fun, and it is nice to know a decent dim sum place in the neighborhood, even if it doesn't have rolling carts. Incidentally, Wikipedia's Dim Sum Entry is kinda neat--I always wondered what leaf was used in sticky rice balls (it's lotus leaf). That's the dish that is a package of rice wrapped up in a dried leaf and steamed; the rice also contains pork bits, Chinese sausage, mushrooms, stuff that tastes like chicken, and, um, I'm going to stop thinking about this now.



The evening was a "Murder Mystery Dinner Party" at my downstairs neighbors' place. I was actually getting bit anxious--this role playing stuff always gives me the self-consciousness jitters, plus a roomful of people I'm meeting for the first time. My role was "Dr. Thomas Blackman, trusted family physician to the Lockwood family." At least the role was a fiftysomething single alcoholic doctor, so it wasn't too big of a stretch.

The dinner party turned out pretty well. The crowd was a nice bunch of people, and even if I wasn't too good at this acting/improvising, there were people in worse shape (Yeah, Bats' goal in any given situation: don't be the worst in the room. Nice to have high aspirations). However, the gameplay itself was a disappointment. It was scriped so that in each "scene," each character has to (almost mechanically) reveal the planned plot point about him/herself, and interrogate a similar one out of another character. And think of this in a room full of people who are just meeting each other, and do not have sufficient amounts of alcohol in them yet. Even worse, the information revealed in this exchange seems pretty irrelevant to "who was the killer"--all the characters are shown to have a motive and opportunity, but nothing more revealing than that. The revelation of who the killer was ended up being a "So what" moment rather than, "Oh yes, that explanation fits all the clues... I should have seen that," which is the heart of the mystery genre. (although I have to say that I did correctly identify her). I can't say that I recommend this particular brand ("Beyond The Grave" Murder Mystery Party Game)--there might be other murder mystery games that are laid out better, but this experience was not impressive.

After that, though, we played the game Taboo. It's actually a pretty clever word game--it involves conveying a word or phrase to teammates with words (no gestures), but without using the word itself, parts of the word, or other forbidden words on the card. For instance, for the word 'baste,' the forbidden words were something like turkey, roast, gravy, and juice, so the explanation was something convoluted like "You put this tube into the rear end of a fowl..." (to which I had to yell out, "foreplay!" Sorry.)

It's actually a pretty interesting word-puzzle type game--I'd love to play it with some of my more geeky friends. I miss the comfort level and caliber of friends I have among Teps and extended community. Ah well. Another Saturday night, but definitely better than average.