Blah-dee blah

[fredericks]

My friend invited me over to her place a little while back. I went empty-handed, this side of broke and uncertain what precisely one brought to a Chinese dinner. When I arrived I discovered I was the only native English speaker in attendance, an occurrence that didn't bother me but made my friend feel inclined to change the entertainment from a Mandarin channel show to a Mandarin-subtitled version of "Tomb Raider 2" (I'd have preferred if she'd ixnay'd the movie altogether, but I didn't want to bother her further). After dinner came games: my friend played an intricate Chinese card game with three of the other guests, while her husband took it upon himself to teach me Chinese Checkers, during which time I was forcefully reminded that they were raised in a Communist country. When it came to gameplay there was a "right way" and a "wrong way", only thing the "wrong way" wasn't simply a move that was against the rules. The point of the game was to move all your pieces from one part of the board to a point immediately opposite, something I grasped quickly, but when I wanted to move laterally in order to increase my strategic window I was informed I was playing the "wrong way". Individuality seemed to be bad - and I say this because both my friend and her husband took turns gently chastising me for moves that weren't *wrong*, but were simply non-conventional. After gaining some confidence in my skills I pointed out why my decisions weren't wrong so much as different. When I left we were 1-1, but I figure he'd been lax on me during the first game.

*
New "Heroes" was on tonight. Hmm. The ending of the show was very good, but most everything prior rubbed me the wrong way. Painful exposition, clunky dialogue, bad fact-checking...but Hiro was gnarly. Hiro! The dude owns. I hope things improve next week, otherwise I'm going to lose interest.

Comments

[fredericks.livejournal.com]

They begin the episode with a mini-review of last weeks, and the pace is slow enough that you'll get caught up rather quickly. It's like Lost in that little is being explained at the moment - lots of dialogue but you still sort of run around with a WTF? on your face while you're watching. Nice ending, though, and some of the characters are intriguing.