The Two Weeks That Was – Feb 8 – 21, 2010

The first week was quite busy in the office with everyone trying to finish things off before they leave for their Chinese New Year break. Being the only one in the office who doesn’t need to rush back home for reunion dinners, I had the luxury of taking my company mandatory leave days ahead of everyone else which I did during the week before Chinese New Year. Most of those dates were spent with household chores and some repairs especially those involving the electrical supply.

I guess that it’s a fact of living in a place that when you’ve live there long enough, you’ll bound to have to deal will problems related to aging electrical wiring and the like. For months, I’ve been having power supply brown outs whenever I turn on one too many electrical appliances. Electrical sparks at the power distribution boards became more frequent and things got worse when I can’t even run my microwave without tripping the power supply. I finally had enough and called the electrician to replace the power distribution board before I accidently burn the house down. Good thing that my landlord agreed to have the repair bill deducted for the month’s rent.

Several friends came together to organized birthday dinner with another friend who is celebrating his birthday in the same month. We all went to a small, out of the way, Japanese restaurant called “NIHON KAI” off Jalan Kelang Lama. I have to say that it was a wonderful find for me as they had a really good spread of dishes to choose from and all of them were priced reasonably well. All of us were led into one of those tatami mat private dining rooms where we proceeded to party like drunk Japanese salary men the night through. I’m sure that we sounded like that as we enjoyed the great food, drinks and company.

Chinese New Year came and went without much to mark it for me. We did get 2 boardgame sessions in during the break. The first one was with a group of friends in Sentul which lasted for a few hours where we tested out Settlers of Catan, Wits & Wagers as well as Taboo. Our hosts made us a wonderful lunch in between the games and we ended the day with dinner at Pavilion. The second session of games was on the following day at a café near to my apartment. We ended up spending almost 7 hours there playing “Settlers of Catan”, “Wits & Wagers”, “Kill Doctor Lucky” and “Wasabi!” The funny thing was that everyone else at the café seemed to have the same idea as every table there that night had some type of game happening. I’m guessing that people were already quite bored staying at home during the long break and hence why it seems like everyone was out with games there.

Being at work during Chinese New Year week was a bit if a drag since the whole office was almost empty expect for a few of us. Fortunately, nothing major happen during the period and I was able to handle a few of the issues that cropped up during the period on my own. I ended up taking some time during the week to visit Toybox and get my own copy of the “SmallWorld” board game that I hope to give it a test drive some time soon.

I ended the week with good food and company at a friend’s place on Sunday to watch as many episodes of “Glee” that we could squeeze in. We all ended up only finishing half of the 13 episode season but it was still a great time. I even got to do some cooking since we wanted to make cookies to go with the show and made dinner once everyone got their fill of the TV show. Having a proper kitchen is one of the things that I missed most after moving out of my parents’ house to live on my own. I definitely want to get a proper kitchen in the next place that I move in.