Not Yet Down for the Cow: Heifer Way Through My 1 Month Vegan Challenge

Here's the surprise: it's easy to be vegan if a) you already don't eat milk or fish, b) you know how to cook and/or you get your lunches from work, and c) you are generally not subject to strong bouts of craving and binging. All of these are true for me.

If I had thought that being vegan meant eating raw lettuce, bare cooked grains and tofu, that's just not the case. True, I made a stir fried tofu, broccoli, and asparagus, but I have also eaten vegetarian sushi, lentil pie, humus and/or falafel meals, vegetarian patties, cholent, tehina and bread, and PB&J, as well as vegan pizza, apple pie, blueberry and banana soy smoothies, roasted potatoes and antipasti, and countless other delicious foods. Yes, sometimes when I smell sizzling meat I hanker for it a bit, but really not much, especially since I'm only doing this for a month. If anything, the hardest problem in my particular circumstance is that I'm not driven by any of the major reasons I've heard that people become vegan.

I don't have a problem killing animals for food; heck, we kill animals by the millions just plowing a field to grow grain, not to mention how many more we kill to harvest and pack it. I don't like the way we raise animals today, but for that I prefer to lobby for better regulations in the animal industry.

As for the environment, I think the animal industry could use better regulation there, too, but I think the damage done by the animal industry is dwarfed by the damage done by other industries. And it employs a lot of people.

As for health: animals are no more packed with hormones and chemicals than the fruits or vegetables we eat. And, since I never believe anything a label, corporation, or government tells me, I put no faith in the concepts of organic, free-range, environmentally friendly, or any other claims by any industry. I took a blood test on the first day of February: I discovered that my cholesterol, lipids, and glucose are high, and my vitamin D and B-12 are low. Being vegan isn't going to solve these issues. I need to take vegan-friendly supplements for omega-3, D, and B-12, and a vegan diet isn't necessarily any less fatty than a meat diet. I admit that there is a correlation between being a vegan and eating healthier, because vegans are the kind of people who are aware of and concerned with what they eat.

Positive and negative side-effects after two weeks? I admit that I feel a bit - just a bit - less tired in the morning. On the other hand, I now eat a higher quantity of food, so I feel as bloated as I felt before the diet started. Otherwise nothing; perhaps two weeks isn't enough time to tell.

Another surprise is the feeling of deja vu: being vegan in Israel is like being kosher in the US. In the US, kosher people only go to specific restaurants, they have to excuse themselves from the meals that other people eat or the dishes they serve, and they fastidiously check labels in the supermarket. Since coming to Israel, I go to nearly any restaurant (in the Jerusalem are, anyway), can eat at almost any friend's house, and can buy any product I want in the supermarket. Being vegan is exactly like being kosher was in the US.

It may be that I have avoided a heart attack because I decided to do a blood test because I decided to be a vegan for a month, and now I am addressing my high cholesterol and low vitamin D; but, if I avoid the heart attack, we'll never know.

I went to a game shabbaton this weekend Read about what I played here.

A Little Bit Like Ajiaco Bogatano and a Lot Like Rummikub

On the many occasions that I have been invited to Abe and Sara's over the years, I always asked her if what she was serving was representative of native Colombian cuisine. It never was, and this became a running joke: Native Colombian challah and hummus! I would say, or Oh, Colombian Coca-Cola!

I told her that one day we were going to have a meal of Colombian food, even if I had to cook it myself. Seeing as this was the last time that we (and some friends) would be sharing a shabbat meal for some time, I decided to cook Colombian cuisine as a going away present.

The problem with cooking Colombian in Israel is that a number of essential Colombian ingredients are not available in Israel, such as plantains, yuca, guascas, and so on. So I either had to choose recipes that didn't require these ingredients or substitute and fudge the flavors. My menu included Ajiaco Bogotano (chicken, corn, and potato soup with garnishes including Aji (cilatnro, pepper, and onion)), empanadas, chorizos, beef skewers, roast "Columbian-style" chicken, guacamole, hummus with roast pepper, and coconut rice, as well as salad and so on.

The results were a true mixture of classic success and failure.

Sara didn't recognize most of the dishes. What's this? she asked. When I said It's a classic Colombian dish, she would say It is? Ok, so apparently the native Colombian didn't recognize anything I cooked as actually Colombian. Luckily it was mostly tasty anyway. Sara recognized the coconut rice as Colombian, but I didn't use enough coconut milk, and she is used to a presentation that includes coconut shavings and the rice served in a ball.

My ajiaco presentation was correct. I brought out garnishes of shredded chicken, capers, sliced avocado, and aji (she didn't recognize aji; also, I couldn't use sour cream, since this was a meat soup), and even before I brought the soup out she asked Oh, did you try to make ajiaco?

Real ajiaco requires three different types of potatoes, at least one is a specific variety that you can't get here, as well as the herb guascas. Real ajiaco is also boiled down to a thick cream, whereas mine was more soupy. And anyway, ajiaco comes from Bogota- which is the capital of Colombia - but not from the region of Colombia from which Sara comes, so she didn't actually grow up eating it. Nevertheless, it's one of her favorite dishes (when she would go to Bogota). And while my soup didn't taste much like Ajiaco Bogotano, it was similar and familiar enough to make her happy.

After dinner we split into two groups. Nadine, Eitan, and Emily played Thunderstone. First plays for Eitan and Emily, who didn't like it that much. Eitan prefers games where the scores are visible during the game so that he knows how to pace his strategy (when to ramp up and when to cash out).

Sara, Anne, and I played Castles of Burgundy. First plays for both of them, third play for me. Both Thunderstone and CoB have long setup times and lots of moving parts, but during play the turns flow fairly smoothly.  CoB is beginning to make more sense to me. It still seems to be one phase too long. Thankfully, by the last phase we were all playing fairly quickly, so it was soon over. In the last phase I completed a large district or two which jumped me ahead some 30 points from where we were all clustered in the scoring.

The next day's lunch was with two families each of whom had four children. I didn't bring games with me, but  two of the kids engaged me in a game of Rummikub. Often, the finagling of the melds are held up by the lack of a few key tiles. The first to draw one of the tiles and recognize what to do with it then goes out. The following player is usually then able to go out immediately after, or at least would be able to if the game were to continue. That's what happened with us.

This was followed by Crazy Eights where the rules changed (not by me) whenever it looked like I had won.

Guests or Not

Bill and Shirley came for shabbat, bringing decadent donuts from Roladin. These are donuts with fillings, icings, decorations, and even little syringe tubes with more filling that you can inject into your pastry moments before ingesting them. Over the top, but tasty.

Rochelle came over for lunch. After lunch, we all played Tichu. I taught them, we played two hands, and I won both hands. Then I taught them Apples to Apples, which I also won. Then I taught them For Sale, which I also won. Really, guys, I don't win every game I play, it was an accident. I tried throwing Apples to Apples rounds by playing cards that couldn't possibly get picked, but they started going for ironic or ridiculous choices and picked my cards anyway. It's hard to throw a game of Apples to Apples.

Anyhoo, after shabbat my guests left and I prepared for a small party I was throwing, my first in Raanana. I had sent invitations to everyone I currently know in the area (and some I don't). The only replies I got were from people who were not coming. I heard tell of three people who might come, and some people said that they might try to drop by toward the end.

Only one person (other than my kids) came. We talked a little and I showed him my Hanukkah Jeopardy game for this year. And these were probably among the best latkes I ever made, and some pretty good brownies, too. More for me, I guess.

Huh, I think there's something wrong with my belt.

Day 16: Many New Games

Games Played

Belfort: A worker placement, area control game by Tasty Minstrel Games. with a fantasy city building game. Actually, the only fantasy element is that you have elves, dwarfs, and gnomes as workers, instead of humans with specialties. The artwork is pretty but very busy, making the game appear to be FFG level complex when it's really straightforward worker placement.

Place guys to earn money, resources, more guys, or bonuses, including private worker placement locations. use resources to buy buildings in the five areas. Reward control in the areas after rounds 3, 5, and 7. Works fine, but nothing new.

Nefarious: Another game by Donald Vaccarino, designer of Dominion. Yesterday's other new game by him (Kingdom Builders) was pleasant enough spacial manipulation, but not really special imho. This one is better.

It's a bare distilled Race For the Galaxy/7 Wonders with a very light invention theme. The game is nothing but cards. Each round, all players select one of four roles to play and reveal. Each player ears money for the roles selected by his neighbors if he has assigned meeples to that role on his board. Then the players do the roles in number order. 1) assign meeples to roles. 2) pay money to play invention cards. These give points and usually a benefit like earn or lose cards or money. 3) take 2 coins and an invention card. 4) take four coins.

Repeat until someone has 20 points. One more thing: each game, two random special rules (out of 30 or so) that modify the game are revealed at the beginning of the game. That's it.

It was quick (20-30 minutes normally), challenging, and essentially perfect. However, in our game we drew the absolute worst two special rule combination possible (I checked afterwards, and I'm not exaggerating). After every invention was played, everyone other than the one who played the invention lost all of his or her money. It made for some frustration, but some humor as well. Plays for up to five, I think. Unfortunately, FunAgain was charging $60 for this card game, which was way too much.

Tanto Cuore: Nearly an exact clone of Dominion, except it's from Japan, so the game is themed about hiring maids with various skimpy outfits (nothing too salacious). It was being demoed by a girl wearing a skimpy outfit, too; she must have been freezing in the hall. The cards were unique to the game, at least, and there were a few minor rule twists, but nothing that changed it from being Dominion.

Meltdown 2020: A "rescue all your guys from the board" game, usually seen in a fire or volcano themed game. This one had hexes with scattered nuclear plants, which melted down. The more they melted, the more damage they did to neighboring citizens. Each citizen could take three cumulative points until dead. You had three vehicles of various sizes and capacity to rescue them. And the entire game ended if the plants hit a certain level.

It's a light filler route planning game, although I expect it's marketed and priced as a full meaty game. It was good. Didn't inspire me to buy it, but I'd happily play it.

7 Wonders: I joined yet another game, and played straight blue again. This time I was entirely straight blue, earning 15 points from my wonders, 37 points from blue, and -5 from military. That was it. I came in third with 47. The two winners each has 53.

Walnut Grove: By Lookout Games. This is a meaty western themed town and farm game. It was late, so I don't feel I gave it my all. There are eight rounds (years) to the game. Each year has four seasons: pick farm tiles and add to your farm, allocate workers to produce goods on the farm (one good for every contiguous tile in an area), move your guy in the large town rondel to buy stuff with your goods or buy more goods (worker placement, pay money every once in a while), pay your farm hands in food and heat.

It's a tough system, and you're (at least I was) constantly struggling for food and heat, making progress very difficult. There are many avenues for victory points, most of which I never had time to explore.

If you enjoy the Alea games, this will fit in nicely; if you don't, you'll probably be tired of games with pastoral themes and pushing cubes about. I'm happy to play again until I can get a handle on the game, at least.

Indian Food

For lunch, my friends and I went to Dallas to the one of three kosher eateries in Dallas, the Madras Pavilion. It's veggie Indian, authentic enough that most of the people eating there were Indian rather than visibly Jewish. It was also pretty spicy but good (better than my constant stream of cold cuts and peanut butter, anyway).

Between Two Meals, or How Not to Explain Cuts of Meat on a Menu

Thursday Night

Rachel and I went out for a lovely mean at Selina with our friends. We had received a prepaid meal coupon from Rachel's study group as a thanks for a year's worth of teaching. Yum.

We speak a mixture of Hebrew and English, and so the waitress tried to explain specials to us in both Hebrew and English. At one point, she struggled to translate the Hebrew word for "breast", which resulted in her patting herself on the breast as a visual aid.

This is so wrong, I'm not even going to get into it. I won't. I won't. I won't. No, no, no, no, ok, I will.

Now that I was thinking of cutting off the waitress' breast and coating it in a roux and brandy concoction, I began to wonder what sort of visual expression she was willing to give us for chicken thighs or rump roast. One of my friends, thinking along similar lines, was hopefully scanning the menu to see if she could find bull testicles, and the other asked if the English name of the dish was Chicken Mastectomy.

All the food was delicious, and service was good.

Today is going to be a rather different experience.

We are friends with a Christian couple residing in Israel, who contacted us originally about gaming. Bill is from Kansas City, Shirley is from China. They're lovers of Jews and Israel, and here doing volunteer work.

We've had them over for dinner a number of times, and they've always wanted to reciprocate, but they don't keep a kosher house, of course. They took us out for dinner once, which was lovely.

Last week we went to see Coraline (great movie, by the way). Before the movie, my daughter Tal bought some crappy Chinese food at the mall court, about which Shirley declared that "that is NOT Chinese food". So I invited her to come over and cook real Chinese for us. Her eyes lit up.

Turns out to be exactly the opportunity she wanted.

Shirley spent a few days this week planning the menu, and in the process learned what was involved in kosher food preparation. And, since Chinese food really has to be cooked and served immediately, we decided to eat before shabbat, and have only the kiddush, challah, and dessert after synagogue. (And my brother and his four kids are coming, so dinner won't be too late for them; another plus).

The menu and ingredient list is extensive and sounds fantastic. It's going to be quite an experience.

Appetizer:
Chicken Lettuce Wrap
Egg Drop Soup

Dishes:
Chicken & Green Peppers
Lemon Chicken
Bulgogi
bean sprouts with green onion
radish
potato
mixed cucumbers
rice or maybe fried rice

Shopping Cart Envy

I am susceptible to shopping cart envy.

If the cart of the lady in front of me contains healthier, less overtly branded, or more environmentally-friendly packaged foodstuffs than mine does, I turn a judging eye onto my own cart.

Do I really need cranberry juice? Soy milk in a non-recyclable carton? Store-bought whole grain cookies? How come my cart doesn't contain only fruit, vegetables, meat, eggs, dairy, and grains? Fruit juices are expensive and fattening. Soy milk comes in recyclable cartons in the refrigerated section. And I can bake my own cookies. And where's my cloth shopping bag?

And so, while the lady in front of me is checking out, I'm surreptitiously making sure the re-stockers earn their pay by stuffing the cookies under bags of M&Ms in the candy display.

On the other hand, if the cart behind me is stacked with boxes of soft drinks, Twizzlers, and Cocoa Puffs, I feel morally superior. What a rube! All that junk. Like you need that in your body, fella. Look at me and learn! I've got real fruit juice, soy milk, and whole wheat products, here. Psssh! The things some people put into their cart.

And watch out for those cookies on the floor.

Yehuda

Good Vibrations in Toronto

I've always somewhat disliked Toronto, maybe because everyone who lives there tells me how nice it is.

My dislike stems from the impression you get of Toronto when you fly or drive into it, namely mile after mile of cement parking lots and outlet stores. All the virgin forest cut down to make this city must have been immense. What a waste.

However, given my last week here, even though I've mostly been inside, I have been warming to the city, much to my dismay.

First of all, Toronto's planners were nice enough to leave a whole lot of green areas in the city, including some awesome grassy areas, forests, and deep ravines. Second is the beautiful coastline on Lake Ontario, which remains to this day nearly unspoilt. Good work, planners.

Third is the public transport system. While a more extensive subway system would have been nice, nearly every location in the city can be reached by a bus to a subway and then a bus from the subway, at one price, of course.

Most amusing is that the bus drivers all call out the names of the streets as they approach them. "Bathurst!" A tiny minority of buses are beginning to install GPS and automatic voice systems.

Another thing about the bus drivers here, is that they don't handle money or tickets. They just drive, and they drive carefully and well. They're trained to drive smoothly and calmly. Furthermore, the buses come every 5 to 10 minutes ... off-peak. Every 3 to 5 minutes during peak hours. All around the clock.

Fourth is that the Jewish community that my wife has landed herself into is fairly wealthy. They have lovely homes and shuls and so on, and they seem to be fairly nice once you get to know them. My wife is staying in a very modest apt, mind you.

Fifth is a dinner we had at the Gladstones Bar and Grill. OK, it was twice the price I would ever normally pay for a restaurant, but it was also the nicest restaurant I've ever been to. It had live piano playing, complimentary wine tasting between each course, and someone filling my water glass every time I set it down. The food was wonderful, of course.

I would never spend half that much at a great restaurant in Israel, but they would also have nothing near as nice service. And the price was still less than half what I would have paid for Israel quality food and service in London.

What makes me reel is that this restaurant was only given one and a half stars out of five by Toronto Life! How good could those non-kosher restaurants be?!?

Sixth was Hugh's Room. I decided on the night that seemed to have the least bluesy and most folky music, and boy did I pick well. The opening act was The Undesirables who were a duo out of this world. Some sort of Canadian hippies, they were truly beautiful and passionate, harmonizing like an undiscovered Crosby, Stills, and Nash. They were so overwhelmingly good, we couldn't imagine being anything but disappointed by the main performer, Jonathan Byrd.

Well, Jonathan stepped up and blew us away. We were stunned at his opening number, and he just kept it going from there. Do NOT miss this man if he comes your direction. We ended up hearing three and a half hours of literally perfect music for next to nothing.

Hugh's room's walls are decorated with the thousands of incredible performers who have played their, including all of my favorites. The people in the audience were very warm and receptive. And, like all bars in Toronto, there was NO SMOKING!

I've not gotten out much, but I'm luckily what I've picked to do has been really good.

Yehuda

More Blogger woes, and Ryanair

Blogger Woes

I am more and more amazed that this thing is out of Beta.

Dozens of times yesterday and today I've been getting access errors when trying to access pages on my blog. The latest error page includes a "code":

We're sorry, but we were unable to complete your request.

When reporting this error to Blogger Support or on the Blogger Help Group, please:

* Describe what you were doing when you got this error.
* Provide the following error code and additional information.

[[[code]]]

Additional information
uri: [[[uri]]]
host: jergames.blogspot.com

This information will help us to track down your specific problem and fix it! We apologize for the inconvenience.

How long is this going to go on? Anyone else having these problems?

RyanAir

As long as I'm on the subject of things I can't believe, someone tell me how Ryanair can offer flights from London to Glasgow for 79 pence. Yes, that's right, not pounds, but pence.

OK, I get that they don't pay air ticket printing costs, credit card fees, advertising, and so on. I get that they charge you for luggage and food. I get that it doesn't include all mandatory taxes and so on which run about 35 pounds. I get that they use cheaper and more inconvenient airports.

But they have to pay for airplanes, maintenance, parts, fuel, staff, service, rent, and branding, don't they? Do so many people pay for extras such as luggage, changing ticket times, late booking, or sandwiches that they can make up the difference?

Seems batty to me. Yet their safety record and service is supposed to be as good or better than regular airlines.

Tu B'Shvat

This shabbat is Tu B'Shvat, one of the four "new years" in the Jewish tradition. This one is the new year for trees and produce, so all the supermarkets in Israel have changed their usual displays of cheap cakes and wafers to nuts and dried fruit.

Some people like to do a Tu B'Shvat "seder", sort of like a Passover seder, where they introduce all of these nuts and fruits and carry on about the land overflowing with milk and honey and so on.

I made brownies.

Yehuda
Causing confusion is a goal, not a side-effect.

Confession of a Coffee-Totaller

I have a confession to make: I'm addicted to not drinking coffee.

I started out not drinking coffee very young. My parents let me not drink coffee from a very young age. Too young, perhaps, for me to handle responsibly.

Since then, I have not drunk coffee every day, sometimes four or five times a day, or even more.

I've been worrying about this problem for some time. For one thing, not drinking coffee separates me from the vast majority of my fellow Israelis who are not similarly addicted. For another, this habit has led to other addictions, such as drinking tea and even ingesting pure coffee-free substances, such as water (sometimes straight-up, out of the bottle).

Only recently have I begun to seriously consider breaking myself from this addiction.

I've tried to cut down my not drinking coffee to only a few times per day. In some instances, I even made myself a cup of coffee and drank it, but then I went back to not drinking it several more times that day.

It's hard work. Coffee has a lovely smell, but when it comes down to it, even with sugar and milk it tastes like bitter boiled beans. So the allure of breaking the not coffee drinking habit is a hard hill to climb.

I'm almost up to once a week now, and I think I probably won't be able to do much better than that for a while.

Let my example serve as a warning to my readers: once you start with an addictive habit, such as not drinking coffee, you may only discover too late that you have a long road to breaking the addiction.

Stay warm and dry,
Yehuda

Watch This Space

I have what I think is a kick-ass post in the wings. I should get it out in a few days, but tomorrow is Games Day in Jerusalem, so you'll just have to wait for it. Maybe Tuesday, maybe Wednesday.

In the meantime, here's:

A $400 board game called "Keep the Customer":

This unique board game is a fun, effective way to learn how to deal with challenging situations, before they happen. Using a series of customer service and role-playing scenarios, employees learn ways to handle a variety of different customer service situations, from basic questions to complicated emotional issues.

Oh my God. It sounds like the AOL Game of Nightmares. They have two versions: Call Center Edition and Health Care Edition, and they also sell bonus packs of cards for $17 each.

This article is about a scandal that a Welch national assembly minister spent £3,500 to print up some Christmas cards, which included his picture next to a Welch version of the game Scrabble. I think the scandal is the £2,000 that Mattel charged him to allow him to use a photographed image of the game on his Christmas cards.

And here's yet another set of games made out of chocolate. Monopoly is coming soon.

Yehuda

Linkety Link

Games Can Help, a non-profit organization working with the Red Cross and looking to make a difference to children in need through the joy of gaming.

National Games Week is coming November 19-25, 2006.

The HomoGenius game. First player to come out of the closet wins. Uh, yeah.

Alan Alda claims that the secret of success behind his fifty year marriage is playing cards with his wife.

And in the ridiculous marketing dept, Trivial Pursuit questions ... on Pringles chips.

Yehuda

Update: And I may as well add the all pink Scrabble set in support of breast cancer awareness.

War and Peace: Games, Food, and Surf in Tel Aviv

Wacky Adventures in a War Torn Country

Update: added pictures

Saarya, my fifteen year-old son, and Tal, my thirteen year-old daughter, and I went to Tel Aviv for a short vacation. The vacation started on Friday; our weekend experiences are covered in a previous post. This post covers Sunday through Tuesday.

Our original plans were to go north, but neither my wife nor my ex-wife would let me do that, even though, statistically speaking, there was still a four times greater chance of dying in the car trip up to the north than in dying from a Hezbollah missile.

In fact, Hezbollah has been threatening to bomb Tel Aviv, so, with any luck, we would still get to experience the thrill of shrieking sirens, the mad scrambling for bomb shelters, and the lingering smell of death and chaos. As luck would have it, however, no bombs fell in Tel Aviv. Rats.

The temperature was hot, by the way, but not New York City hot. And muggy.

The Safari

Our first stop was the Ramat Gan Safari. The main attraction here is that Tal has become obsessed with zebras, to the point of trying to acquire the nickname "Zebra" at school, with variable success.

Saarya warned that he doesn't like zoos, but, armed with seven books from Alan Dean Foster's Tar-Aym Krang series was willing enough to sit and read while we walked around. I went pretty sure that I had a moral objection to zoos, and in going to zoos, but having not been to one in more than ten years, was willing to take a chance at reassessing my feelings.

Unfortunately, my feelings were strengthened.

The "Safari" actually consists of a drive through area, along with a zoo inside, and then a return through another drive out area. The drive through areas had all the zebras Tal could ever want to see live. The zebras came up to our car and tried to eat our window.

Click here for eleven zebra pictures.

There were other less interesting things in the safari section, including some lions who were asleep.

Click here for non zebra pictures (penguins, giraffes, lions, etc.).

As a matter of fact, that basically describes all of the animals we saw. They were pretty much all asleep. The snakes looked like so much piles of plastic. The hippos might as well have been rocks submerged under the water. For all I know, they had already drowned.

The animals that were awake all did the very fascinating activity of staring forlornly at the visitors. They just sat there looking right back at you, scanning the crowd, and hoping that someone would explain to them why their formerly happy life in the endless prairie or tundra had come to be reduced to a life-long sentence in a prison cell. And those were the lucky ones. The less fortunate had electric shocks to contend with, or had had parts of their bodies permanently ripped out in order to make them more docile or less mobile.

Zoos were originally created in order to show the wonders of the world to those who could not otherwise see them. With the advent of pictures and then videos, what is the point? The only people who still go to zoos are researchers and children. Research I can understand. But this misery is too high a price to pay for the entertainment of children, most of whom don't like the smell anyway and would prefer to be playing games or running around.

There was one bright spot to the visit, and it came from the only animal present of its own free will, more or less: humans. There was a show at two o'clock.

I wasn't expecting much - something like a children's version of Little Red Riding Hood or such - but it turned out to be a very nice show with a magician and two acrobats. The magician was fair, although he did very nice work of making some people appear and disappear. The acrobats, especially the woman, were amazing, however; I'm talking Cirque De'Soleil amazing.

It was worth the price of admission.

We left at three, which is when check-in time was at the youth hostel.

The Youth Hostel

My budget is limited, as you may know; you may even be in the same situation. So it's nice when every once in a while you try to save some money and it actually works out well.

The Youth Hostel in Tel Aviv is a simple stark building right across the street from the lovely Yarkon river and it's grassy walking areas.

The receptionist is snarky. There is little in the way of amenities. What there is, however, is: a clean room with four beds, a strong and well heated shower, working and well adjusted air conditioning, and a reasonably edible breakfast. That's all that we got, and that's all that we needed. Oh, we also got an in-room refrigerator, and a television that could receive two channels, but who cares?

There was one problem: no parking designated for the hostel. We were lucky to find free parking across the street most of the time, and when there wasn't, we found a free municipal parking lot on a side street, directly behind the hostel.

Two nights cost us 680 NIS including tax, which is about $150. That left us more money for other stuff, or simply more money. Survey says: recommended.

The Game Store

I had brought some food along with us, intending to eat light Sunday, and spend money only going out to dinner at my favorite Tel Aviv Chinese restaurant on Monday. With that in mind, we went for a walk around dinner time down Weizmann street to find Israel's only game store that sells Euro games, Freak. The Youth Hostel is located right at the top of Weizmann, and so the walk was about ten blocks.

Unlike Jerusalem, Tel Aviv's restaurants are generally not kosher. So we kept an eye out for kosher places just for general interest, and we found a few here and there on the way.

We eventually found the mall within which Freak was alleged to be, and after looking around, found it on the -1 floor.

Freak is a small store. There is a small hallway going into it directly up to the cash register. To the right is a small room with computer games and miniatures, and to the left is a small room with roleplaying and, in one bookcase, about 70 board games. Behind or on the cash register are CCG products. In the roleplaying room is a table that would fit around eight for gaming, and in the miniature area another two or three tables that would each fit two people.

Gilad from the Hebrew board gaming group alleges that twenty or more people come for game nights once or month here, but I just don't see how. Nevertheless, the store does host board game nights once a month, and weekly game sessions of Warcraft, D&D, Magic, and so on.

I had three missions. One was to see the store. The second was to meet and interview the owner. The third was to try to convince him to donate some stuff to my collection of games that I was sending to the bomb shelters in the north, or at least to let me buy them at a discount.

I saw the store, and it was modest. The board games are priced at what would be retail prices, plus 17% VAT, plus some probable shipment fee, plus more on top of that. Alhambra, for instance, was 250 NIS ($55), while Tigris and Euphrates was 240 NIS ($53). Apparently it depended on whether the game could be ordered in some sort of bulk shipment, or had to be ordered individually. They were out of Settlers of Catan.

All of the board games they carried came from Silver Stars, the exclusive importer to Israel of many of these games. (More on them later.) Suffice to say that Freak gets along with Silver Stars, but it is a business relationship, not a close personal one. I suspect that Freak would much prefer to do its own importing, rather than have to buy from Silver Stars.

Two people were working there, Eli, the owner, and Ilie, a worker. They had customers coming in regularly, so it seems that they are busy and profitable. There were also a few people playing an RPG at the table.

Eli told me that the bulk of his profits comes from the computer games. The other stuff is less profitable; if it wasn't profitable at all, he wouldn't carry it at all. Eli is happy with the gamers who come to play at the store; they get a place to play and access to the games at a small discount, and he gets the increased business by virtue of ready purchasers in his store, and as the known place to play games in Tel Aviv.

Eli himself plays some computer games and a bit of RPGs, but no board games, CCGs, or miniatures. He claims to be looking at opening a second branch in Haifa by the end of the year. Obviously, this plan is going to be set back a little by the current situation in Haifa. I later found out that he has had this plan for some time already, so I don't know how likely it is to happen. He has no plans to open a store in Jerusalem any time soon.

The Freak store has been around in Tel Aviv for quite some time, but only began carrying board games two or three years ago.

As far as donations or discounting, he didn't look too thrilled with the idea. He says that he could be more generous with the computer games, but that donating or discounting board games would be a difficulty for him. Nevertheless, he still offered me a "25% to 35%" discount on the board games, which I estimate is probably about what he pays for them.

I considered the board games. Even with a discount of 35%, 400 NIS was going to get me two, maybe three, board games, none of which had Hebrew translations. The same 400 NIS I spent last week got me two Monopolies, two Pictionaries, two chess sets, and buckets full of Legos, all with Hebrew instructions where appropriate.

I decided that although ultimately introducing kids to better games was a nice long term goal, in the short term it just didn't make sense to give out so little when I could make a whole lot more kids happier for the same price.

The First Restaurant

At this time, I decided that we could splurge a little for dinner. The mall had a food court where at least two of the places were kosher. If we all got something like a schnitzel sandwich, we would be spending about 70 NIS, which wasn't outrageous.

Unfortunately, Saarya wasn't too thrilled with the offerings, and we decided to go back to one of the places that we had passed on the way. It turned out to be a nice looking dairy restaurant. The price for all three of us now looked like it would be around 130 NIS, but the food would be better, at least.

Unfortunately, Saarya wasn't too thrilled with the offerings. I long ago decided to pick my battles. Saarya had been patient at the safari/zoo, so I wasn't going to start admonishing him for his fussiness here. I was a picky child, so I know what it's like.

We were directed to another meat restaurant called Meatos, also on Weizmann, but in the other direction (past the mall that we had just come from). We went to look at the offerings there; it looked really good, but even more expensive, around 200 NIS for the three of us. Saarya said that it didn't look any better than the first place we were at, and he was now willing to go back there, but I had had enough walking finally, and anyway, I'm a sucker for good food.

The food and the service were both excellent. Really really excellent. A low 4.

A brief aside about my food rating scale:

My scale works as follows:

1 - Inedible. The kind of food where you don't even finish it because you prefer to be hungry that have an upset stomach.

2 - Basic. This covers the Hostel food, fast food places, and quick dinners at home.

3 - Good. This covers good restaurants, normally the most that I can afford. A "1" hamburger tastes like leather. A "2" hamburger tastes like browned meat-like stuff. A "3" hamburger is thicker, has good quality meat, is cooked the way you want it, and tastes like steak.

4 - This is excellent food, restaurant quality that I go to only on expense account, or if someone takes me out. Also first-class airplane food.

5 - There is no kosher 5 class food, as far as I know (maybe the King David restaurant). 5 is from the best restaurants in the world, and would indicate not only perfect food but a unique experience.

End aside

So when I say that the food was low 4 food, for 3 prices, you now know what I'm talking about. The truth is that there were five items priced within our range on the menu, and the rest of it was out of our range. But that was adequate for us.

And that was Sunday. Peace.

The Mall

The next day, Saarya had originally planned to meet some friends, but it didn't pan out, so he ended up coming to the mall with us. It seemed to me that he once again tolerated rather than enjoyed the experience, but he claims to have been happy to go.

We went to Dizengoff Center, because that's where my eldest daughter Ariella always asked to be dropped off when I pass through Tel Aviv, and I trust her finely tuned shopping instincts.

I loathed it. The center is designed in the similar confusing style in which the "new" Tel Aviv central bus station is designed. The floors make big erratic rings around a central open area, while each ring is actually part of a spiral. Each ring is actually a double ring, and there are seemingly randomly located escalators which only go up, sometimes one, sometimes two flights. And there is a second part of the mall which does the same thing. Throughout, there are random nooks and crannies, side passages, sudden ascents or descents, or walkthoughs. And constantly blaring music and advertisements.

It's like Dante designed a mall.

Tal bought herself a few things with money she had made this summer, while Saarya mostly read. He did buy a book. I bought a newspaper. Although I was trying to keep off the grid, I needed something else to read at the beach.

After the mall, we went back to the Hostel and ate lunch. Tal and I played Havoc.

The Beach

The beaches in Tel Aviv are free, but you have to pay for parking. I spent a lot more than I realized, but still not too much, so hey. Also, there was a stack of chairs and umbrellas in a nice pile, and many people were using them. I thought it would be nice to have some, and only knew that I had to pay for "renting" them when a guy came by ten minutes later to collect money. Again, not too much, so I gave it to him, even though we really didn't need them.

The beach in Tel Aviv is really wonderful. There are no rocks, and little litter. The sand slopes out very gradually and the water was warm. It was also slightly less hot out than the day before. Really, a great experience.

It had been a long time since I had been in salt water. I was a little disconcerted by the saltiness on my face. What was fun was the nice medium sized waves that lifted you up every ten seconds or so.

When I got to the newspaper, I read about the dozen solders killed by a missile in the north, and then I found a small condolence message on the bottom right side of the page addressed to the son of my downstairs neighbor, consoling him on the loss of his father.

He had been sick occasionally, I knew, but he had been happy the last time that I saw him (last week), so it was a bit of a shock, as you can imagine.

We were ready to go at 6:30, but I wanted to see the sun set. It probably would have been very beautiful, but clouds completely obscured the sinking, so no go.

The Second Restaurant

We went home late, showered and changed, and were ready to go to find the Chinese restaurant. I remembered it being called China Lee, and on which street. When we got there, at about 9:10, there was a different restaurant called Shang _____ (something) and a meter or two afterwards a big sign saying that China Lee had moved to such and such a place.

I called them, and they couldn't fit us in until at least 10:30 pm. Meanwhile, this restaurant looked ok, still oriental (Thai), and could take us immediately.

Enter restaurant at 9:30. By 10:30, the restaurant had taken our order.

Apparently, as we were told by the nice couple sitting next to us, the new restaurant was under new management. I don't think it was entirely the management's fault - some blame must go to the waiting staff - but it was grossly mismanaged. Waiters and waitresses ran to and fro, and then back again. There sure looked like there were enough of them, and the restaurant was not at all packed. But it took them a freakin' hour to: ignore us, not give us enough dishes, not give us the "crispy" noshy stuff with sauce, not take our order, and then try to take our order again twice. We got the crispies only after our neighbors complained on our behalf to several passing waitresses.

I bet out loud that they would get the order wrong, and while they didn't bring us anything that they shouldn't have, they completely forgot half the order. So we got the main dishes and the rice, but didn't get the soups or egg rolls.

The food: excellent, excellent. Again, a low to medium 4, although this one was slightly pricier, a high 3, so more of a match.

The staff was apologetic after the first hour, at least. One of the waitresses tried to pour water for us into out glasses just to show how apologetic she was. But they didn't offer us any sort of discount. I left a standard tip. I just don't feel right in punishing the waiting staff for poor management.

We came home rather late. So ended Monday.

The Game Importer and the Game Center

I had read in the paper that the Educational Center for Games would be having some game mornings this week, starting Tuesday, from 9:00 to 13:00. I mentioned the EGCI a few months ago when I first found it. It is run by one Helena King (0544 717 314). She evinces no knowledge of the new games, but she has a good heart and spirit when it comes to games. She claims to get high double digits for various activities on occasions, all kids and their parents, of course. The ECGI has been operational for twenty-five years.

I very much wanted to go and meet her, so that was this morning's activity.

To kill another bird, I had also been in contact with Johnathan from Silver Stars, also regarding donations or discounts for games. I very much wanted to meet him, as well.

Johnathan was more forthcoming than Eli from Freak. While Johnathan has exclusive rights for imports, he very much has his eye set on the long term goals of building up the gaming community - the more people play any games, the better. The more they play his games, whether he was involved in it or not, the better ultimately for business.

He goes to events and does demos. He is also organizing Israel's first board game convention which will be later this month. See his site for more details.

He suggested that he could give me a free copy of the Travel edition of Settlers of Catan, and that a 40% discount on a Hebrew translated copy of Citadels would not be too expensive. I asked him for two copies, and arranged to meet him at the EGCI, which would also serve to introduce the two of them to each other.

Helena, it turns out, had just returned from outside of Israel the night before, and was unaware that the advertisements had run about activities in the game center this week, having thought that she had canceled them before she left. She called me at 9:00 in the morning to return my call, and I told her that she was expected at the center and that I would be there soon, too.

We met at 10:00. The EGCI has several rooms. In two rooms are slews and slews of games, mostly old fashioned, with the occasional gem such as some Go boards or a nice copy of Acquire. Several more rooms stock vintage games, such as puzzles from the 1920's, old first edition Hebrew Monopoly sets and so on. Another room has toys, another has a game library with about a thousand books on play, games, and toys (mostly older stuff), and the last room has a workshop for creating new games.

Helena is an old fashioned motherly sort of British woman, very personable. Johnathan showed up a bit later, and he was also very nice.

We talked plans, about hosting activities, demos, coordination, and so on. We talked about Freak and another store that also carries some of the games, Gilad, other games groups such as the two Go game groups, and others who are involved in gaming in whatever capacity. Johnathan was persuasive in trying to get me to come to more Tel Aviv events, especially the one coming up this month. I promised to make an effort.

Johnathan does this full time. Helena is a volunteer. I paid Johnathan for the games and then he had to go, as he was in the middle of translating more RPG books into Hebrew.

Saarya read his book while Tal and I taught Helena how to play Acquire. Tal also needed to be reminded. Tal won by making the most out of mid game mergers. I out-earned her slightly in the end game, but not enough to win. The score was $58k to $46k. Helena had $26k.

Helena is not a "gamer". She spent a lot of the time during the game teasing Tal about cheating (not seriously), or mispronouncing the hotel chain names. To her, games are not about the games, but about laughing and poking fun. She was a little surprised that even Tal played the game with a certain degree of seriousness.

On the other hand, she was cognizant enough to notice that Acquire was a much better game than Monopoly, and her judgment about the relative value of many of the other games around seemed pretty reasonable.

All in all, a productive and fun morning, although, once again, Saarya ended up only reading his book. I donated the Travel Settlers to Helena, since it didn't have Hebrew rules, and thus I couldn't send it up north.

The Negative Note

When we went to find someplace to eat, Saarya again found fault with the first place that I found. He and I got into a little tiff over the issue. He was then impatient to get home. There was one other activity that he would have enjoyed doing - some sort of Chinese circus - but it was only later in the evening and I deemed it too expensive when we went to check it out. In hindsight, it wasn't really that expensive, and I really should have taken them, but my judgment was impaired at the time.

Tal and I went to look at the river one last time while Saarya waited for us, and then we went home. When I got home, I went straight to a shiva call.

Overall, a fun trip. Interesting and different, and mostly enjoyable.

But no missiles. Rats.

Yehuda

Personal losses from the war, so far:

1) My step-daughter Ariella's step-brother Noam lost a good friend.
2) Gila Meyerson, the P.R. person from MaTaN, a place where Rachel works, lost her son.

May there be no more.

Blogger Blues

I don't know when this post, or my last post, will actually show up, seeing as how Blogger is unable to publish my posts today.

Yesterday's posts took most of the day to publish on bloglines, by which time everyone else had also published the little snippets of news that I had written (the article about the Baby Blues comic showed up as a BGG forum post, article about Game Rules as Art on both BGNews and RCKs blog). Either that, or great minds think alike. (Or great minds steal news tidbits from each other, whatever.)

Jonathan Degann's Journal of Boardgame Design showed up in Blogs 0f Note on Blogger (Update: Gone Gaming has, too, and "The One Hundred" showed up last month):



BoardGameGeek is down, again.

Things fall apart. The center cannot hold.

Meanwhile, continuing with games and chocolate:

Chocolate dice, poker chips, and a playing card

Chocolate checkers and chess set

Yehuda

Game news

My tagline: All the news that BoardGameNews won't print.

1. New Monopoly version: Italian prostitution.

"In Puttanopoly (which roughly translates to Whoresville), eight players become immigrant prostitutes enslaved by the mafia. The game, created by the Committee for Prostitutes' Civil Rights, aims to raise awareness of the growing problem of sex slavery."

[ED: I'm trying to figure out to what age level this game is aimed at.]

2. Only three more shopping days until the first European Chessboxing championship.

"In a chessboxing fight two opponents play alternating rounds of chess and boxing. The contest starts with a round of chess, followed by a boxing round, followed by another round of chess and so on."

[ED: A version of chess at which humans are still better than computers.]

3. Buy chocolate board games (via slashfood)

"This stunning take on the traditional game will make anyone smile! A solid dark chocolate board, with hand drawn milk and white chocolate snakes and ladders. This modern design is based on a spiral that you follow, the first person to reach the centre is the winner. Perfect for presents! Wrapped in cellophane."

Disclaimer: No indication that the products are kosher.

[ED: A version of Snakes and Ladders that is actually useful after it has been played once.]

Yehuda

Technorati tags: board game, board games, chessboxing, chess, boxing

Not my day

Do you ever get those days where only one out of the processors in your brain booted up properly? And the others are spinning around giving off a high-pitched hum? That was my day.

I wandered around trying to make things for shabbat, pick up kids, and so on. I could do one thing at a time, slowly. The moment anyone spoke to me, my brain froze up and began thrashing. I hesitated and milled about like a robot in RoboRally. Eventually I came to, confused as to where I was, picked something up and started again.

My muffins came out like hockey pucks. My meat sauce came out like chunks of rubber. My kids and wife, bless them, were buzzing around my head like mosquitoes.

And to top it off, I have been dethroned from the top position on PR-Game.com .

If it wasn't for shabbat in an hour, I would go back to bed.

Peace,
Yehuda

Too Little of Nothing

* I had to buy a new cell phone, an older model. Rather than pay extra to reactivate my old number I slipped in my son's old phone SIM card which he stopped using when he got a new phone a few years ago. His SIM card was set to display "Run for your life" whenever my wife called him.

* I finally found a new job and gave notice at my current job. I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing, since the terms aren't that different, but I hope to be a little happier at the new job. My old job doesn't finish until Feb 11, and the new one doesn't start until Feb 15. Which gives me only three days respite, and one of those is shabbat.

* We're wrapping up the post for the GG:BGIA nominations summary and should be posting that soon.

* Still finding more blogs and posts about board gaming. I'll write them up when I get a chance.

* Split pitas into halves, sprinkle with olive oil and pizza spices. Toast. Parmesan is optional.

Yehuda

I Wandered Lonely as an Ant

The Wedding

Religious Judaism prescribes certain virtues for all people, but specifically for women: a certain modesty about clothes and actions, a certain kindness and generosity, a certain piousness, and an adherence to the rituals of keeping kosher, keeping shabbat, and taharat mishpacha (for another discussion).

Haredi women take some of these to a deeper level. Regarding modesty, not only will they only wear clothes down to their ankles, lower arms, and collar, they will also hide every hair on their head with a covering of some sort if they are married (your basic religious law allows an inch of a married woman's hair to show in public), they are scrupulous about not being alone behind closed doors with men, they won't sing around men, and so on. Things that your modern religious person might be aware of, but somewhat more lenient about, according to their understanding of the reality of the situation and the actual law. From the outside perspective, it seems that public sexual awareness by haredim is so feared that it becomes all they ever think about. As one of my friends put it, the books written for the haredi public about modesty are so comprehensive and so specific that they border on the pornographic.

From my limited experience, and while admitting that everyone is different, there are roughly two types of haredi women who have been my co-workers. One type tends to be very straight and serious. They are scrupulously honest, often extremely talented, and dedicated workers; they don't fraternize beyond what is required for work and have no sense of humor around men. The other type is more interesting and companionable. While they are just as honest and talented, they don't seem to mind fraternizing with co-workers and can be quite spunky. One of my secret and twisted amusements is working next to a modestly dressed haredi woman as she lets loose with a string of old-world curses in a decidedly immodest manner. Of course, she will apologize for it with a wry smile.

As I mentioned previously, I came unprepared for the work-wedding I was supposed to attend after work. So I went home, lit my menorah, sang to myself, shaved, changed, and headed off to the wedding.

The wedding hall was a hall specifically designed for haredi purposes. The "least" haredi wedding will have separate seating for men and women throughout the evening and tall barriers between the men's side and women's side for all but the actual ceremony. The "most" haredi will have two separate halls altogether. And during the ceremony, the bride wears an opaque veil that covers every inch of her. (Perhaps the best solution is to just have men marry men and women marry women; that way the sexes won't have to mix at all.)

The co-worker who got married is a haredi woman, of course. I don't know her that well, since, while polite and friendly, she is of the non-fraternizing variety. It probably made no difference to her whether I came or not, but I thought I could at least contribute to pleasing her by being part of a group of co-workers. I forgot that I wasn't going to see her and she wasn't going to see me. Oh well, at least I will have an evening sitting with some people I know from work, I thought.

A group of other co-workers came. They poked their noses around the wall, said mazal tov to the bride, and then decided to go. What? Well, they said, they only came to say mazal tov and go. They didn't even wait for the ceremony. That meant that if I decided to stay, I would be basically alone on the men's side surrounded by walls of dark coats and no one to speak to. Feeling betrayed, I decided to go, as well.

So much for the wedding. I hope it was nice and I wish her the best. And for this I turned down going to a special game evening that Binyamin, who has recently been coming to the game group, planned for his friends and neighbors in Beit El. OK, to be honest, I really didn't want to go to Beit El, anyway, especially at night; it is in the wrong part of the West Bank. I did that for five years when I lived in Tekoa, and that was enough.


The Mall

So I now found myself alone, again, and without dinner. I remembered that of my four children, the only one who said they wanted anything in particular for Hanukkah said that they would be happy with a gift certificate from a certain music store in the mall. I decided to treat myself to a rare expenditure and eat out at the mall while buying the certificate. Eating out means spending $12 or so at a restaurant.

I quickly found the store. That done, I remembered that there is a movie theater in the mall and that there are a number of movies that I would love to see, only I never go out to movies. Well, a movie is about $8, and if I recall correctly, after you buy the movie ticket they give you a coupon to eat at some local fast food place for $4.50 . I could do that instead of eating at a fancier place.

The choice was basically between King Kong and Harry Potter 4. I called one of my kids and, after determining that he would be free, I decided to take the three other kids to see HP4 on Thursday as their Hanukkah gift. That left me to see the Kong. I bought the ticket and went to eat at Sbarro.

Sbarro has a kosher joint in Jerusalem. It used to be at one of the main corners in the center of town, but it kept getting blown up by baby-killers, so they moved to the mall. When something non-kosher becomes kosher, they have to choose whether to eliminate the meat or milk from their menu. Seeing as Sbarro makes pizza and pasta, they decided to eliminate the meat.

As I'm intolerant to milk, my only choice was the pasta and tomato sauce with a salad. And salad dressing packets.

Let me tell you about my fascination with salad dressing packets.

I got three salad dressing packets with my salad: Thousand Island, Vinaigrette, and Garlic. All three packets contained 10 grams of dressing, yet they were all different sizes. The garlic is about 2 mm shorter than the vinaigrette, and the vinaigrette is about 3 mm shorter than the thousand island. I'm telling you this because it's important that you know. You may be blind, or you may walk into a Sbarro when the lights are out, and then where would you be without this knowledge?

Furthermore, the ingredient list for these dressings is also of utmost significance. Let's have a looksee:

Garlic/Vinaigrette/Thousand Island
------/----------/---------------
Veg Oil/Water/Veg Oil
Water/Veg Oil/Water
Flavor/Vinegar/Sugar
Eggs/Sugars/Pickle
Sugar/Salt/Flavor
Garlic/Spices/Tomato Sauce
Spices/Lemon/Eggs
Salt/Color/Salt
Colors/Flavor/Red Wine
Preservative/Color/Colors
Preservative/Flavor/Spices
/Preservative/Flavor
/Preservative/Preservative
//Lemon
//Flavor
//Preservative

What do we learn from this:

1) The primary ingredient in a vinaigrette is water. That's also the second ingredient in all other dressings.
2) Salt is not a spice.
3) There is a difference between "Sugar" and "Sugars".
4) All dressings have: water, veg oil, flavor, sugar(s), spices, salt, colors, and two types of preservatives.
5) 10 grams of dressing is enough to cover one lettuce leaf.

Number 4 is the most important piece of knowledge, here; it leads to the creation of the Food Ingredients Game, a game for 2-5 players:

1. All players go to a supermarket and buy ten different items that each include at least two of the following ingredients: water, veg oil, flavor, sugar, spice, salt, color, or preservative. Each player keeps their items secret in a bag.

2. Around a table the starting player chooses an item to take out of his bag. He places it on the table and names one of the eight ingredients. His item must contain that ingredient. Each player chooses an item to place on the table in turn, clockwise. If they have an item that contains that ingredient, they must play one; otherwise they may play any item. The person whose item had the ingredient numerically highest in the list of ingredients collects all of the items. If there is a tie, the last played item wins. If an item doesn't have the ingredient listed at all, it can't win the trick.

3. Play passes to the right, and continues until all ten items have been played.

4. For each item you have won, count minus four points if one of the eight ingredients listed is numerically first in the ingredient list, minus two points for second place, minus one point for third place, and no points otherwise. Each item may score multiple times. However, if three or more items all have the same ingredient at the same level you score those points as positive, instead of negative.

5. The person with the highest score wins.


The Game Store

I still had about a half hour until the movie started, so I did my usual checking out the local game stores. I have found surprises in the past, like TransAmerica, Take 6 and so on. This time I was hit with a wallop of a surprise: Ingenious on the shelf for $36. In Hebrew it is called "Hiburim". Unbelievable. I was sorely tempted, but I'm out of game spending cash.

They had TransAmerica ($26), Blokus ($30), and Travel Blokus ($22), as well as Gobblet, Kid's Gobblet (only three sizes of pieces with colors instead of wood), Quarto, Batik (alternate dropping wooden shaped into a frame until someone can't without his piece sticking out), Sputnik, Pylos, DisX, Abalone, and Talisman (1st edition). Pretty good for a typical trashy toy store.


The Movie

Peter Jackson is back with King Kong, a movie that opens with a condensed version of Shakespeare in Love (before the boat), and then follows with Titanic (on the boat), Lord of the Rings (before Kong comes), Jurassic Park (while searching for Kong), and finally Superman II (back in New York).

It is a fun movie, but it is a bit disjointed, and it is hard to really get into any of the characters other than the big guy, himself. Naomi Watts does a fabulous impression of Nicole Kidman. Unfortunately, she is given virtually no lines in the movie. Instead the movie draws out a number of long wordless shots of her that would have been better with more dialog.

The other "flaw" is that there are way too many serious characters delivering serious pronouncements. Over and over. Jack Black as the film-maker takes his role so seriously that I wanted to slap him a few times. And his last utterance, the last line of the film, was so seriously delivered that I burst out laughing. I think this may have been done deliberately to match the overbearing acting style of old movies, but why? If we can update the effects, why not update the quality of the actors' deliveries?

The remainder of the film is lovely. Aside from aforementioned long wordless shots, it moves along quickly. In fact, the characters get into so many scrapes in scene after scene that you may be exhausted by the time it ends. The effects are amazing, of course. Unlike every other fantastic movie, bullets actually work against the critters, which was a big surprise. The best part is Kong, who steals the show as a thoughtful, considerate, yet manly-man loner type who just wants to rest, but has to keep asserting his right to be King of the Jungle.

The movie ended late, so I'm now groggy. Game night tonight.

Yehuda

Technorati Tags: board game, board games, games, gaming, Israel, Judaism, haredi, Sbarros, salad dressing, movie review, King Kong, King Kong movie

BGG.con: Wednesday, Nov 09

Today my plan was to spend the day in nature. Apparently, close by is a lovely park called Flat Rock Brook, which, while not the Appalachian Trail, looked good enough for my purposes. Unfortunately, the weather decided not to agree with me. While not exactly pouring, the day was cold and threatening rain with dark clouds overhead.

In any case, I had one more important task to do before going out: mail my prototype to a few other game companies. To do that, I had to cut a few more copies, print more rules and bring them to a post office. This is without a car, and the nearest post office is a few miles up.

I got to the post office by 1:00 and then discovered that I had forgotten my directions to the park, which I knew was vaguely in some other direction. And, of course, no one else knew what park I was talking about. Luckily for me, I also vaguely knew that the road I was on eventually passed through the Jewish stores of Teaneck, so I continued on for a while. Eventually I hit an amazing used bookstore and some more kosher food. I had brought food with me, but my one weakness is good eating. I kind of bleed money around food. Really, I am too poor to afford this, and I will be sorry about it when I get back to Israel. Actually, I was sorry about it soon after ordering the food.

It's not that the food was bad. It was a $5.50 takeout Chinese lunch: sweet and sour chicken, white rice, and wonton soup. It's just that the rice was fried instead of white. And, um, even though I asked them if they had included a spoon to go with the food, they, um, hadn't. Which I found out only after walking another several blocks in a vain search for a nice place outside to sit and eat. Seriously, why is the universe withholding spoons from me? Why did I elect to eat outside in the cold on the ground instead of inside the restaurant? Questions, questions. Anyway, I am now sick of fast food, and tomorrow I am eating only sandwiches, fresh fruit, and vegetables.

I eventually made it back home to discover that I had finally made contact with New York gamers and that we will be playing tomorrow evening in Neutral Ground. Yay!

I taught my game to one of the friends I'm staying with (the other one wasn't back from work) and she liked it a lot. Yay again.

The weather looks like partly cloudy and windy for tomorrow, and then sunny on Friday. Guess I'll try again one of those days.

Got an email from Live Oak Games, publishers of Siege Stones, that my entry just missed the top three for their design competition, but that it was a close toss up. Must be because I made up the entire game a few minutes before the deadline finished for submissions and I never got a chance to playtest it. It uses some similar mechanics to Kingdoms, but it has funky scoring, you get to move castles, and you select stones from either end of a line of stones or rearrange the queue of upcoming stones. Whatever. I think they will be publishing the rules online.

And lastly, I submitted my game to BGG for inclusion in the database, with myself as both designer and publisher. Yikes. Let's see if it shows up. Note to self: REALLY have to start working on another game.

Yehuda

BGG.con: Monday, Nov 07

Today was an inefficient day. I was meaning to do a few things in New York City, but I didn't organize them properly, so I just wandered around.

First up, there is a secondary bus system, other than NJ Transit, that takes you into Manhattan from Teaneck and which costs less. The trip in is through beautiful foliage for most of the way, and then over the Hudson River. I had forgotten just what Fall is like, since we don't have one in Israel and I haven't been in the U.S. in the Fall since 1989.

After arriving in Manhattan I got on the easy public transportation system, with complete rail maps posted in every station and also handed out for free to anyone who asks. Trains come every few minutes. And I bought a weekly pass. What a difference.

I was looking forward to some good New York food. Certain things about America are better than Israel, including American Kosher meat. Also, my cultural taste is still American when it comes to some types of food preparation. On the other hand, my financial situation is more limited than the last time I was here, so I am expecting to buy a bit less and choose more conservatively.

What I didn't expect, although I guess that I should have, is that the prices have gone up dramatically since the last time I was here. An eggroll that I'm pretty sure was $1.75 only 4 years ago is now $2.75 . Maybe I am just not remembering properly. I grumbled and bought a meal at Kosher Delight anyway, consoling myself that at least the food would be tasty (in the fast food sense), but ... urkle. It wasn't, really. The Chinese food was bland, the rice dry and boring, and the eggroll almost totally uncooked. Tomorrow I must get a hot dog. They can't mess that up at least, and a hot dog is one of those things that is (or was) much better here.

So I did a lot of walking downtown, through the Diamond District and the Fashion District, all those brand names that I never remember in big letters on the buildings, forgotten again once I pass them. Prices, of course, are unbelievable. FAO Schwartz is a small shadow of what it once was, although two people were giving a demo on the walking piano (see Big).

A few minutes in Central Park, a park that would be nice if it didn't have the smell and sounds of traffic and exhaust, the sight of large buildings towering over the trees, and the lingering fears about muggings and other sorts of craziness. The back to the subway.

I had bought a NY Times hoping it would have an events section, but it didn't. It had two sports sections, however: regular and about the marathon. I had no use for them so I raised them over my head on the subway and shouted:

"Anyone want the sports sections?"

Lots of people looked at me.

Believe me. I am not the weirdest thing on a New York subway.

The couple on my left said they would like it, so there you go.

I rode up north to see some more of my friends from Israel, also in the U.S. for the last year and a half. When I asked about a mutual friend of ours, they didn't know where she was. A few minutes on the Internet and we discover that she is not 500 yards from their apartment and they didn't know it for the last year and a half. This tells you a lot about the insular world of Manhattan. We popped over to see her and her husband. Back to my friends for dinner (simple food, yet much better than lunch).

During dinner, I told them about my game. Dina asked me if I had a game, or could help her create a game, involving Hanukkah that would also teach Math for her students in second grade. I love a challenge, but this one took me all of ten seconds.

"Give each player a board with eight candles, and each candle has a number 2-9. Make a lot of cards with numbers 1-10. Deal each player 4 cards. On the player's turn, s/he can either lay down a number of cards that add/subtract to light any candle they still have unlit and then draw back up to 4 cards, or discard a card and draw one either from the deck or the discard pile. First to light his/her menorah wins. Obviously you have to experiment with the number of cards in the hand to see if this works well."

Bonus points for telling me what game this resembles.

Back to New Jersey.

I am leaving next Sunday. I explored the possibility of ordering some games that I wasn't able to pick up at the con from an online retailer and having them shipped to me before I leave, but unless I am willing to do overnight shipping, (which I'm not, since for the same price I can just ship them to Israel) I may not get them before I leave even with 2-day air.

So, things to organize:

- Mail more prototypes to publishers
- Arrange game in NYC/NJ
- Buy unnecessary items to bring back home
- Trade Magic cards, if possible.
- Other things to do in NY/NJ: inexpensive dance, plays, music, nature walking

Yehuda