Building Work

It's a few days at home for us all. There is building work going on. We are doubling the size of the kitchen at the rear and putting up an outside roof with a tiled area for outside lunches and parties. We also had the rear wall reinforced and a drainage system that picks up water from all around the house and discharges it into the street at the front. The builder is a family friend and a lovely guy. They work fast and hard. Every day there has been substantial progress made. The roof is up already and the existing kitchen stripped and one wall knoked down to ajoin the extension. All quite exciting really, as all these things (buying the house, having extensions etc. are suddenly a reality). A bit different to the normal renting, living from paycheck to paycheck as is the norm.

Indeed, I have positively spoiled myself with games from Battlefield Bangkok. The kind chap, Chris from UK, I believe and a Tai Kuondo expert runs the shop and is super kind with lightening  efficiency. My games are ordered from overseas, arrive and are dispatched the moment I transfer the money, which isn't a lot for a few games. I just ordered a paint set from Games Workshop (Peter may remember) to coat all my lovely Descent fantasy figures. I bought a super lamp for close-up work; very bright and looks like a robot.

There is a package arriving tomorrow with two expansions for Descent (Trollfens and Halls of Nerekhall) and two entire fleets of Star Wars ship, with which I can commence galactic warfare. In the mail is 2 core sets, X-Wing and TIE fighter expansions, 2x B-Wing expansion, Millenium Falcon and Slave 1. I will be able to conduct a fleet of 7 TIE fighters or 4 X-Wings in a single battle. Quite awesome.

There are more ships on back order (they have to make another batch) of Vader's ship, Y-Wings (my fav), TIE interceptors and Rebel transports, as seen in Hoth escape in Empire Strikes Back.

I have been spending soothing moments neatly trimming the various cards and really look forward to painting goblins and heroes. I envisage a captivating experience.

Actually, one reason for getting these games is to break up the "drinking every night" culture that exists here; to do something different, though I, for one, got blind on the initial game. I blame it on my nerves.

Enough.

Descent Pix

 

Harry

 

 

Arun

 

Jon

Descent

Hosted the first game in Descent last night.

As night fell, a massive downpour and powercut sent by God did it's best to deter the young adventurers. Two were forced to turn back. Jon and Harry came riding through and an emergency call to Arun saw him coming to the rescue. Thus, the brave party consisted of three fine warriors; a fighter, a mage and a thief.

Many beers were drunk, the party fought bravely and sent the mighty Ettin, Mauler to his death. Arun getting the final death throw in with his handy knives.

It was a lot more fun than I expected actually and I drank way too much beer, forgetting all restrictions in the blinding fun that ensured.

I woke up downstairs at some early hour and crawled into bed.

In the morning receiving condeming look s from wife and daughter.

Oh well. It was huge fun.

Mid Term

Coming up to exam week thank god.

It's been lots of work and what with Grace, there has been little time for any escape.

I started lifting some weights which has revitalised me somewhat though as soon as I sit down from working, I immediately feel very tired, and in no mood for any activity as I would like to do.

I have been waiting weeks for my Star Wars spaceships to arrive which is a bit of a pisser and I have not felt the urge to attempt getting friends together for my other games. I expect I will be dead before that time arrives. Horrific, I know.

I love these games that I have bought. I hope I get passed the point of merely gazing at all the pieces and imagining actually playing a game. Bloody Hell.

I actually watched a movie two nights ago. First in ages. It was shite but quite fun; Non Stop with Irish rogue Liam Neeson. I think they have lost the abilty to make movies. The French Connection lies in my collection awaiting a viewing.

Board Games

Always loved games and now, with the discovery of Battlefield Bangkok, I now have a direct link to the world of games.

My superb table and uber comfy chairs are being delivered today. The room has air con and we are almost ready to launch.

Here's a flavour of what I have on offer so far;

 

 

Game Room

We went out looking at furniture today. Grace ran around trying all the bed and chairs. Oi found a bed she likes and I found a really cool table and chairs for board games. I'm uber-excited and hopefully tomorrow we will go back with a big wad of cash and make some purchases. Luckily, we both like staying at home and are happy to invest cash into making our home as great as possible. Once we have the building work complete and have the outside tiled dining area complete with uber-great drinking table we will be able to have fun times outside.

More board games have been ordered from Bangkok.

Building Work

Saturday morning and the garden is full of workmen.

The rear of the garden is falling away as we are on the edge of the site. Thus, a retaining wall has to be erected. Funnily enough, retaining walls were the first diagram I drew when I started work at EHDC (East Hants Darts Club). So I know a little bit about them.

In addition to this, we will also extend the kitchen and create a roofed outside area with drinking table etc. And a roof over the balcony on the first floor. I plan to get an exercise bike as I keep getting bitten by dogs when I venture out on my bicycle.

All quite exciting really and Oi is getting mighty proud of her home, and Grace just skips about like a princess demanding olives and assorted snacks.

I bought Descent: Journeys in the Dark board game, mail order from a kind American chap in Bangkok who runs Battlefield Bangkok games shop. I have been play testing it ready for the launch of the Chumphon Winkle's Patch Chinese Board Games Club. The two air con units we hauled up from Hat Yai will finish off the prestigious Games Room. Oi has kindly agreed to me taking command of an entire room! I got the drill out and put up my Edward Hopper and Henri Rousseau pictures. I'll probably get a couple more made as they are cheap to produce. I have my eye on the Dark Assassin card as a possible picture. I already have the wonderful Carcassonne game, which was my carefully selected present to myself when we went to England three or four years ago. My cherished treasure, and Oi plays it online on the ipad every day, then there is Descent which brings back D&D style dungeon crawling, and then on order is Star Wars X-Wing minuatures game which gets top reviews for being super easy to play but incredibly fun. It means I get to collect stuff again which was such an exciting part of my youth - collecting stuff. Back then

I have finally voluntarily graduated to Pink Floyd as my music of choice. It just sits awesomely with whatever activity I am doing. This week I had a molar removed which is still horribly painful. Oi suggested I took a day off work which I did and spent a very pleasant day laminating cards from Descent. I am definitely venturing back into hobbies from my early teens and now I have been able to cancel all but one of my private classes which is a Godsend. The one i kept (an hour on Friday evening) is just to keep in touch with the kind people who run the language centre.

It definitely knackers me out at my day job; 22 teaching hours a week, Wed, Thurs, Fri 5 hours of class. Fortunately I am in total control of the classroom and now have a fellow gamer Thai assistant to help me. His name is Port.

I also hit the secretary at school with a bunch of requests; new whiteboard, various things fixed - all of which have been done. And I've been knocking out some pretty good lessons which have gone down well; plenty of speaking exercises and reading to sort out the kids who never got it sorted. I have also issued writing exercises and publicly scorned anyone with bad hand writing.

Oh Well. that's enogh for now.