and on labour day thou shalt play

i don't really know much about the origins of labour day - i'm just happy that it's a public holiday which means i don't need to go to work, i can sleep in, and i can play :) i guess it's fitting that labour day celebrates (in part?) the move towards less work, which you could say leaves more time for play :p

although i've lived in australia for most of my life, there are a few games/activities which i only first tried when i've travelled outside of australia. one example is (tenpin) bowling - there are a number of bowling centres around town, but i didn't bowl a single ball in australia until i had first bowled a few games in taiwan, singapore and malaysia (and i think that was all during the one holiday). since then i've played a few games in australia, and my aim is always just to break triple figures - something i don't manage all the time...

another example is the board game risk, which i've only played once in singapore last december. it was quite an unexpected thing as i'd dropped in on a group of strangers and they were about to start a game so i joined in. dropped in on another group of people today (not strangers this time) and they were about to start a game of risk too, so i played my second game. this time i managed to win, hehe... with a fair amount of luck on my side i might add :p

for dinner, we walked out of a japanese joint cos the food we wanted to order was going to take 40 minutes (probably should have asked before we sat down), and settled on coffee square. i've been here a few times and never really felt comfortable there cos the joint does not feel very english friendly - maybe it's ok for the non-chinese who eat there, but as a chinese person who doesn't speak cantonese in this honkie establishment, i feel a lack of welcome and service. tonight they got my order wrong, which meant waiting an extra 20 mins for the right dish to be brought out, by which time my friends were either fully or mostly through their meals. at least it tasted pretty nice, and was filling.

then it was back to the house... js had brought his ps2 and i happened to ask if there was anything easier to play (he was playing some dragonball game in between his turns at risk, and i pretty much stopped playing computer/video games when they got beyond having 2 or 3 buttons to control :p). this was when i had my first experience with the eye toy! we fired up eye toy: play and we had quite some fun waving our arms about and generally getting a bit of a work out - so there was some amount of labour involved after all! ;)