Tag: myGoodTime

An American Weird Game

Learned that on today’s FreeWheel 5-year anniversary party(hooray~)

Get an inflated balloon. Bite a small hole on it do air can come out, then immediately put your mouth on the hole and inhale as much as possible. Now SPEAK! You will find your voice becomes very weird… Like a baby.

It’s probably because the balloon increased the air pressure in your lung. But it remains mystery to me that how Americans invented this game and why it’s popular here…

Btw, Chris showed us he can bite balloon to make it explode one after another, like nothing happened! Monster!

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Talked with a few ppl, and found the funny voice was not from pressure, but from Helium. See here.

Snow, Prospect Park Lake

It was snowing yesterday. We went to Prospect Park to check snow view. Prospect Park is pretty famous in Brooklyn, designed by the same designer of Manhattan Central Park.

Last summer I came to Prospect Park once with Gregory, for a musical event in memorial of Michael Jackson. There was a huge grass field, loud music and dancing crowds.

This time is a totally different view. Xw and I entered from a small gate from west. Soon we hit a big lake with countless birds. There are wild geese, wild ducks, seagulls, a kind of small black bird, even some swans! Those birds are not afraid of people. When we walk close to the water, some birds swam to us too. Maybe they thought we were going to feed them. I felt sorry we didn’t bring any food. Most birds are comfortable for us to get as close as 1 meter. When we approached even closer, they walked away too. Seems 1 meter is their “safe distance”.

Lots of kids were playing on slopes in the park. Riding various “snow boards” to slide down, laughing and screaming. We saw some kids sit or laid in small “carts” and fathers were dragging them in the park, very cute.

New York Aquarium

New York Aquarium is at the south end of Brooklyn, beside a nice beach. It is chilly today, but still fun to have a short walk by the sea. Some guys were feeding seagulls with bread. A few pigeons mingled there in a funny way.

The aquarium self is not big. Compared to Monterey Bay Aquarium, this one is tiny. However, popular animals are all here! Sea lion, sea otter, seal, shark, penguin, sea turtle, jellyfish… The most special animal here is seahorse! This is the first time I see live seahorse. Their “wings” on the back shake very fast, like bee or butterfly, to push them forward in the water. Their tails curl round sea weed or others’ tails, like snakes or eels. Seahorses have a very delicate and beautiful look, pretty amazing.

seahorse

This aquarium has small sea lion shows and some animal feeding today. We watched sea lion, sea otter and penguin feeding. Sea otter is always the cutest of the cutest, lol. Penguins look so dumb, 4 of them walk in a queue, one after another. And a big seagull waits beside them during feeding, hoping to get some leftover…

xw and Shark

Chicago the Musical

Last Thursday was xw’s birthday. We watched her first broadway show – Chicago!

The dinner place was an old French restaurant in theatre district – Tout Va Bien. It’s very close to most famous big theaters. 6:30 to 7:30 is probably its most busy hours, because lots of customers come here to have dinner before shows at 8pm. This restaurant even has a “pre-theater” prix-fixe menu, for around 26$. We were quite satisfied with the food there. Space is a little tight though. Still a fair choice before a broadway show.

The “special” thing of this dinner, is a handsome gay couple sitting beside us. We were basically sharing a 4-ppl table, so xw kept overhearing them talking… They were both dance teachers, dressed nicely. It’s obvious this is a couple because they had a lip kiss over the table…

OK, back to musical. Chicago is a nice show. I would give it 8.5/10. If Mamma Mia is about sing and dance, Billy Elliot is about boy and ballet, the key word of this show is definitely SEXY. Long leg women and six-pack men, broadway level dancing and singing. Very enjoyable show!

I do like the main actress (Charlotte d’Amboise, starring Roxie) very much. She has attractive voice, brilliant dancing and cute acting style. Hard to believe she is already 47 years old!

Some Patterns in Dixit

Dixit has been a really popular party game since we came to US. On New Years Eve I taught some American to play that. It was a bit tough to explain this game to them, especially about how to score. However, the interesting part is how they put together the “word”. One of them said an artist name, because the picture is related to the most famous art of this artist. This is a working way, as long as someone knows the artist, but not very fun. Because it turns the fun game to a knowledge contest.

So I started to think about a question: what common patterns do ppl use in Dixit? Here is my list.

  • Overall feeling. “Cold”, “Dark”, “Lonely”, etc. Novice choices. Not very interesting.
  • Trivial places. Small part in a messy picture, count of something, etc. Not very interesting either, usually used when can’t think of something better.
  • Background. Build a story around one picture, then say something about your story. Needs powerful imagination!
  • Twist. This is a really fun way. Basically it is your “very own, very special” understanding of a picture. For example a pink bell may make you think of a condom?
  • Connection. A unicorn can be connected to fairy tale? fairy tale connects to Denmark? Multiple levels of connection could lead to unexpected result..

What else pattern do you have?