Thursday, February 21, 2019

Cavalock and The Lazy Sunday Post

It's like that oldie by the Commodores, Easy like Sunday morning. The Baker-at-Home and me taking it nice and easy on a lazy Sunday afternoon. She (b)aked sure that breakfast for the next couple days was taken care. And that's our homemade kombucha fermenting in the living room.


We still got the coffee beans from Omotesando Japan and grinding, brewing them has kinda been our weekend afternoon thing for awhile now. And then I continue with my Warhammer miniatures painting. 



Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Cavalock and The Book Club Revisitation

After months of being lost in the abyss of illiteracy, I'm finally back to reading my stack of books I purchased last year. Picked up this collection of whimsical Japanese short stories during my last trip to Tokyo. Written in the later part of the 19th century by Lafcadio Hearn, these stories are all about the supernatural, fairy tale-like tales of old Japan, complete with samurais and lost ghosts. They are mostly short and rather straightforward stories reminiscent of the fairy tales that I used to read when young. But there's a certain poise and innocence in those works that just draws me in, know what I mean.



Anyway I have always liked fiction writers from the late 19th to early 20th centuries like Tolkien, Lovecraft, Tanizaki and now Hearn. If anyone has recommendations for short stories from that era, fiction of cos, let me know. Hah!


And speaking of Japanese, a friend treated me to this little bubble tea joint at Vivo City recently. It's called Nayuki and the surprising thing, well at least surprising to me, is that it's from China. I mean, I just thought it's strange that such a high profile Chinese shop would have the Japanese character 'no' in its name, considering their history and all that. I know copying designs, trademarks etc. are common there but kinda weird I thought to be coming up with one that's so ...er... Japanese.

Monday, February 04, 2019

Cavalock and The Sagrada Ice Cream Night

Always fun to introduce folks to the wonderful world of boardgames. Been ages since I had the opportunity to do a boardgames session and dinner at me friend's apartment. And the best thing to go together with boardgames is a good serving of premium ice-cream.  Having one of the brains behind local ice-cream parlour chain Creamier at the dinner party, means we were certainly spoilt for dessert choices that night. There were tubs of Longan and Goji Berries, Roasted Pistachio, Chestnut Rum, Mandarin and Carrot Sorbet and maybe one or two more that I missed out.


Had the Roasted Pistachio and Longan Goji Berries, and I much preferred the latter. Not too sweet and the berries weren't too overpowering which for some strange reason, I was kinda afraid they would be. Not sure if they are already out on sale, but I'll likely drop by Creamier for more scoops in the near future.



So one of the games we played that evening was Sagrada, a game I picked up in London last year. In this boardgame, we are artisans designing stained glass windows. We pick or draft dice to put in our individual window boards, following specific placement rules. Everyone loved how colourful and eye-catching the boards were when the game ended. Wish I had a picture of that! It's fun but a bit of brain burner and when you have five players like we had, it can take awhile to get to your turn as we are all staring at our boards and dice, and trying to figure out which dice to draft into our boards. Like I said earlier, I really enjoy bringing my games out and introducing them to new as well as old friends. My offer still stands.