[Spoilers] PBEM 62 - Ichabod's Thread, feat. Mardoc and retep

[GermanJoey]

Is there any reason Dazed doesn't report his games?

[Ichabod]

Is there any reason Dazed doesn't report his games?

Just lack of time, I believe. He used to report, I remember that I ded-lurked him in a game he won.

[Mardoc]

Ok, flavors you don't have yet (and that I don't know yet if I like):
Golden Imperial Yunnan
Nilgiri
Kenilworth Estate (Kandy)
Keemun Superior
Rembeng Estate Assam
Nuwara Eliya Estate
Jasmine
Pu-erh
Lung Ching
Lychee
Tikuanyin
Gunpowder Green

Some of those make better names than others, I admit.

[Molach]

Nicely done, awesome stats and a clean war.

Guangzhou was a major exporter of tea to europe back in the days, so naturally it are belong to you now.

Nice to pay for it, if THH has any use for gold he'll probably take it. But he has perhaps nothing to upgrade, and no need for cash funding teching.

[Ichabod]

Ok, flavors you don't have yet (and that I don't know yet if I like):
Golden Imperial Yunnan
Nilgiri
Kenilworth Estate (Kandy)
Keemun Superior
Rembeng Estate Assam
Nuwara Eliya Estate
Jasmine
Pu-erh
Lung Ching
Lychee
Tikuanyin
Gunpowder Green

Some of those make better names than others, I admit.

Thanks, Mardoc. I don't know most of these flavours (gunpowder green makes me really curious).

Nicely done, awesome stats and a clean war.

Guangzhou was a major exporter of tea to europe back in the days, so naturally it are belong to you now.

Nice to pay for it, if THH has any use for gold he'll probably take it. But he has perhaps nothing to upgrade, and no need for cash funding teching.

Good catch, didn't realize the irony of attacking China (and, later, probably India), as a tea-loving England. it really fits the roleplay.

In the game, the main thing for me is getting that silver. It's not that much of a reach, since, as you can see, my borders where actually touching the city tile. It'll also be nice to get a culture headstart against Dazed, competing for that beautiful riverside corn. Finally, this city makes it really awkward for Dazed to fit Nanjing (the city SW of Guangzhou) into his land, so that city will most likely be mine even before a likely knight attack.

[Ichabod]

Long time no update, right? Well, long time no turn received too. The end of the year rush is owning my opponents, which is understandable. My own work is a bit more busy than usual, but that's not saying much. And I'm not a very christmas-y person, so I don't need to buy gifts, nor send 'em.

Speaking of which, the idea of sending/receiving a gift through the mail has a sort of a "nostalgic fairy tale" vibe for me, like the idea of a grandma telling a story for a kid, while he drinks hot cocoa, or the idea of a childhood love, with a heart and two letters cut into a tree - yes, I've seen this in a whole bunch of american movies, to the point that I kind of consider it a memory of my own, but it never happened in real life. I may be completely off, but I think American families tend to be way more scattered across the country (which explain sending gifts through mail); here, we hardly see families not living in the same city, let alone in a different state. Not sure why I'm saying all this, guess it's just the lack of turns...

Another funny thing is that, here in Brazil, we are starting to import american holydays. A lot of people already celebrate halloween, some already celebrate Valentine's Day (which makes it the more expensive to have a relationship, because we already have a "couple's day", in a different date) and, recently, we started seeing Black Friday sales too (which, in a lot of places, is just a trap, the famous "everything for half of two times the price"). I wonder how long until we start celebrating Thanksgiving, for all the sense that'll make...

Finally, each year I celebrate Christmas even less. I just don't like the idea of showing love by buying an Iphone 6, as much as I dislike marketing that says i'm only going to be happy when I drive a BMW, when I drink a Blue Label, when I don't have dandruff and when all my posts in facebook are liked +1000 times (well, I guess I'd probably be more happy if I dated Gisele Bündchen or some other supermodel, but, frankly, I have my doubts). Yeah, I know it's not all about that and when (if) I have kids, I'll probably give them gifts, but I'm facing a sort of a cinic period.

Here's the part where I finish of by saying that a turn would be a sufficient christmas present for me.

[Dreylin]

I'm with you in general, but yeah, small kids means you can't escape the holidays - fortunately my wife is fairly enthusiastic & organised and I can search for my 1 piece of inspiration and get away with a supporting role!

I've been out of the UK for nearly 10yrs now and I must admit I was surprised/disgusted to find out that Black Friday was a thing over there now as well. And of course now there's Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday, and I bet that Sat & Sun have "things" as well. <sigh>

Of course in Brasil you have the best export-holiday of all in Carnaval; bringing gyrating semi-naked fit young things to the World for many years!

Anyway, I'll make sure to set aside 10mins per day to keep the PBEM63 turns rolling so you have at least something to do...

[wetbandit]

Make sure you lobby for the adoption of American Thanksgiving (last Thursday of November) rather than Canadian Thanksgiving (2nd Monday of October) as to have the de facto four-day holiday.

I increasingly don't understand Halloween for anyone but children and teenagers. It's a fantastic way to make money for certain companies, getting people to spend $50-$70 on a throwaway Gladiator costume made somewhere else for pennies. I was surprised to hear that it is matriculating to other countries, but after my inner cynic reached me, with that type of profit margin, why wouldn't it be pushed everywhere.

I imagine many people still find religious value in Christmas. For me, It's always been the time to go back home and see people, reconnect after a year apart. I guess I confirm part of your thoughts, then.

[Ichabod]

I have nothing against people that find value on Christmas, I actually admire them, because sharing love and happiness is never wrong. But, in my current context, Christmas doesn't have such a meaning to me, and it kind of bothers me to see that people are using this meaning to gain profit (yeah, that's how the world rolls, but still...). It's the old TV commercial, where a kid hugs his smiling parents after he gets his gift. The only christmas commercials that don't show gifts are the ones selling turkey (or whatever is the chosen christmas food on your country), because they are all about the table.

And since I'm divagating here, it must be hard to raise kids in this world. I have a very good friend that works as a teacher in the school where I studied for all my school life. It's a private school, and the tuition (not sure if that's the appropriate term) is pretty high (not absurdly, but enough to make it that just a small percentage of the population can afford it) - that's the only way to get a decent education in Brazil, since most public schools are cathastrofic. Anyway, he mentioned in some of our conversations that kids were being laughed at because their parents couldn't afford to give them the newest generation of cell-phones, tablets and what have you. This is mind-blowing... And I wonder how difficult it is to tell a kid that a last gen cell-phone doesn't define his worth, nor the amount of love he receives from his family, especially when he hears this all the time in most medias around. For that, my advice to all the parents in the world is to give Calvin and Hobbes for them to read from a very young age.

Of course, this is all first world problems, at least from what we see here, but even so. Interestingly enough, I have a friend that studied with me in the same school since first grade. His family had to make great sacrifices to pay for the tuition of the school, which they did to give him a better future. He played the violin from a young age and he worked a lot to get accepted at a good music college, which isn't that easy around here (probably not as difficult as in the US, but it's hard to compare). Anyway, he had a scholarship for all his school life, because even with the sacrifices his family made (which I've seen first hand, since I was always pestering him in his house), the tutition was too high. Anyway, to the point. On the last year of school, the school decided to suspend his scholarship, even though he had good grades and played in the school orchestra, on the basis that too much people had scholarships. Meanwhile, some of my dearest collegues in school (and by this, I mean that I hated them, for a variety of reasons), were going to keep they scholarships, even though their families could afford the best cars (my friend's family didn't even have a car), a summer house on the beach and a lot of other conforts. And they were terrible students, that only managed to pass the year because it was incredibly easy to do so (even if you didn't manage to get a 5 out of 10 in your final school grade you could still succeed), while constantly pestering other students and being dicks. My friend only managed to keep his scholarship because one of the members of the parents and teachers counsel vouched for him, that he was extremely dedicated and deserved it.

That makes me almost lose it. It's too much bullshit how things work around here. If you have lots of money, you are more likely to get a scholarship than if you don't have lots of money (and, yes, that's exactly the reason why those guys were more favoured to keep their scholarships, because their parents were big shots). I just recently found out about this, but if I did it during my school years, i'd probably get completely crazy and try to tear the school apart (I was pretty rebellious back then, just having finished "The Catcher in the Rye" and all that).

And, of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. And that's the problems of the part of society that has a chance in life. The biggest problem here is that most of the society doesn't.

Well, not sure about where all of this came from, but there you have it. A bit of my considerations regarding the way society works here in Brazil (and perhaps the rest of the world, but I've never been to other countries, so I can't really say).

(still no turn)

[Mardoc]

kids were being laughed at because their parents couldn't afford to give them the newest generation of cell-phones, tablets and what have you.

In my experience, everyone gets laughed at in school. If it's not this, it'll be their name, or the way they walk, or the things they enjoy...basically whatever it takes to get a rise out of them. It wasn't until high school that people started behaving with a bit more empathy.

As for gifts: the best gift is a thing I would have wanted to buy for myself, if I knew it existed. More about the thought and knowledge that goes into it, than about the thing itself. But that takes the right person to do the shopping. Second best is something I want but can't quite justify the cost to myself - that's the category I'm most often in when giving.