B12 is prevalent in the diet, but not everybody has the so-called “intrinsic factor” that permits the body to actually process it. If you lack it it’s very difficult to get enough B12 no matter what you eat. (Ask me how I know…)

I don’t know these games (I’m out of the loop on commercial and board games for the past 20-odd years, sadly) but I have loved this mechanism since playing the earliest rummy-family games from China. (Majiang is the most recent of a loooooooooooooooooong line of build-and-discard games in China.) The added spice of worrying if someone is going to use your discard to improve their hand or even complete it before you can do yours is part of why I like playing the rummy family.

Oh wow. The sheer amount of tradition surrounding this, with a myriad of local variation, is impossible to keep up with. Then they make up “traditions” on the fly as well. It’s so much fun!

Have your B12 levels checked. (Don’t assume you have a B-vitamin shortage, GET IT TESTED.)

I saw someone with no fucks left to give play every step and yes, it is serious popcorn time when it happens.

You’d call it Chinese New Year.

There’s a whole lot of food involved. SO MUCH FOOD! 😱

Once you hand in notice you can start playing games so that they hustle you out the door with alacrity; you won’t have to stay for months.

First, the old tried and true tool: work to rule. Do your job, as described, and no more.

Second, the incompetence gambit. Do your job BADLY. Do what’s asked of you, but make dumb mistakes, do things slowly, “accidentally” hand in first draughts (with the correct draught already on your computer so you can produce it when they spot the problem…if they spot the problem in the first place!). You know, that kind of thing. If you’re training your replacement, key pieces of misinformation are always fun to insert.

Third, make sure all communications are in something more substantial than speech. If they tell you something vocally, follow up with email summarizing the conversation and what action items you took from the conversation. Ask them to confirm that your understanding was correct so there’s records instead of he said/she said. (This is both protection for yourself and fun.) Tinpot dictators really hate being held to account (it’s why they favour only verbal communications!), so torture her.

Finally you can play the tardy/absentee game. Come to work increasingly late. Leave work increasingly early. When the complaints start, you can make a subgame with the third technique, driving your nemesis to distraction as you roll this activity back … only to roll it forward again to test resolve and boundaries.

I mean what’s she going to do? Fire you?

I’m in the beginning stages of Spring Festival. I’ve had three feasts in five days, plus the immediate family feast (which we could better control the contents of).

I think I’ve gained about 15kg. But in the good way!

I’m still here too.

I use water and soap. For everything. Including my hair. Unscented soap with no industrial chemicals to make it “smell good”.

I horrify my coworkers when I tell them this. They’re convinced my hair is going to fall out, and that my skin will dry out and slough off despite literally years of me not showing any of this.

I’m pretty sure the makeup industry is purely a scam.

The pipes tend to be insulated, the temperatures don’t really get very low (coldest I’ve ever seen is -10° and that was for a couple of hours), and that’s at night, and the cold “season” is very short. It takes time to freeze pipes, and here it just doesn’t get cold enough to do that.

That’s the most polite way I’ve ever seen of edging away from my obsessive tendencies. 😀

We used, as I said above, a PU (PVC? I don’t know, I’m not a polymer expert) sheet the same size as the table to protect the glass under it. 1.5mm is all you need, it rolls up nicely to set aside, and you can put maps and stuff under it to keep it visible but protected.

And the metal dice won’t shatter your tabletop like one evil d10 did mine. 😬

Central China. Wuhan to be specific. If you’re going to visit, go to the south. It’s pleasantly warm in winter. Or bundle up and go north. They heat their homes in the north. It’s the poor suckers near the Yangtze that get screwed.

I caught the 2009 total eclipse here and it was awe-inspiring. It was also the longest solar eclipse expected for the 21st century at 6 minutes, 39 seconds, so it made a deep impression on everybody standing on the roof of the apartment block to watch it.

I don’t wish to see a second, though, because the next one will be in the year 2200 and that would mean I’d still be alive in 200 years. Not something I want.

I’ve seen the Aurora Borealis hundreds of times. (Living in the high arctic does that to you.) But I have heard them only once.

I’d like to hear them again.

Usually only the one, but if I’m going to run a game I’ll bring several sets because there’s always someone (possibly more than one) who doesn’t have one.

And yes, there’s no insulation anywhere here. The walls are mostly concrete (with plaster, etc. over top, natch) and when cold weather hits actively start to radiate cold. (I know, I know, technically they’re sucking heat out, but it FEELS radiative!). All the windows are single-glaze and they’re not particularly well-sealed either, so drafts are common.

Blue is supposed to be the colour, yes. The verbiage is that “blue is an ancient symbol—dating back to Ancient Rome—representing love, purity, and fidelity”. This is, however, absolute poppycock. Blue was a symbol of fidelity, this is true, but to the emperor, not in love. And indeed there is no single colour that symbolizes all three things in Roman times.

White symbolized purity and innocence. Yellow represented marriage and fidelity. Red represented violence (Mars), yes, but also passion and love. Green represented beauty, fertility, and love. Purple represented passion, but chiefly reserved for the royal classes.

Blue was not related to any kind of love symbolism whatsoever. The Victorians just made stuff up. Again. Like the so-called “medieval” torture devices (like iron maidens, etc.)

Central heating (and insulation) is not common here. And cold weather rarely lasts longer than two weeks. We make do with small space heaters at need and I’ve got the space heater I’m using under my desk right now, keeping my legs nice and toasty. But the thick wooden desk is insulating quite well from the heat source, sadly.

3D printing in metals of various kinds is pretty common these days.

As the proud (and almost exclusive) user of metal dice¹, however, let me warn you that metal dice have a few problems.

1. As others have noted, you can really scar the wood of tables. What they didn’t note is that they can also, if they land just wrong, break glass. I have a nice coffee table that had a glass overlay about 5mm thick or so. (Note the past tense.) One of my d10s landed JUST WRONG, apparently on a hidden flaw that left a stress point, and that lovely glass overlay broke into three large shards. Replacing that was too expensive for my tastes. The solution was to buy a transparent PU (I think?) cover to the same dimensions—only 1.5mm thick was more than enough—and always unroll that over the replacement glass. But you have to be aware of just how damaging metal dice can be. (Other alternatives include using dice towers, rolling bowls, etc., but the PU cover has an added bonus of letting you put key documents, maps, etc. under it for quick reference without worrying about getting pizza grease on it.

2. They’re heavy. Indeed that’s part of their appeal, but if you carry multiple sets it can get a bit unpleasant. Sometimes my purse feels like I’m carrying several sets of knuckle dusters or something.

3. This is one I haven’t heard comments on, but they get very cold in chill environments. Were I playing today (3°C at my desk at the moment) I’d use plastic dice.

¹ E.g.: https://i.imgur.com/X11DeQ2.jpg