The Prepping Thread - A Newer Beginning ;)

DigForVictory

No, but next time you’re travelling I may try to wrangle a cheap seat nearby.
We don’t play to a very high standard at all but love it. I have a bamboo & something set, plus a Bakelite set & have been found engrossed on a charity shop floor laying out All the pieces & then not buying as no gardens.

My cousin has asked if I find another if I ’d consider offsite storage but I think he think I pay over a tenner for these things!
(Well, I do, occasionally, but the sets have to be very beautiful to eye & fingertip as well as having glorious gardens...)

thriftwizard

No gardens? Probably Japanese, they don't tend to use them.

The cardboard set is very dinky & lightweight; I travel very light when going somewhere warm! And it's been worth the few grams it weighs in gold entertaining the troops when they're hot & tired & not inclined to go clubbing or watch foreign TV in the evenings. One year I even took a charkha "cigar-box" spinning wheel & some fibre - I was taking part in Ravelry's Tour de Fleece at the time - which led to some very interesting discussions with Spanish customs. Well, I knew the Spanish for spinning wheel, but they didn't until I demonstrated it. I'm still amused to have been likened to Sleeping Beauty, aged 50-something!

DigForVictory

The Mah Jongg set for me every time - I can only hand spin & that with persistent effort & deplorable language. Besides where else can you suggest "let's build a wall" and get several pairs of hands jumping to help & few dubious political jokes?! It's a lovely game & you can easily accommodate up to another 4 observing "helping" & learning! The children also pick up a few other nice habits like no food or drink or phones at the table, language to be courteous & if anyone must bet, they can (a) get the maths right & (b) buy or make every player a drink at the end of the game. (One game ended with the maths post-grad dutifully having their hot chocolate making critiqued by a 7 year old in pajamas & pigtails - some players just do not like being speculated on!)

Japanese? Intriguing but my lot love both the beauty and the points!

Eyeing that cabinet set on eBay - beautiful-ish but where are the racks?! Need them to build the all & hold the tiles to play!

ivyleaf

This has made intriguing reading, ladies. I know absolutely nothing about Mah Jongg

GreyQueen

DforV, am I to read that the maths post-grad got the sums wrong? Teach teaches archery as a leisure subject to some boffins up at the uni. Science post-grads with (probably) IQs into the stratosphere.


They shoot 4 arrows at a time. The maximum possible score per arrow is 10, should it hit the exact centre of the target. They regularly end up adding 4 arrows' worth of points and coming out above 40.


Proof that you can be very clever about some things and incredibly stupid about other, much simpler, things........ :rotfl:

thriftwizard

This has made intriguing reading, ladies. I know absolutely nothing about Mah Jongg

The great thing about Mah Jongg is that it's such an equal balance between luck & skill; most games are much more of one than the other. In MJ, you can have all the skill in the world & be building a fabulous, high-scoring hand, but be pipped to the post by someone who has just been lucky & scraped in by the skin of their teeth. They will be immune to "paying" for your high score (which won't be nearly as high as it would have been, had you won) but equally they won't have earned the points that they could have had with a bit more patience. It's entirely possible for the winner to earn less points than someone who's been aiming for a high score, but they will also lose less than the other players.

So it all balances out & is full of life lessons; if you try to build a high-scoring hand but don't get the tiles you need, you'll get nowhere. By & large, you need to build on what you've been dealt, and seize any opportunities that come your way, which isn't always easy when everyone around you is chattering & laughing. However sometimes you can make a killing by ignoring a low-scoring opportunity and hanging on for something better; that's where the skill comes in, guessing what your opponents might be hanging onto or be about to discard. Life in a nutshell!

It's played, in various different-but-similar versions, in China and Japan, but also in the States, where there are a number of variations of the rules that skew the game towards skill & high scores. Mostly unnecessarily complicated, IMHO!

DigForVictory

ivyleaf, ask around. You'll be intrigued at who knows & plays (& who thinks it's just a computer graphics showcase). It's easy to learn the basics and then you can devote time to mastering it or just enjoying!

thriftwizard, a pal of mine plays MJ and something call 'limit hands' - about which I treasure my ignorance. She still plays with me & mine as a nursery game (as that is pretty much our level) and much is the rejoicing.

The really straightforward plastic sets may not be beautiful, (indeed some even label the seasons & gardens and the winds & dragons which is dumbing down a step too far for me) but it's more intriguing than cards and still playable by the visually impaired with a little practice. (A fingertip that can manage braille can manage the crude embossing!)

GQ, yep, that supersmart Oxbridge maths postgrad got the score wrong. Even as the pigtailed 7 year old was using both hands and scrunching toes as a reminder - he was forgiven as the hot chocolate was made with scrupulous care, served with grace and m'father (now an Extraordinary Don, not that he ever was your typical ivory towered occupant) was chortling gently in his armchair. I don't think that lesson in humility needed mentioning again, but sometimes a sibling will squawk "check or chocolate!" & we all break into nostalgic grins... (Not that MJ & hot chocolate have any Formal correlation - it's just a family thing.)

In The Event, I'd rather be playing MJ by candlelight than cards. Plus you can spend Ages with the tiles face down trying to remember pairs. Small girls trying to dodge bedtime would "help put tiles away" in a 144 tile attempt thus to delay the inevitable! Building towers was a no-no - we were told firmly we had Lego for that - another case of MJ instilling good conduct in the young by firm precepts at an early age.

(Cards are very portable and there are still more games that can be played. Shrewd planning includes both?)

thriftwizard

DfV, we too sometimes play with "limit hands" - just means there's a mutually-agreed limit to the high scores, say 400 (you can, and I have, achieve 4,000+) which makes for a more even & long-lasting game, rather than one player scooping the whole pot near the start of the evening & everyone else thinking they'll never catch up. But it kind of spoils the maths...

And for anyone else planning to take 5-8 young people off to the sun for a couple of weeks: rental villas at the more sensibly-priced end of the market do usually have a few packs of cards - though they won't necessarily be complete - but entertainments are often limited to those, regional TV, a couple of teenage footballers' "autobiographies" and a couple of bonkbuster novels, the latter not necessarily in English. It's worth having a few tricks up your sleeve...

DryTheRain

Interesting food for thought, was subsequently musing on hot humid climes only to spot a huge mozz trying to attach itself to my wrist, perhaps our insect overlords know more than we think?!

So what's everyone been up to on the prepping front over the weekend - redoubling efforts, having a bit of a breather or chucking a few extra tins in as usual?

Carer and I made brexit stroganoff on Friday night, using TVP for the first time. It was v.good indeed and super cheap compared to using meat. Howled with laughter at Giles Wemmbley Hogg does Article 50, can our favourite posh tw*t pull it off or will he be rumbled by a ritter sport? Tune in to iplayer or that annoying Sounds thingummy to find out..

GreyQueen

This weekend, as on most weekdays after work, my form of prepping involves allotment gardening. Getting soil ready to plant to little seeds mid-month, big things like broad beans were autumn-sown and spuds went in on 24th, leek seedlings are in the cold frame, the last of the 2018 leeks and parsnips are still to be harvested.


I'm contemplating trying celery for the first time, I eat it most days and, if I can make a go of it, it would be both MSE and also, should I be able to eat some into the winter month, save imports.


Never tried growing it, have no clue how hard/ easy it is. I do grow chard which is insanely easy and whose leaf-stalks are a pretty good celery-substitute, so all isn't lost if the celery fails.