A bunch of my UW friends came over today and we did hot pot. We had a ton of food, which I’d have to say about 1/5 was thrown away at the end. We had enoki mushrooms, regular mushrooms, spinach, bak choi, tang oh, beef slices, squid, fish balls, beef balls, tofu, daikon, taro, shrimp, tripe, mussels, and some other stuff that escapes my brain at the moment.
I had gone to Uwajimaya and picked up a Iwatani butane powered gas stove. I had actually dropped by Costco earlier to see if I could find this: Coleman InstaStart Single Burner Butane Stove, but unfortunately they didn’t carry anything similar in the store. I knew Uwajimaya was going to be expensive, but $50 seem somewhat excessive. I guess that’s what happens when you’re not buying these when they’re on sale. A can of butane gas lasted us about 2hrs and cost $2.75 at Uwajimaya, which I’m guessing would be cheaper elsewhere. Saran also brought his butane powered stove and we had 2 simultaneous hot pots going at the same time.
We had 3 different types of sauces. A special soy sauce combo that Stanman made (soy sauce + cooked oil + sesame oil + green onions + ginger + sugar + serrano chiles (substitute for Korean red chile) + garlic + whatever else he put in there). Then there was the peanut shabu shabu sauce I picked up. Saran also brought his spicy sweet Thai sauce.
After everyone was stuffed, it was time for dessert. Saran and Desperajo busted out the cupcakes from Cupcake Royale. These cupcakes were awesomely delicious. Interesting… “awesomely” is a word! Or maybe Firefox spell check is broken. Anyway, the flavors are unique and interesting. We got to try: Red Velvet, The Classic, The Coconut Bunny, MoFro, The Lemon Drop, and The Orange You Glad.
I was just thinking, tripe is called tripe because if it was called cow inner stomach lining, no one here would ever buy it or order it in a restaurant. ;p
After dessert, we sat down and played around of Fuzion Frenzy 2. The mini games were pretty fun and Stanman pretty much dominated, though near the end, it got pretty close.
We played Settlers of Catan afterwards and once again I got shafted. Last week, I had a high 70% chance of winning because I was next and I had a soldier card which would give me the largest army. However, 2 other people were also close to winning and if he rolled 1 of 3 #s, one of them would win. However, the Settlers god was not on my side that day and awarded the win to Stanman. Today, I had 3 ways of winning and was already at 9 points. I had 3 roads in my hand (3x brick and 3x wood), I had a “Year of Plenty” which awarded me 2 cards of any choice. I also had a “Road Building” card. I was 6 behind the longest road, but if I wanted to, I could try and get it. However, I had a 3 to 1 port and could get 4 cards of anything (2 from trading and 2 from the “Year of Plenty”), but that wasn’t enough to build a city. I could also on the other hand trade in for 2 development cards and hope that one is a victory point. After conversing with the other people, I decided to take the safe route and hope I hit an ore. In fact, Saran immediately after me gave me an ore, so I was pretty much set to win (everyone else had 8 pts or below), but I had to wait for the “special building phase”. I thought I had won. However, he was at 8 points and was able to upgrade one of his settlements to a city pushing him to 9. He then just barely had enough cards to get a development card which gave him the last victory point. There you have it, the Settler gods are out there against me. The only time I wont Settlers with this group was when I partnered with someone else and made him do all the dice rolling and I did the strategic thinking as he was new to the game.
All in all, it was a fun day.