This Saturday, MAO AND GAMES all afternoon and BLACK TIE BIRTHDAY all evening

Happy New Year, all!

I will shortly be 25 years old, and in honour of the occasion I would like to invite you to two parties on saturday.

ALL AFTERNOON (2pm->) there will be MAO AND GAMES.
ALL EVENING (8pm->) there will be BLACK TIE PREFERRED PARTY.

It would be wonderful if as many of you as possible could come. Especially if people who don't normally play Mao any more would like to give it a go, and if everyone would come in the evening.

If you want to come from outside Cambridge, I may be able to arrange crash-space -- let me know. (And apologies to people who would like to come but are missing out, or who haven't met me.)

Please bring a bottle and other half, and not a present unless you must :) We will order takeaway food inbetween, feel free to come at 7ish if you want to eat. You don't have to RSVP but it would be good to know if you want to come, particularly if you want to play mao so I know how many people will be there.

Directions and contact: http://semichrome.net/~jack/social/directions.html

Thank you,

Jack (aka CartesianDaemon)

Monday

Post-pizza was very jolly.

* We played post-it game, where each person has a post-it on their forehead written by someone else, and has to ask yes-or-no questions (without semicolons in) to determine who they are.

I was the Archbishop of Montevideo (the capital of Uruguay), courtesy Tom. This in fact turned out pretty well, given that you can work it out. Better than, eg. "February" for guessing :) Although at the time I complained bitterly at being expected to know the capitals of all South American countries, and guessing someone no-one knew whether he was fictional or not.

OTOH, Tom was entirely right. There are no non-catholic south-American Archbishops, and most of the largest cities do have an Archbishop. And there are *some* Wikipedia mentions, though no page, to the person.

A widely circulated rumour had it that Brown had embarrassed himself while drunk at an official reception in South America. Brown was said to have lumbered over to a tall, elegant vision in red, and requested the honour of the next dance, to be told "I will not dance with you for three reasons. The first is that you are drunk. The second is that the band is not playing a waltz, but the Peruvian national anthem. The final reason is that I am the Cardinal Archbishop of Montevideo". However, checks that have been done on whether this could be a true story have not substantiated it.

* Iain and other people took many photos. Some of me, which made me embarrassed for a while, as I often don't like photos of me. Not that I object to on principle, although I have got into the habit of hiding, a lot I just don't like looking at because they don't look good. And they offered some nice advice on how to smile and be a subject :)

* We played bridge for another mumble four hours... I partnered Naath again, and again we got a lot of the cards, and some errors, but on the whole I definitely feel experience taking root :)

* I swear, staying up till four playing bridge can be just as bad for a hangover as drinking till four :) I guess it's a combination of concentrating hard, being jazzed and not sleeping, and not drinking enough water.