A handful of reunions

I had a pretty good week last week as I got to meet up with a few sets of friends over the course of a few days.

Reunion #1
I met up with some of my college friends during the week while Nem and his family were in town. Actually, I almost didn't make it since I had several issues at work. However, since I was unable to join the 1st birthday celebration of Nem's daughter a few days before, I felt I needed to meet up with them that night while Nem was still here. Dinner was supposed to be at 7PM in SM North Edsa so I decided to schedule my meetings that day in our QC office so that it would be relatively easy for me to join them. As it turned out, I only made it to SM North by 9pm so I just got to join my friends for ice cream and coffee at the Magnolia Flavor House at the SM North Sky Garden. The last time I recall visiting SM North was maybe around 10 years ago so it was my first time back in ages. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay too long because I had another important meeting at 10:30pm so I said goodbye to everyone. Not the best t

Reunion #2
I had dinner in Balboa in Shangri-La Mall with a few of my Yaminoy friends last Saturday: Eliza, Marie, Beck and Meg. It's amazing how we all initially became friends because we were crazy fans of AI 5 contestant Elliott Yamin but our friendship has grown over the years. We had dinner at Balboa and we talked about a whole lot of stuff; after all, we hadn't seen each other in a while. In fact, I think the last time I saw Beck was during the concert of The Killers back in September 2013. We left Balboa at around 9:30 pm because I wanted to pass by Happy Cream Puff before the mall closed. I tried this place once and I really like their cream puffs so I bought one for myself and almost everyone else got at least one either for themselves or their families. (Eliza ate hers almost immediately and said that it was indeed really good.) At that point, there were a lot more stories to share so we moved to Poetry & Prose Patisserie (it was my first time there) where we had coffee and dessert until the shop closed at midnight.

Reunion #3
As if my Saturday night wasn't long enough, I headed to the surprise birthday party of Jam, who was part of the first team that I led. When I arrived at around half past midnight, the gang, including Jeoff, Case, Migs, and of course Jam and her husband, were just about to start playing Avalon so I joined in. This game is actually just a variant of Resistance which I had played before. The key difference is the addition of two roles: Merlin and the Assassin. Cool! We played four rounds and I actually won three times, once as a spy and twice as the resistance. Afterwards, we played One Night Ultimate Werewolf. I feel that this game involves some strategy and a lot of luck; I was a bit annoyed when I was supposed to be a villager and I successfully killed the werewolf but as I flipped my card, apparently, the troublemaker swapped my card with someone and I ended up being one of the werewolves as well so I lost haha. However, the variety of roles, the interesting night actions, the cool tribal-war music of the app (the link I provided above uses the cricket sounds; the tribal war music is much better), and the fact that one round is completed in under 10 minutes does make it a fun game to play with friends. I ended up hanging out until past 4am before deciding to call it a night. Learn more about Avalon and One Night Ultimate Werewolf.