More than fifteen months after we first got placed under lockdown and Metro Manila is still in some form of quarantine. Thankfully, more and more people are getting vaccinated, including some of my family and friends, which will definitely help build herd immunity. I'm also grateful that the company I work for is securing vaccines for all its employees. Some of my colleagues already received their vaccination notifications but I still haven't. Hopefully I won't have to wait too long for mine. Given the current situation, many of my friends still feel it might be too risky to meet up face-to-face so many get-togethers still happen through online video conferencing. My friend Michelle celebrated her birthday recently and she organized an online game night so we could all have a virtual party with her. It was a really fun night, highlighted by a round of Bingo which Michelle wanted us all to play. There were six of us playing bingo block-out so it took a while for it to finish. It came down to the wire, with only 3 numbers out of all 75 left and almost of us waiting for just one number. As luck would have it, I ended up being the winner. Everyone in the group was saying it was most fun they've ever had playing bingo and I completely agree (and not just because I won haha).
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| My winning Bingo card! |
The initial idea was for us to play online Steam games and since Steam has its summer sale from June 24 to July 8, I decided to purchase a few more games online. However, it turns out Niki didn't have an active Steam account so he didn't have any of the games we did. Since we wanted everyone in the group to be engaged, we decided to play other online games. We ended up playing Just Once, Codenames Philippine edition, and many different Jackbox games. Nothing beats face-to-face gaming with great friends but the online games we have are the next best thing, especially during this pandemic.
This wasn't the only online event I attended. Just a week before that, our department at work had a whole-day online team-building event, the first time I ever participated in one. We had some org-building exercises led by our HR team, a lot of games, and even a raffle where I won a portable neck fan. All of the games played were team activities, including a Pictionary-style game, a variation of Bring Me, a video-recreation game, and a trivia quiz done over Kahoot where all players played individually but the scores were averaged to determine team score. My team placed 2nd overall (our prize: GCash credits!) but the individuals with the highest scores in the trivia quiz also received special prizes. I topped that trivia quiz, correctly answering 25 questions the fastest, so I ended up with some extra GCash funds. Cool!
While these online activities have been good substitutes, they are just that: substitutes, I am hoping it won't be to long that some of my groups will already be fully vaccinated and we will finally be comfortable meeting up in person (while still following safety protocols, of course).
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