Easter Holidays

Last week I was feeling a bit stressed at work, so it was great to have some days off for the Easter Break. Now I feel refreshed after spending some time by myself and enjoying good times with my friends too.

Saturday swim
Saturday morning Sin Jat and I met in the garden and exchanged some small talk. He asked me if I was going swimming today and I thought that was a great idea. It had been more than a week since my last swim and the lack of exercise had begun to make me feel slow. So I packed my bag with Speedos, goggles and a towel and walked to the beach. It was yet another summer day with light wind, lots of sun and a temperature in the mid twenties. The water is still warm and there was good visibility, so I had a very enjoyable swim.

I was surprised to see several Kingfish during my swim
Photo credit Erik Schlögl

Twice my swim was interrupted by Kingfish, who scared me by casually swimming close by me. They are very large fish, but I realized later that the ones I had seen were small specimen well below the 75 cm legal minimum size.

Board Game Night
Sunday night we had a board game night in the house. It was awesome. To tell you just how awesome it was, I will tell you a short story about my background with board games. As a kid I liked board games, like most kids do, but it wasn't until later in my life that I became fascinated with them. I joined the BoardGameGeeks website a couple of years ago and discovered that there are lots of grown ups who still play board games. And not just with their kids, but with each other, usually at board game nights with 3 to 6 people.
The trick is to find like-minded people to play with, so you can enjoy the same games. Some people like social games, some like fast games and then there are the real geeks like myself who prefer long slow strategic games. In Denmark I used to play that kind of game with my friends, but I had never imagined that I would get to play in New Zealand. I feel extremely lucky that I am now living with a host who is an enthusiastic board gamer. To make it even better we have a common favourite in the game Agricola.

Sin Yat owns expansions for both Agricola and Race for the Galaxy

We played all night and had to order pizza, because there was no time to cook. Sin Yat crushed us all and I spent a couple of hours restlessly contemplating my mistakes before I could finally sleep. As I said, it was awesome.

Happy Birthday
Tuesday I turned 25 and I celebrated that by inviting my friends for dinner. I made goulash for them and a layer cake, which I think might be a traditional Danish dessert. At least it is a lot easier to make one in Denmark, because you can buy ready made cakes that separate the layers. I wanted to make it with strawberries, because strawberry red and whipped cream white are my national colours. Unfortunately strawberries were out of season so I used bananas and peaches instead. I bought some plain cakes and cut them until I had something that resembled a round cake in layers and used custard for one of the layers although I am not sure what custard is. The result was a dessert and desserts are always tasty, so it was fine even if the only originally intended ingredient was the cream.

I make Instagrammers all over the world jealous with my
splendid cake presentation