A deal's a deal

If any of you know Mike or me very well, you would know that we are much more similar than different in regard to our opinions, our hobbies, our interests, our way of doing things, and just view on life in general. The two things that drastically differentiate our hobbies/interests would probably be sports and games.

Mike loves sports… any kind of sport interests him. He will read about sports, participate in any kind of sport, and watch whatever sports games he can get on the internet over here. Additionally, he is highly competitive when it comes to sports. I like sports a lot too… but not for the reason that he does or the reason that most people might think! I love sports because Mike loves them; because it means snuggle time as he is totally absorbed in watching a game or reading about them on-line. :) I don’t like playing them though because if it’s a team sport, how I play or what I do affects others, so it really stresses me out. However, I do enjoy individual sports like running.
Games are a whole different beast. I think Mike would play board games all day if he could. Whenever he gets a new game, he wants to learn how to play it in order to understand the rules and be able to tell others how to play the game. So you can often find him playing by himself or “playing against himself” (because I will refuse to play). I often tease him asking, “Who’s winning? Mike or Mike?”

I have never had the same adoration of board games as my husband. In fact, I really don’t like board games at all! And when we do play a game together, I have “game selection rules”
a. Preferably a card game
b. The games needs to be 30 minutes or less (otherwise I lose interest)
c. It can’t be an hyper-strategy game (chess)
d. It can’t be a war game (risk)

One of the main reasons I don’t like to play board games with him though is because I basically have NO chance at winning! He is so good at playing games, he is good at thinking through moves in advance, he is good at strategy…he is just good at practically everything he does. So it’s annoying and frustrating to play when I know I’m doomed to lose and just get totally spanked by his mad skills. Basically, I have no motivation to play what-so-ever!


Mike doesn’t like my disinterest towards games and thinks it would be good “bonding” time if we played games together frequently. I told him that I would need a reward or motivation of some sort to play if that was the case since I knew I was bound to lose. So today over lunch, we hashed out the details of our deal: For every 5 hours of board game playing I do, he will take me to Akiyoshi, my favorite [and pricey by Thai standards] Japanese restaurant in downtown Bangkok.

I think we both got a good deal out of it all. :)

Challenge: Can anyone guess all six games in the pictures?