Log Entry 120909.10

It's all gone very quiet—well, not totally quiet because as I'm sitting here I can hear somebody moving about in the Jeffries Tubes. Most people probably wouldn't notice it, but I can hear their movements echoing through the vents. It's undoubtedly just an Engineer having a tinker with something but it's still a bit distracting. Anyway, back to what I logged on for.

I've not heard anything since my meeting with Cdr Jarrod so I'm going to sit tight for a while. In the meantime though, my social circle has expanded.

Al and Midas invited me to join them and some other crewmates for a games night. There's a group of them that get together and play long forgotten games from the many species that we are. Last night they were resurrecting an ancient game from Earth called Dominoes and as none of them had played it before, they thought it would be a good time to introduce a new member as no one would have any advantages.

Traditionally fashioned out of wood, a double-6 set has twenty-eight little rectangular tiles, the ends of which have spots on each them ranging from no spots to six spots. In a nutshell, the objective of the game is that players, in turn, lay tiles matching up the ends with the same number of spots on, into a long line. The first person to place all their tiles wins that game. There is also a scoring system attached so that over the course of the evening there is an overall winner. It's quite a simple game and fun too (if you can't place a tile, you have to 'knock') but that makes it ideal for chatting and getting to know people while playing. In fact, if you ask me most games were invented, first and foremost, to help pass the time and develop social interaction. The winning just makes it a bit more interesting as it appeals to people's competitive nature.

Well that was the game, as to the players, Arcaran is an Andorian male. He's tall and lithe, and his antennae are continually on the move. He can be quite a serious chap and he has a very dry sense of humour.

Tezenia is just the opposite. He's a Tellerite; a slightly more portly man and very jolly, and last but not least, there were three other humans in the group: Icarus Blaney (such a great name), Susan Warwick and John Redmond.

That made eight of us in total. For the double-6 dominoes, we discovered that it was better to have two games of four running rather than one game of eight, so we switched from the double-6 set (so named because double-6 is the highest or 'heaviest' tile) to a double-12 set (where the double-12 is the heaviest tile). This set therefore has seventy-eight tiles and made the game play far more interesting.

Midas won overall, much to his delight and Tezenia came second. Arcaran claimed his antenna gave him away, and that wasn't entirely untrue. Their wiggling slowed dramatically whenever he had to knock!

Well, it's late now and I have an early start tomorrow so it's definitely time for bed.