Week 22 — Thank you MEL | Daniel Nitsikopoulos

Another week in Melbourne in the books! I spent this one mainly visiting family and working. The last time I was down, my team was all of 3 people. It has since gained 4 more, so I took this chance to meet almost everyone (thanks again COVID-19). I spent every day making the trip in to the office, which, continues to remain a novelty right up until Friday. After that, I look forward to getting back to my home office in Canberra and screens that aren't incredibly blurry.
In amongst the various dinners, lunches and general hangs, my brother and I went and checked out a Game Grumps live show — I bought him tickets for his birthday mostly out or curiosity of how the show would be adapted for a live audience. And while it was not at all what I was expecting, it was stupidly funny and intensely chaotic. I think my watch notified me of being in an environment that was too loud 2 or 3 times, and that was just from the crowd noises.
Continuing on our nerdy adventures, my brother also hosted a game of Twilight Imperium at his place over the weekend. It's a super dense game, but is pretty intuitive, so once the group gets in to a rhythm, it's incredibly fun and immersive. This is the second time he and I both played, and it made the whole experience so much easier and more fun. The first time we messed up a couple of rules that broke the game which meant we only finished in 5 hours. This time, however we didn't make those same mistakes and were able to coach some of the new folks, resulting in a game that took around 7 hours. And to be honest, when you spend most of the game just chatting, it doesn't really feel like that long a time! I really like these kinds of rules-heavy games, especially when they're on the 3rd or 4th edition and some of the clunkier rules have been smoothed out.
My flight out of Melbourne back to Canberra was slightly delayed, so I got a chance to make a couple of small UI adjustments to this blog that I have been meaning to make for a long time 😅.