2004/09/26

Angels and Demons

After reading The Rule of Four, I started reading Angels and Demons. It is remarkably similar to The Da Vinci Code, in terms of the plot and the writing style. And just as captivating.

2004/09/25

Snoopy Museum

Today we went to the Snoopy Museum in Santa Rosa. The exhibit sets the Peanuts comic strips against the cultural background at large, which made me appreciate the jokes a lot more. I also got to know why it is called "Peanuts" -- it means "little children" in American English!

2004/09/22

The Rule of Four

Just finished reading The Rule of Four. I couldn't help but keep comparing it to The Da Vinci Code. Both involve solving Renaissance mysteries, and both of them have a web game. I like The Da Vinci Code a lot more though. The writing flows a lot better, and the web game was much better too. That said, reading The Rule of Four brought back a lot of memories from Princeton, and made me smile from the heart throughout.

2004/09/19

Bang H8

Yesterday we went to the Haight district in San Francisco to play in the treasure hunt Bang 8. It is a part of the Bay Area Night Game series. My team was very frustrated last time in Bang 7 since we couldn't solve a problem which required the knowledge of the middle names of US Presients, so this time I invited 4 Americans to play with us. That proved very useful in the first puzzle "Cookie Monster!".

"Cookie Monster!" consisted of a bag of cookies and a crossword puzzle. The task was to identify all the cookies in the bag and fit their names in the crossword. I only knew Fig Newtons, but my teammates came up with names like Nutter Butter, Nilla Wafer etc. I was so glad that they were on the team!

Initially I was a bit worried that a team of seven was too large, but since we had at least two puzzles on hand each time, we worked in smaller groups, and that was quite efficient. In fact, we were the first team to get to the finish line! That really surprised me. I had been to several treasure hunts, but I was never even close to having a decent rank. Three cheers to the team!