Behind-the-scenes of open house 2007

A very very late post.. (i was busy ok...) but definitely worth the wait.

Revealing to all of you what goes on behind the scene for open house day (10th march if u forgotten)ok.. all i can say is.. we really did worked very hard... we even only ate junk food for dinner so tat we could prepare for the best... 9 people to 1 bag of chachos~ (sobz..)

no prize for guessing who's "beauty legs" these belongs to...

i think i look DAMN good with the flower loh.

we really kept ourselves busy during the nite...

and during the day. be it preparing for the booth and games area,

Chatting away...

smsing our girlfriends...(maybe boyfriends too?)

or taking photos of pretty gers. (ok who's the wise guy...)

others prefer to keep themselves busy by

gorging themselves with food,

or indulge themselves in ballon sculpting (and linus' picture looks abit wierd hoh.. haaa).

let's not forget those who took a liking into modeling.

The classic "Ni zai pai wo ma?" pose

The very manly "deep in thought" pose(oi.. weishiong wake up leh..)

and how can we forget about the "Kawaii ne~~~ peace" pose.

it's a long day and im sure everyone was tired. the ever so kind hearted weishiong decided to be kind to all and volunteered to be the rubbish man.

turns out, he only wanted to "ka-pok" the goodie bags.

haa oh well.. good memories made i have to say. :)

stay tune to our holidays programmes k?

FastForward - Kester

games session 22/03/07 (sobz.. last of this sem...)

Hello everybody,
Thoroughly enjoyed the game session yesterday, tried out 2 wonderful games, Rat a-Tat-Cat and Niagara.

Rat-a-Tat-Cat is a simple card game that involves swopping of cards until your hand score the lowest point. Very boring?? The multiple rules imposed during gameplay enhanced the playability of it. Such as, not permitted to look at your hand in the course of the game increases the challenge of the game. But the biggest draw of the game must be its multi player interaction, trying to deduce the opponents hand by observing his action is a daunting task especially in a scenario of at least six players. Perhaps the only drawback of the game is its limited library. So why did I chose to write this review because I am the winner yesterday, score was 5, 9, 7 over 3 rounds. Woohoo.

Niagara is a fun game, a bit complex in gameplay, so explaining the game is extremely tedious for me, especially with my limited vocabulary. Basicallly you jus try to get the jewel on the board by means of moving your boat along the edge of Niagara which is actually discs. The game completes when a player collects either one of each color, 4 of the same color or 7 of any color. The unique part of the game is that it allows disc to be slotted in at the end of each round which will displace your boat down the waterfall. Another interesting mechanism of the game is the actions of the players. If everybody tries to be greedy and moves a lot then the number of discs to be inserted will get more, so somebody will have to sacrifice and move lesser. But who will and when will he makes the move to make it strategically advantageous to him. Unreusable paddles card also makes hand management essential. A little hard to pick up, but once the game starts rolling, the 3-d gameplay will get you mesmerized by it. Oh… and the winners yesterday are heng and linus. They both pick up 4 of the same crystal, perhaps is a game bug? Haha, I am such a sore loser. Oh and is wonderful to welcome new friends to our gaming session.

Lets welcome Junxiang, I haven’t got the chance to mingle with anothe group though. And well I thanked Jan for coming back and showing his support to us, is always nice to see old friends around.

Quote of the session (including the car ride home): Captain big f*** ah!!! You think you captain planet?!?!
P.S.: Everybody plays saboteur like pro liao.
P.S.: p.s.: Brian don’t make sense in the game and off the game

Enjoy the weekend and work hard for exam everyone.

FastForward - WeiJian

LATE LATE update for OPENHOUSE 2007

hello everyone, sorry for the late update for NTU open house! it's been one week already, omg, i'm slow!

SO, the day began at 8am, the time we were told to reach to help set up the booth.

here's a picture of the booth and some members

and at the quad, the SAC, there's a boardgame session for people who are interested to try out some of the games!






SOME of the games we played that day :)




OH and that day we had so many goodies to give people. pitstop vouchers, walletshop voucher, post-its, etc, and how can we forget about our beloved balloons??!?

SERIOUSLY, the STARS of the day are really the balloons, a new skill we've all learnt!

here's a picture of some of the stars.




one my favourite ones are the pitstop vouchers! they're really worth it la, FREE 1 hour with free drink! they're so nice. oh and the vouchers are stamped with weishiong's ANCIENT chop also. i don't know what you call it la, the one with a lion on top, and carve your chinese name one. but he represents the club la, so it's considered the club stamp too. heh heh.

anyway another freebie i like
(COME ON TILT YOUR HEAD!)




our first 'customers' of the day!



the girl was so cute, she caught the gist of the game really quickly, and emerged winner in every round! haha.

shortly after that we have 2 more people to join us. they stayed for a really long time i believe, and tried most of the games. they even went off for awhile and came back after lunch. really nice people who helped bring up the atmosphere well :)




and at lunch time, weishiong and linus went to buy chicken rice for us. everything is yummy when one is hungry! anyway during lunch time it was still pretty quiet. it's after lunch time when we start to get really busy! people streamed in to play, and sometimes there weren't enough places to sit, so they can't play :(

oh, and some pictures of the gamers that day,



see how they concentrate! bet they had lotsa fun. :D


the girls were so cute!! halli galli is obviously a hit with all the young girls!

BLOKUS is another popular game which most people will love. some people even come to us and asked for blokus first. NOT BAD!


and this picture says A LOT of things.
1.people rather buy small snacks to eat and play, than leave the place to eat proper meals!
2. all the tables and seats were taken up by game enthusiasts, and this is not even the busiest period!
3. we all just love making balloons! heh.

so anyway, throughout the whole event, our members alternated between staying in the SAC and going up to the booth. some of us went out to distribute flyers so that they'll know about the game session. overall everybody has done a great job! we're all happy, because we pretty much achieved what we set out to do. created much publicity among NTU people and showed the prospective future members that a club like that actually exists in NTU and that we actually HAVE FUN TOGETHER!

everyone go home as a happy man, 3 CHEERS TO FAST FORWARD!



fastforward - chloe

Game Review Time~~~

Like no new posts lately leh.. Shall review a game.. I'm the Boss!



Ok, this game consists of a game board similar to Monopoly jus that instead of title deeds, there are deals to be closed. The objective of this game is to close as many deals as possible. Each deal is worth a certain amount of shares and the value of the shares get higher as the game progresses and more deals are being closed.

So how do u close a deal? To close a deal u will need the right people required to close it. For, example a deal requires George and Watts to close, and suppose u only have George, U can den propose to any other players who have Watts to close the deal with u....of cos at a price...u will have to cut a portion of the deal to the other person la....how much to cut or to get ppl to close deals with u depends on ur 'persuasive' powers....

There are certain power cards which a player can play, which ranges from sending a person off on a holiday so he can't close a deal or buying a particular person over dats required to close the deal or play the most powerful card – I'm the Boss! To take control of the deal!

Because it's basically a negotiating game, it is noisy and interactive. The sabo-ing or psycho-ing aspect of this game makes the game very enjoyable. Watch wad everybody does when someone is close to closing a huge deal.. There will be lots of psycho-ing asking everyone not to co-operate with the boss or the person holding a card that the boss requires asking for a huge cut of the deal.

The game ends when some huge deal deals are closed and a particular dice roll that corresponds to the end game requirements. Den the scores/money are calculated and the real Boss is born!

Fun value: 5/5
Replay value: 4/5 ( negotiating can be tiring...haha..)
Learning curve: Easy
FastFoward Rates.... : Must Play!

FastForward's Recruitment booth --- 07/03/2007

flyers anyone...

Okies, so we had our second recruitment booth today at Canteen B and i kena arrowed (ouch) by Mr Ang to share our day with u guys, here it goes...

Met up at 10.30 at Canteen A, Today's strength: Linus, Chloe , and me. Linus drove so we sit car happy happy go draw key at the student academic centre, only to find out keys already drawn by someone else..ok, so no keys, and we set out to find our key holder. Found him at Canteen B, got the keys and got our booth set up after some serious table and chair work out =P

Linus and i hung our banner( yes! For the first time) behind our booth. At first we thot the length of the banner was too long, but after we hung it, we felt the length was jus nice. Our professional photographer for the day Chloe took pictures of that glorious moment.. haha..

drum roll, the glorious moment...

Linus and i decided to exercise some marketing strategy (beauty trick), so we sent our Chloe to distribute flyers, as it was near lunch time already, traffic started getting heavier, so i went to help Chloe distribute as well. We had to print more flyers as we gave them all out within 15 minutes wow... beauty tricks sure works well..

By now, we were bo liao and were practising balloon sculpturing, decorating our booth with balloons making our booth stood our from the rest, den a lecturer approached us and asked Linus how to make a flower, so he got to show off..haha maybe we should start charging for these kind of misc services as well..

the busy balloon sculptors @ work.

Linus and Chloe left for class at 1230, leaving me alone at the booth..sianz.. sit dere stone, gif flyers, stone, gif flyers, stone, ya i think u get it.. dere were a few students who approached to ask questions and they seemed really genuine to know more, so i asked them to come down for our games session on thursday. Dere were still people asking if we sell games, maybe we shud look into dat? Anyways, Linus and Chloe came back ( and saved me from potentially dying from thirst). I had to rush for class so i left..

take your pick @ the games!

Came back at ard 4, saw a few more names on our nominal roll.. the traffic is really very little now.. so we sat down and do wad we do best, game! Played Carcassone.. The guys did pretty well, getting scores over 100, but our dear Chloe was zoned out for most part of the game, beauty trick mus be too exhausting liao... so we decided to close shop. Again the table and chair work out.. -_-''

play play play~

Yeps, a lot of people seemed interested, see see look look but didn't stop and ask. although traffic at Canteen B not as heavy as Canteen A, we did manage to attract some interested peeps. so we're hoping to see at least some of them turn up for our games session tmr. For now ciao!

FastForward - Javern

Photo of gathering!

ok ok this is a bit late.. better late den never rite?
(so little pics leh...)

fastforward - kester

OKAY, i'm supposed to say something about the pitstop gathering on saturday, 3rd march, from 1 to about 5pm.
so upon reach the place, we split into 2 groups to play more games, yadda yadda, and everything ( like jianxiang already said la. i don't wanna repeat myself, might sound too naggggggy! )
i would like to first comment about the food there. so all of us were under the pitstop package, and all 4 at our table ordered 'FOOTLONG FISH AND CHIPS' for our maincourse. NOTE THE NAME, DOESN'T IT SOUND GOOD? was pretty hungry so was waiting (quietly =/ ) for the food but the guys, namely linus, javern and junyuan, at my table not very gentleman leh. they all took their share first. WHAT HAPPENED TO 'LADIES FIRST'? so i had to sulk (quietly again), wait for my food, and see them eat happily while my stomach rumbled and grumbled and pretended to be happy. :(
( but of course, no matter how old, boys will still be boys. they see food, they happy. they see games, they also happy. =/ )
ok sorry i digressed. so anyway the food was, IMHO, good! heh heh. i liked the dory, fleshy and delicious and woohooo-ly yummy! the proportion was big and oh i forgot to mention, the soup they served as appetizer was not bad too. it was quite funny of linus to think the potato chunks as undissolved bits too. HOHO!
**oh and linus brought some yummy rocher-lookalike chocolate(which i forgot the name) from germany and shared it with everyone. i must mention this lah because must give him some credit for bringing the choc. every single little piece cost roughly 40cents if you calculate by the price they sell in sg you know! even more expensive than ferrero rocher which is at least triple the size but even cheaper! :D

anyways, i don't feel like talking about food anymore. it's past past midnight now and i'm hungry with no food at home.
so! time to talk about the games we played!
seriously. no one told me i must write this entry. so i can't really remember the games and the sequence we played them. anyway, here goesssssss!
BLOKUS
heh heh, can't really remember but i think all of us(from our table) are first timers for this game. so we had 1 quick warm up round (which i won, hiaks), followed by 2 more proper rounds before we changed to the next game. the objective of this game is to fill the board with your pieces, and the one with the most squares on the board wins. sounds simple but need to think!
i think most people will know how to play this game lah so no point describing further. :D
CODA
seriously i don't know what's the next game we played. but i like this game because i won all the rounds!
this game is like playing mahjong. we're supposed to draw tiles and the other players must guess your numbers. there're black and white tiles, and each colour has number 1-11, and special tile '-' (dash). then some special instructions will enable you to guess each other's tiles.
quite a fun mind game. hehheh.
PIT
a trading game that most of us have played before. something like the game 'heart-attack' but in this game you can exchange cards with anyone on the table.
better played with MANY MANY PEOPLE because personally i like noisy games that irritate the hell out of the people at the next table. *grins*
HEY! THAT'S MY FISH!
some cute little penguin game which involves cards with fishes on it. we had to place the cute little cards 8 by 7, then place our penguins on it and try to eat as many fishes as possible by moving the penguins around.
OKAY, i know i've made the game sound kinda stupid, but it requires the working of our wrinkly brain too.
this game is a little difficult to explain like this. if you're interested then play it the next time!
HALLI GALLI
some fruit game which has already been mentioned in the previous post. the guys in my table are apparently quite weak this game, i don't know why!! *whispers* i think they can't count properly =/
GIZA
OMG. this game. i can fall asleep while playing this game! please don't make me play this game again. i'd rather give up my fish and chips to the guys than play this again! =/ requires just ONE person to complete 3 pyramids or sphinx but it'll take a looooooooong loooooong time. and people can actually remove what you've built and everyone only has 1 more per turn which is very very slow. kinda boring IMO. i'm sorry!
PIG PILE
okay, i don't have much comments on this game because i sucked at it. basically it's a card game, somewhat like UNO, but there're actually times when LUCK is the only thing you need. ROAR!! so each round the winner gets 3 little pigs, the runner-up gets 2, and the 2nd runner-up gets 1. played 2 rounds and the 3 guys tied the game. all of them got 4 pigs each so no overall winner! they only win cuz they're born in the year of the oink! CHEY!
CARTEGENA
LAST GAME OF THE DAY! some pirates game, which we must try to help our fellow jailbirds out and onto the tiny ship.
something like chinese checkers, which you must jump jump jump and try to get to the other side quickly. i'm the big loser (AGAIN!) of this game and i'm sad. no further comments!
ok finally i'm done with the games!
so,
good food... CHECKED!
nice games... CHECKED!
friendly staff... CHECKED!
nice environment... CHECKED! (and yep! the cushions are really really comfy! :) )
- $15 for our pitstop package with maincourse, soup, drink, 2 hours of gaming.
- $2 for extra 1 hour of gaming
- 10% service charge but waived because we're proudly affiliated to them!! (YIPEEEEE!)
so all in all, $17 for good food and 4 hours of gaming, it's super worth it!
SO WHAT ARE YOU GUYS WAITING FOR? if you're not yet part of us, JOIN NTU FASTFORWARD NOW!!
PLAY, EXPLORE, CREATE!
FastForward-chloe

FastForward's Gathering at PitStop cafe!

(Hello everyone, this article is meant for those who were busy on the day 3rd March and miss out on the outing.)

Ok, the time to gather--12:30pm, everyone arrived on time, some a bit late and for 1 more person (dun want to pinpoint),2 hours late. Anyway, we didn't wait for Brian (opps),and proceeded on to our destination, Pitstop.

The moment we arrived, we were being welcomed by a group of friendly staff, as well as the bright orange tables and concrete walls decorated with an enormous amount of pictures of its satisfied customers.
And Joanne Peh is in one of the pictures also, you go and find hor.
As there were 8 of us, we decided to split up into 2 groups, reason:- to play more games.
Next, we decided on the package (pitstop, $15 with 1 soup of the day, 1 main course, 1 drink and 2 hrs of playing time) we needed and the food we want. Surprisingly,even choosing what we want to eat ended up taking quite some time also, haha.

*Impt*
(The cushions there are very soft and comfortable, so do give it a hug next time you are there)

Finally, time for some serious business to play some board games--
(Below are the games that i had participated in the outing)

Halli Galli
I guessed that everyone has played this before. Basically, once 5 fruits of the same kind are on the table, smack the bell.
Surprisingly, Weishiong is very good in this.

Halli Galli Extreme
Wonder why they call this extreme, since i thought this is a lot easier than the original Halli Galli. Basically, once there are 2 cards of the same kind appearing on the table, you can smack the bell liao. Oh, there are also the elephant, monkey and the pig cards in this game. If anyone is interested to know more, you can ask Weishiong, the Halli Galli King.

Sequence
Similar to connect 4, just that we need to connect 5 in this game. Not very interesting, so i wun say much.

Blokus
I only played the hexagonal one, while Linus and his group played the rectangular one. Ok, quite fun, need some thinking too.But i think our group think too much liao, we played only 1 round with this while the other group already finishes their 3rd round.

Taboo
Guessing game- Describe the word on the card without using any of the related words stated on the card itself.
Quite fun, and makes the person describing look stupid too.

Saboteur
We did not manage to finish this, but according to weishiong, quite fun. I did not find it very fun though, perhaps need more try on the game.

Other than playing games, we also decided on some issues for the Open house, like the game list for Thursday and Saturday, and the souvenir.

We took a photo too, and is pasted somewhere inside. Maybe you guys can try to find it when you are going there sometime.

*Oh ya, Brian, didn't you say you wanted to treat us to drinks for being late?

FastForward - JianXiang