More Weddings!
Congratulations to Dan and Tomoko, who are also engaged. I've been holding my tongue a little regarding this, hence my rather cryptic entry on the 28th April.

Mushrooming
On Saturday we went mushrooming with Dan and Tomoko out in Emerald (an outer "suburb" of Melbourne). Dan's family regularly goes out to a very scenic golf-course every year to pick mushrooms. There's an incredible variety of fungi growing on and around the course, although there were only two types that we were picking. We ended up taking home a huge box of them, and spent the evening preserving and cooking with them.

Dan only knew the mushrooms by their Russian names, although he provided us with English translations for our benefit. However, I was curious to learn more about these fungi which (except in the pantry of Dan's family) I had never seen before. It ends up that we were collecting chanterelles and Slippery Jacks. I've been chomping down on the chanterelles both during the preserving activities, and now again today. I haven't yet tried the slippery jacks -- we don't have as many, and I'm leaving them in the jars longer to soak up some of the flavour of the spices and herbs we added.

Diplomacy
We actually succeeded in organising and running a 7-player Diplomacy game, with (most) players arriving on-time, (most) turns taking a fixed amount of time, and actually having the game run to completion (five-way draw, with Italy holding 17 centres). I was the first player to be eliminated, and Ross the second. Despite this, we were both instrumental in planning and holding a stalemate line to force the draw.