Business in Chinatown

Met with some old colleagues yesterday evening and on the agenda was playing board games. We started with a few (too) quick rounds of "Reaction", which proved not to be my game. And it is tough on the cards, too.

The second game was more strategic, called "Taj Mahal", which was excellent but would take more practice to win. After dinner, we decided to take one more quick game and we chose "Chinatown", which is a trading game. The game had six rounds and it was said that the trading is freeform and the heart of the whole game, and that it can take up to ten minutes per round. Ten minutes, my behind! We started the game half past nine and finished half past midnight! It took us three hours to trade businesses in Chinatown. It was fun, though.

I had to make some devious trades to get my two Hop Sing's Restaurants started in addition to my complete Antiques dealer and the maximum-sized Watchmakers business with six plates and the maximum income of 14000$. I was clearly making the most money in the end, but the deals I made were very expensive and I was left third of four players.


Here's our gaming group: me, Markus, Laurent (always with a glass), Julien and Frank.

The training materials are all but ready. They just need to be updated, the design needs to be polished, the layout finished and then the cards need to be printed and laminated. That's all there is to do.

Tomorrow, we focus on accounting basics with our business counselor (Unternehmensberaterin), and on Friday we close a couple of missing insurances for the business.

Barely over a week left to my first trip America!