Rooftop Gaming

Nanshijiao, in the south of Taibei City and close to the mountains, is an area home to a wildly popular sport. This sport is non other than racing homing pigeons. It is a highly competitive sport with rivals constantly trying to steal each others prize birds. People sometimes set up nets across treelines during races in order to try and catch birds. Then, if they catch an especially fast flyer, they can ransom it back to the owners for absurd prices. I've been informed that ransoms can be as high as hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

Enter into this calm picture the presence of six bemused foreigners equipped with pencils, paper and enough dice to choke a horse. We ascended to a rooftop flat, though flat may be a generous word. Put simply, it's a box - a box on the ninth floor.

The larger structure is the frame surrounding the stairwell and lift shaft. The "flat" is the smaller square on the right.

This friend doesn't live alone, though. He shares this glorified lookout point with two adorable overgrown-rats.

Unlike most "rats" (tiny dogs) these ones were good natured and I took a shine to them. I believe it was partly to do with them being sweet natured, and heavily influenced by their lack of yapping. I don't recall a single bark all afternoon.

Of course it wasn't long before our minds began drifting to practical matters. Dogs are, after all, tamed animals and many of the other animals we've tamed have been put to use pulling plows or providing us with milk. What could dogs do?

A military application soon presented itself.

Behold, the half-breed chihuahua improvised semi-automatic.

It wasn't long before everyone had gathered. We released the hounds to enjoy an evening of freedom while we brought out the real weapons.

As you can see my weapons have gone native on me.

We set out our things upon one of the tables visible in the picture earlier, gathering around it on bar stools. Playing commenced in the late afternoon, after a lively encounter with the wind which left us chasing paper around the rooftop and requiring us to flank one rather unruly sheet before it could be snagged and returned to a folder.

Rooftop gaming is an experience. Being that high up we were enjoyed the novelty of actually feeling the breeze and welcomed it after the heat. Luckily our day of gaming wasn't as hot as the week prior. But all things come to an end and for us that meant daylight. The sun lowered itself to the horizon and then gleefully sank beyond our reach. It wasn't, however, time for gaming to end.

'n Boer maak a plan. So did we. The host whipped out a lamp at sunset and gaming continued into the night. We eventually packed it up at twenty minutes to midnight.

PS: We found Batman.