Atotga

I just wanted to share with everyone this image, which is a photo (ginnen Thea) which shows off my blue Risk pieces on the verge of overrunning the world. This image is special to me because it records for posterity, what was my first Risk victory ever.

The game began in an interesting way. Me, Jose and Thea (all in Ethnic Studies at UCSD) were sitting at the table at a board game party which, was being attended primarily by Ethnic Studies graduate students from UCSD, and had been early on hijacked by a magic mic and largely assisted by large amounts of alcohol. With all the board games free the three of us faced a difficult choice. After reducing our options by almost a dozen we were left with two choices, capitalism or imperialism. Or as they are known around the world Monopoly and Risk.

Gof mappot este na inayek, para Siha ni' manggai"progressive politics." Manhuehuego taiguini kalang mani'isao no?

The three of us are all from islands, Guam, the Philippines and Puerto Rico. Thea, who often argues with me that Filipinos are Pacific Islanders proved that she clearly wasn't an "islander" when me and Jose became obsessed with fighting over the island continent of Australia at the game's beginning. It might have seemed silly, but after watching my brother Jack so successfully win Risk games regularly by using the Australian Anchor strategy, I felt my only chance was to emmulate his greatness. So while me and Jose re-enacted scenes from The Thin Red Line across Papua New Guinea, Thea rushed to conquer the Western hemisphere. She ridiculed us for our primitive fight over such small and useless territory!

Talk about reversing the colonial gaze!. It was a victory that Epeli Ho'ufa should write about.