Intermezzo and Al Simhara

In between trips, River and Haruo did get a few things done. Haruo is steadily working on the amount of fishing that he needs to do in order to reach level 10 in his angler career. And River having managed to get her lifetime wish fulfilled, is now working on sculpting as well as painting.

The new house was quite the home; much more massive than before, just one floor was easily half the square footage of the entire lot and considering that there were three complete floors above and 2 partial floors below ground, it was well over 1.2x the lot square footage (guaranteed to make any RL city planner go pale white and start screaming about zoning violations). There was a rather expansive dome fountain out front, with two large geyser fountains: one to each side. and four spray-jets...two: on each side of the large geyser fountains, pointing at each other.

The garage was also quite large with a sculpting room up stairs and a visual mausoleum of photographs was on the third floor.

Asian families love water, it is a symbol of purification and of peace, the stillness of a pool of water at rest; the constant flow of motion of the fountain.

Haruo and River went out for dinner...which after having kids had been a long time before they had had time to themselves. After all...being able to spend quality time with each other enabled marriages to be stronger.

Satoshi had to go to the bookstore as he'd read through all his charisma books and had to get Volume 3. He ended up buying out the entire bookstore of skill books: one copy apiece. Perhaps he'll get the hankering to learn mixology which might come in handy when the Chikamoris get a home bar.

And lo and behold who should appear, but three ghosts... The ghost of Simis Bachelor showed up and Haruo greeted him. "It's good to see you, Dad..." Haruo said to River's step-father. And peering out the kitchen window, River saw her mother and ran to greet her. "Yes...dear River...there is another world beyond this one..." "I miss you so much, Mom...so much..." And of course...having died of of a heart-attack while hungry...Mayumi came over to raid the fridge...but disappeared before she could eat it. Guess her time haunting in this world was up...for the night. The Creator had to "hocus pocus" the dish back into the fridge again before it spoiled.

It wasn't long before Haruo got the itch to go world travelling again and booked tickets for Al Simhara, but until the departure date, Haruo, Hiroko, Yasunobu and Satoshi went fishing in their backyard pond.

Their trip to Al Simhara went off without a hitch.

Their first stop was at Al Simhara Market where they stocked up as it was uncertain as to when they would ever be back.

Unfortunately it was very tiring for most of the group and it appeared as though the Market was the highlight of the trip. Haruo let his inner photographer roam free and spent a lot of time photographing the sights out in the desert and dodging cerastes cerastes to boot. Let's just say that you had to watch where you step and getting bitten would have not been fun at all. Of course there was also the Saharan Horned Viper to contend with too.

Photographing the Pyramids and the Sphinx at night was the real highlight of the trip. And they all came home happy, but only two days till Yasunobu ages up to elder...

Family Travel - Shang Sim La

There's enough grand pianos in the house for the three sims who have maxed their piano-playing up to level 10. Yasunobu and Haruo played piano which was a balm in itself. Haruo poured out his emotion into his piano playing when he wasn't busy causing havoc causing TNT blasts at Grady's.

It had gotten too much to live in the house that Fiona died in (too many memories)...so they built another one on the same lot in Riverview. This time, Haruo went all out on the home and they had a beautiful pool, a hot-tub and a wonderful mini-lake stocked with fish that they could use. The hot-tub immediately got some use.

...as did the pool.

Satoshi made his interest known to Constance who of course...accepted. After all...what girl doesn't love a long-haired party animal? Oh, Satoshi had his quiet moments too. He was also a bookworm and their equivalent taste in classical music clinched the deal.

...and Constance made herself comfortable...as Mrs. Satoshi Chikamori...no fancy wedding, just two people in love.

Several Sims had the desire to go to Shang Sim La so off the family went (The game started crashing on the WA travel load screen...so I nearly went crazy trying to figure out what could be causing the corrupted file. Sure enough, it was a .bad file and deleteing that (having saved multiple separately named files as backup) plus clearing the cache files...caused the travel to work again...so luckily the Chikamoris were able to make it to Shang Sim La finally. Let's just say that they took the wrong turn at Albuquerque.

What Shang Sim La vacation could not start with a trip to the marketplace. Yasunobu and the whole family headed off to Shang Sim La's market to partake in some victuals.

It was after they had fed themselves that they decided to make the trek up the mountain to see the Chinese graveyard. It was a beautiful, serene place during the daytime, but there was no way that Haruo and the rest were going to stick around to see what the place looked like at night.

Next on the list was to be able to visit the Martial Arts Academy. Getting back to the main-road took them past some beautiful scenery of some abandoned chuán and a fishing dock.

It was late afternoon as they came up on the familiar Academy grounds. There Haruo asked a brown belt to spar and quickly showed him that despite having come from Canada, his black belt still took the same effort as having practiced in Shang Sim La. 2-0 Haruo...won.

The next two days were filled with visiting sites in Shang Sim La that were of interest to all of them, especially to Constance since she was one of the ones that had a wish to go to Shang Sim La after marrying Satoshi.

And the hostel was just as wonderful with all the family together. Haruo cooked and provided Chinese style cooking having learned his cooking skill to level 10 many years ago. He cooked stir fry and egg-rolls. But all too soon their vacation was over and they wouldn't be able to travel as much together as a group when Yasunobu became an elder...which was one of the reasons why they were travelling again, to allow Yasunobu to see the world again before aging up.

Upon the Chikamori's return to Riverview, Yasunobu feeling spry despite his closeness to elder age, decided to jog home. Haruo and River had an intimate moment in the kitchen latched to each other's faces and Satoshi decided to turn the stereo on waking Constance out of a deep sleep which she much "appreciated".

Ah...the bonds of family.