Tina's eggs are ready

If you've felt that I've been remiss in writing over the past few weeks, you are most certainly correct. My online time, and much of my life has become centered around farming. "Farming?", say surprised that anything can grow beneath Shanghai's rainbow of greys. Yes, online farming.

Recently a Chinese co-worker introduced a social website with a farming application to our office. Having spread like wildfire through the teachers' office, you're more likely to hear us discussing eggplants and pumpkins than exclamations and punctuation. Frankly, we're all obsessed.

The game is straight forward enough. You plant seeds in your plots of land, which then take somewhere around 24 hours to 'grow' before they are ready for harvest. You then need to harvest and sell your plants before anyone else can steal them. The interaction comes from being able to steal from each others vegetables if they're slow to harvest them, or put weeds and bugs in their crops to diminish their crops quality. The more money you have, and the more points you accumulate allow you to expand your farming empire, buying more land and even a cow for milk and a chicken for eggs.

Most of the past two weeks all office talk has centered around this game. What's the best crop to grow at different levels? Should you use the expensive fertilizer (which makes your plants grow faster) or the cheap stuff? Whose crops are ready to be stolen? Alliances have been built and trampled, but the general rule is if someone's crops are ready to be harvested and they're off teaching class... tell everyone else in the office so they can steal their crops.

I'd write more but I need to harvest my eggplants before anyone steals any.