Pong*!

I have talked about playing mahjong like nobody's business and yet I think I forgot to explain that among my group of players, there were two Finnish.


One of them, is my (ex)-housemate's husband. He can play super well and he had even won quite many limit pay-outs before!! The only funny thing is that at the end of the game when I sometimes request to see who was holding my cards, he would refuse to show anything.

Once, I put down all his cards (at the end of a game of course) and he got really angry. He said that this would show people how he strategised. Well, I am not so 'chiem' and really! I am not much of a strategist myself. I cannot even remember what card people throw out sometimes, let alone remember strategies.

Anyway, I guess I should have respected his wishes and not 'revealed' his cards like that. Guess I am too used to playing with my aunt, cousin and Dad.

The other Finnish, is his visiting friend from Finland. The hand that u saw in the earlier posting, is his. Spotting fella who places his cards not in a neat row, but in what we call "Stone Henge manner". Quite understandable, as he not too familiar with he many signs, symbols and characters. I had to write a translated sheet for both of them for the north, south, east , west and the numbers for ten thousand, twenty thousand and so on.

It was fun though and who knows? We might even be starting some historical thingy, being the first ones who passed the knowledge of mahjong to the Finnish!!! Hahaha!!! Fat hope. I am sure someone else has already done so and there are other Finnish out there playing mahjong too!

We did not play much last Saturday in the end as all could not get up on time and they went for some real swimming before dry swimming on the mahjong table. Hee!

Nevertheless, friendship grew stronger with whatever little time that we managed to meet up.

Did not end up eating any sushi but bought OCK (Old Chang Kee) and some good and delicious hawker food like fried carrot cake, chui kueh and ondeh-ondeh from Bengawan Solo which were bought by my mum and oh so delicious!

Knowing that we were going to trek at Macritchie the next day made me 'relax' about what food I put in my mouth.

*For my non-Mahjong playing friends: "pong" means to 'eat' a card from someone else to form three of a kind for yourself. One can pong from which ever player who has thrown out a card but if one was trying to get three cards in running order eg. 123, 456, etc) then one can only 'eat' from the player before oneself. Blur? Start playing mahjong. It works your mind and contrary to what some may take as gambling, can be healthy for the brains if one doesn't play with money or does not play too big. :)