Mahjong woes

Today's (or rather, yesterday's) highlight was mahjong. It was a time for interaction and catching up. There were news of friends who got attached and friends who went their own separate ways.

There were lots of laughter and yet, there were also lots of squabbles over mahjong matters.

I think playing mahjong can really reveal a person's character: whether they are gentlemen and/or ladies or whether they go all out to 'kill' everyone else.

Today started and ended quite badly as two of the players refused to used chips to play. They wanted to use real money. Coins to be exact. I guess, if I came in all ready with a whole bag of coins, I would not minded it so much, but the fact is that I did not have so many coins. The other thing is that I am more of a chip person; play with chips first and then pay the real money right at the end.

In the end, we decided to use half coins half chips: two of them used coins while my ex-housemate and I used chips. Should be easy right? Whichever coins you have would be your winnings. NO!!! There were discrepancies and the biggest loser in the game had already paid everything that needed to be paid and nobody refused to budge. In the end, I took out the mere 90 cents to settle the unhappiness.

Well, for one, I think I have only seen people use real money when they play big: their starting pay out is $1 and $2. For the other, if it were me, I would respect the host's wishes as to whether he or she wants to use chips or real money. If the host had told me beforehand that real money is to be used throughout the game, I would have respected that. If the host insisted on chips, so be it.

It goes to show one thing (to me at least): that arguments and conflicts do not just occur among children. Grown people have to deal with it everyday too :)

The thing I got out of this whole mahjong session is that we learn to interact with one another in our own different ways and I try to adapt and accept them as they unfold before me. Who knows? I might also be able to use it on incidents that occur among children. Hee, hee... .

All that said, I also remembered how my cousin just walked off the table last week leaving us with one player less (not sure whether I mentioned it in my earlier blog). She had continually lost to her mum and worse still, she was the one who kept giving her mum the winning tile. Luckily thouh, her brother came to the rescue.

Aahh mahjong. it teaches me that I have to watch my manners too.