Mahjong Madness

It's someone elses fault...

Mahjong on line that is...it's their fault that they told me about it and encouraged me to play. It is way too much fun. Well, fun and occasionally infuriating. There is work to do on the website, it has what I consider some glitches but it is a super fun place to pick up a quick game or play all day. New Years day I spent some time there; at www.Mahjongtime.com/

Since I had this very nice hand I took a pic of it. I coulda been a contender; it was very nice but not a "limit" type of hand. Limit being the very best you can have.

There are 5 different type of mahjong played there, Hong Kong (my favorite), Chinese Official, Riichi (Japanese), Taiwan, EC (European Classical) and American. I was playing Taiwan when I had this hand. The different mahjong games with the exception of American all have a basic format similar to gin rummy...it is runs of 3 or 3 matching and a pair to declare mahjong. They all score different and it's a mystery how that works but I did get my 8 for a pair and declared mahjong winning 30 points.

LEARN CHINESE IN 3 HOURS

It was so nice to hear from other weavers that blog, yesterday 3 of them encouraged me to keep at it, I plan to keep abreast of their weaving also! I've decided to use my first weavings as dishtowels since I plan to use cotton on my experimental pieces which should be the first 50 or so I imagine.

So much to do, so little time, the less spent on my computer the better. I forget that I want to treat it like a tool and less of a toy. The lure is like a siren song beckoning me to come turn it on and look up odd bits of useless trivia.

I HAD TO LEARN CHINESE TO PLAY MAHJONG YESTERDAY!!!!!!!

I registered at the tournament desk and my friend kt showed up to do the same, I sat her down and pleaded for help, I looked at all of the mahjong sets, they did not have English on them anywhere. My set has both chinese and english. I look at the pretty Chinese designs on my set and utterly disregard them as to being useful as far as play is concerned. These people played mahjong like the room was on fire. In fact I think we would have had to finish the game before anyone bothered to put out any fires....

kt wrote down the numbers 1-9 and the winds, N,S,E and W so I had my cheat sheet. The play started and I thought, well, I will just save the bamboo and circle tiles and last for as long as I can. Yeah, I drew a handful of characters (numbers); to me it looked like scribbled tiles, not so pretty anymore. And they weren't the easy ones to remember either, the 1,2 or 3. Since it would be considered impolite to vomit on the table or cry or even whine I just kept faking it. If I had a wind that didn't match another - out it went, who cared if it was my wind? I looked at a 7 bamboo and my head said 5 bamboo. Ha, I had mahjong only I didn't have mahjong. OMG, there was no place to run or hide. I thought about the books I'd read where silly people do things among other cultures and the thoughts that run through the mind of them - were they thinking, "Stupid Caucasian woman thinks she can play Hong Kong mahjong?" Or, "Why is she here ruining our fun?" Things like that. Well, during the bathroom break I thought about hiding in the bathroom for a very long time to eat up tournament time so I could go home but I returned to finish up the last hour or so.

By the time I went home I had nearly all of the 9 Chinese numbers burnt into my brain; the winds...not so much. Well, I went for an adventure and I sure got one. I better stick to learning how to weave!