Mahjong Galore

My first official mahjong game.

Mahjong is something that you always thought was a game for adults... specifically older people per se. However as things were changing, there are more and more people who are interested in playing this game. There are even various events who were hosting it. As for me, all I could do was to observe from afar wondering how this game was played. I only played it once before when I was younger and our neighbor taught us how to play the game.

Now, I was chatting with one of the friends I met in the community, we were both interested in playing the game, but we also acknowledged that we don't know how to play the game and we do not want to be the cause of headache from the other people who were already probably experts at playing the game. When we first saw some events organizing this, both of us felt that the price was too steep (around 2000 pesos) for the just for fun and we needed to find more people to play the game. As we know, mahjong needed four people in order to play the game.

Then came last month I saw a mahjong event where it would held on one of my MBA classmates' café and it's very accessible to my home - even if it's on a weeknight. When I check the rates, I told my friend in the community that it was a good rate. Imagine 500 pesos each and you already have a free drink, then you play for around 3 hours provided we could find 4 people to play with.

I already know that my friend was definitely on board, so I contacted our mutual friend who happened to be his co-teacher and my high school classmate. He too is on board and finally I contacted my MBA classmate who also knows the owner of the café and she agreed.

Now, the event finally arrives where the organizers started to teach us how to play. From an observation point of view, you would have an idea that it's either you win by finding the same tiles or the consecutive tiles. However, I didn't know that a pair exists to win the game and how do you organize a tile set plus you can skip people's turn if somebody discard a tile that you need.

On my first game, it's not a surprise that I definitely struggled because I don't know when you draw a tile or get a tile from a recently discarded pile. As our team is finally complete, we started playing while introducing my MBA friend to the friend I met in one of the community events and my high school classmate. I felt like I got the hang of the game, but for some reason I'm usually a piece away from winning while somebody else finally won the game. I think out of eight rounds, I only won once. What's even funnier about it was my MBA friend, who is of pure Filipino origin, playing a Chinese version of mahjong received the most chips. Mind you she needed a guide and would take her longer to know which tiles were thrown while the three of us were mentioning the words in Chinese characters like the Chinese directions, 中 and 發. 

In the end we all enjoyed the game because for me the more I get the hand of the game, maybe... just maybe if there's someone especially the elders who wanted to play, I can offer myself to play the game now. I just realized as I saw some reels on Instagram that there seems to be a lot of variation, and I wanted to know other variations because what was taught to us was not what I normally saw on the shorts.

Then a month after my first mahjong activity, there was another mahjong game from another organizer which was shared by another person I met in the same community, the price seem to be a bit steep for the time allocated, but I'm really curious as I saw they were doing a double stacking and that's what I wanted to know. So I registered on my own only to find out that what we were playing is a Filipino version of mahjong where the Chinese directions, the squares, 中 and 發 are all part of flower/bonus tiles. Not only that, one of the people I met in the community was also there. We both didn't know that we would be attending the event and we also met new people outside of our community by ethnicity but we are joined because of our interest in playing the game.

My mahjong winning tiles from yesterday.

In this version, it seems like luck is on my favor, I was getting favorable tiles. I am not sure if it's because there are a lot of bonus tiles to exchange from. It's crazy that it's my first time to encounter a "Kung" where I got 4 tiles of the same kind.

Not only that, I managed to win four out of seven rounds. Which I think it's pretty remarkable and perhaps shocking.

As much as I wanted to stay as the organizer haven't told us to leave since our time was up, I had to leave as I have to attend mass with my mom. I mean if I knew that I could stay until 6pm, I would have attended the Sunday mass instead.

In this event, it was nice that I get to know more people outside my race but who have the same passion or interest. I think the only sort of community I had was rooting for the same team in the NBA, even that it's hard to penetrate where all of you are rooting for the same team since I'm not as die hard as them who would follow and analyze their plays.

Now... on to the automatic mahjong tables. When? I don't know, but I think I would be looking forward to playing that kind of game and probably meet new people which doesn't necessarily mean that you would have a prospective relationship with them.

All I can say that yesterday's mahjong activity was fun as I not only get to know people more, but also knew a different version and a different way on how to win the game.