I'm famous!
Actually, that's not really true. But I got talked about on another blog! And by that, I mean, the friend I played mahjong with mentioned me in her blog. At any rate, what I got mentioned for *was* pretty awesome. We were playing a casual, two-player version of HK-style mahjong (which apparently already has the fewest rules of the major regional variants). I got a Special Victory Condition Win, the most rare and famous of them all, the Thirteen Wonders.
It's pretty awesome, I have to admit: the 1 and 9 tiles from each suit, all four winds, all three honors, and a fourteenth tile that pairs with one of the others. It was a really exciting game playing to draw it (since you can't use any of the normal game mechanics to pick up your opponent's discards), and it looks way pretty.
The only problem is, like hitting your best golf shot at the driving range, we were playing this informal two-player version, and no local people were watching, which would clearly have made me seem cooler and less awkward and foreign (right?). And, of course, as a math major, the likelihood of achieving the same feat in a four-player game is at least 3 or 4 times more rare, so it's not quite as much of an achievement. I would say it's like hitting for the cycle in an exhibition game or something--really cool, but somehow unquantifiably not as cool as doing it on the Big Stage, whatever that may be. Oh, and I can only imagine how silly it sounds that I'm trying to describe a game played (most famously by old people and housewives) with tiles using metaphors pulled from 'real' sports. Well, now that I look at it, golf and baseball are on the 'game' side of the SPORT--GAME continuum, so maybe they aren't so badly stretched after all... I figure that at least people will respect my mahjong achievements more than my badminton game (which, as I found out on monday, is pretty good if a little bit rusty).
Oh, and I'm getting sick. But I got Skype. So skype me! (I'm in Hong Kong! And I have a webcam! Which has awesome/awful 'glitter' and 'fire' effects!)
It's pretty awesome, I have to admit: the 1 and 9 tiles from each suit, all four winds, all three honors, and a fourteenth tile that pairs with one of the others. It was a really exciting game playing to draw it (since you can't use any of the normal game mechanics to pick up your opponent's discards), and it looks way pretty.
The only problem is, like hitting your best golf shot at the driving range, we were playing this informal two-player version, and no local people were watching, which would clearly have made me seem cooler and less awkward and foreign (right?). And, of course, as a math major, the likelihood of achieving the same feat in a four-player game is at least 3 or 4 times more rare, so it's not quite as much of an achievement. I would say it's like hitting for the cycle in an exhibition game or something--really cool, but somehow unquantifiably not as cool as doing it on the Big Stage, whatever that may be. Oh, and I can only imagine how silly it sounds that I'm trying to describe a game played (most famously by old people and housewives) with tiles using metaphors pulled from 'real' sports. Well, now that I look at it, golf and baseball are on the 'game' side of the SPORT--GAME continuum, so maybe they aren't so badly stretched after all... I figure that at least people will respect my mahjong achievements more than my badminton game (which, as I found out on monday, is pretty good if a little bit rusty).
Oh, and I'm getting sick. But I got Skype. So skype me! (I'm in Hong Kong! And I have a webcam! Which has awesome/awful 'glitter' and 'fire' effects!)
posted by sam at
2:41 AM
2 Comments:
Sweet. As soon as I get a new webcam I'll take you up on that. Is there any sort of online Mahjong we could play? Or is it not 'cool' enough for the internet generation?
By
Travelingrant, at 11/10/07, 7:27 AM
well, what the tricky thing is is that most americans know mahjong only from the "tile-matching derivative game", which lacks any relation to the original. so you gotta find the one that's all authentic. a local student told me she uses something called qq[something, i forget what].
By
sam, at 11/11/07, 2:31 AM
Post a Comment
<< Home