The Mum cooked sea cucumbers for reunion dinner.
I ate them because it is the polite thing to do. After all, I made her traipse the whole of JayBee town with me to find ‘em damn thing. Not forgetting the fact that they are (I quote myself here) “RM60 per tiny shit.”
We left the telly on during dinner. The Channel 8 news was on and the feature was on rising costs of food products during Chinese New Year. They interviewed a handful of disgruntled heartland folks who waxed lyrical about how they have to buy less bak kwa this year. A secretary-by-day-pastry-chef-by-night was complaining that she has to raise the price of her cookies because costs of ingredients (such as flour and eggs) and even her water bill have gone up. Shopkeepers complained that the ‘Gah-Men’ are restricting them from displaying their wares outside their HDB shop lots resulting in decreased sale.
The next piece of news is regarding 6 recent robberies on Singaporeans in JB. They keep showing a webcam video of the Causeway during the report which got us wondering whether it took place at the Causeway itself (which is pretty dumb, if you think about it.) One of us turn the volume up and we found out that the robberies actually took place somewhere else in town but obviously the reporters didn’t dare to venture into JB to take actual shots. We all went back to our sea cucumbers.
After dinner, The Dad and I were watching some HK Canto movie when The Bro came by to tell The Dad that he has been summoned to go to the study room with his wallet. Curious, I followed them and realized that they were going to start a mahjong session – without me!
“What about me??” I exclaimed.
The Frou Clan looked at me blankly. Apparently, I was conveniently omitted because the three of them felt that I am not the ‘mahjong’ type.
I wasn’t going to watch telly on my own on Lunar New Year so I planted my ass firmly on the fourth seat. That’s right; they were going to play three-legged mahjong even though they have a (potential) fourth player in the house– that is how much they didn’t want me there.
OK, I admit that I caused ‘slight disturbances’ to the game. For example, I have to randomly show my tiles to The Bro to ask him what they are (because I don’t know how to read the Chinese numeral characters.) Also I kept thinking the freaking ‘Bird’ is a ‘flower.’ And I made everyone take at least a 3-second pause after placing their tile down so that I can think about whether I want it. Oh ya, I also shouted ‘PASS’ whenever I couldn’t decide which tile to let go off but other than that, I did pretty well. Heck, I even won the first round!
The Dad is a very animated and loud mahjong player. Every time he draws a tile, he will close his eye and wish out loud for a particular one. If it is something he doesn’t want, he slams it down on the table loudly to scare us. Cheap tricks!
The Bro is not very lucky the first half of the night. He ‘char hu’ once, meaning he announced a win but his tiles were not in place. Usually he will need to pay all of us but we let him go. Because he is the youngest in the family. Bah!
The Mum is a very skilled, silent player. She is the type that doesn’t boast, doesn’t taunt, always laughs along with us and then quietly wins 4 games in a row. Needless to say, we all lost money to her. “Pay up all your losses because you can’t owe anyone money on Lunar New Year,” she announced.
We ended the mahjong game before midnight because The Mum has to welcome the Gods. We were made to eat bird’s nest before we go to bed. Now, that is indefinitely tastier than sea-cucumbers….
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