Sunday, December 27, 2009

Merry Christmas!


I hope you all enjoyed a lovely day where you gorged on food, gave thanks to the day baby Jesus was born, relaxed to the max and spent an insufferable amount of time with the loved ones. That's how my Christmas went, anyway. I guess my family didn't get my bulletin announcement of how I didn't want anything for Christmas. They went and bought me some lovely knicknacks and pattywacks, for which I'm really appreciative of, thanks! Nevertheless, my favorite Christmas gift would have to be this:

When I first saw it in its comatose state of propped to one side and lying in the storage room, I thought it was either a big screen TV or a robot. But as you can obviously see, this is a mahjong table. A top of the line mahjong table that shuffles and sorts the cards by itself. All you have to do is press a button. Excessive? Not for our family.

Our family love ourselves a little gambling. They can spend all week on the casino floor of Vegas (and have). My young sister has an annual pass to Morongo. And our favorite way to spend away a rainy afternoon would have to be playing mahjong. And because we have a large family with many members itching to get in on the game, we're not content with just one table. We play with two.

Even though I'm not the biggest gambler in my family, I love playing mahjong because it is the one event (other than eating) in which our entire family can interact and hang out together. Our entire family - the grandpas and grandmas, nieces and cousins. Around the mahjong table is where we can spend some quality time laughing and playing, sharing stories and trying to gyp each other off (in a fun, family-friendly way, of course). And the money? It makes no difference who wins or loses. Okay, so yea, my cousin, Irene wins far too much, she has to have cheated, but whatever. No biggie. I'm no sore loser. So she took 5 HK dollars from me the other day. Whatever. Jk. Irene wins fair and square and I just have to suck it up.

The other big thing our family does together is eat. Post to come shortly. Enjoy the holidays, y'all! I'll be spending the New Year in BEIJING! 好 好 玩!