The search for the quintessential game

I have been looking around for a mahjong set since November last year, when I volunteered to host our family reunion last December. You see, my recollection of our family reunion during my childhood is one of great food, exchange of presents the games of bingo for kids and mahjong for the elders.
Mahjong is always played by four people and in our reunions it's usually our grandmother whom we fondly call Mama and her sister, who we all also call Ate', my dad and the fourth player could be any one of my dad's brothers or sisters.

I loved the sound of the tiles as they are moved around, I loved how the glossy the tiles looked when they are lined up and I particularly loved how the players would exchange friendly banter during a game. As an observer, it seemed like the game entailed a bit of concentration yet fun at the same time. Sort of like watching people play chess but with the players giggling and laughing with each other at the end of each game. There never was a sore loser, nor were hurtful words ever exchanged. After all, they played for coins and heck, the pot money was always given to Tita Lina in the end anyway.I guess I like mahjong because I always saw my dad smiling whenever he played, and he would only play at our family reunions.

I also remember how Mama' used to get dressed and tease her hair and put on lipstick in the midafternoon and her amiga (friend) Aling Chabeng would pick her up driving her Volkswagen Beetle and both of them would go to the home of their other friend to play. Mama would return a few hours after, often with Castanas that she lovingly shared with me, my brother and cousins. (Not quite sure how often that happened but the memory is vivid so I will insist that it happened often).

The thing is, I never learned how to play mahjong. My mind then until now, refuse to trigger it's pleasure sensors in any game that may involve losing precious coins. So I never learned how to play cards or mahjong or even roulette. I do not feel any thrill whatsoever whenever I put a coin in the slot machine. I liken car and horse racing to watching paint dry.

So there I was, trying to recreate the reunion we had in my younger days and it felt like it would not be complete without a game that I do not know how to play using tiles that I do not have but oh, I need to have one.

And so the search began.

I checked out websites and asked around and I learned that it is not as simple task to buy a mahjong set. There are a lot of considerations to take note of and a lot of decisions to be made.

For starters, they come in various sizes: small, medium, large and extra large depending on the size of the hand of the players. Of course, they also come in travel sizes so there are extra small tiles (how one can play at the airport or in the airplane is beyond me). There are various types depending on the characters: western (with numbers), chinese, japanese etc and variety of materials bamboo, plastic and of course one that Id like to think is no longer being sold: ivory. The cheaper kind are boxed in plastic. The more expensive ones come in wooden artsy boxes. Oh, and I learned that one should never borrow nor buy a used set so as not to inherit any misfortune or bad luck that can go with it.

Okay, given all that I decided that I want a medium, plastic, plain ivory color western mahjong set.

So now that I find myself in Hongkong and just after I declared to H that I shall not shop for anything extravagant, I thought: what better item to bring home than a set of tiles that can trigger pleasant memories?

A serious search was thus declared. I shall find me a mahjong set!

MrsA