Mahjong Life and Living

I had written a fair share of entries long before I ever started playing mahjong.  I did it via LiveJournal, along side with a number of online friends associated with a past anime community.  Connecting past to present, I shall link it here . Here's the thing: I lost both the password and its associated e-mail.  So, I cannot nor would not change any of my writing then.  I turn back to it once in a while just to look at it.   I may actually regret releasing this material, but it's a part of me.  So have at it. Despite everything that has happened so far, my general attitude to blog writing is the same.  I have my thoughts, and I jot it down: either directly typing into an entry or pen-paper.  Even now, I have a collection of incomplete draft entries to post.  They just sit there waiting to be edited, amended, posted, and/or deleted.  Plus, I have more on paper waiting to be typed, if I get around to it. Deep down, my general p...

Lent had ended this year.  My pledge to abstain from online mahjong has ended yesterday with the celebration of Easter.  Despite the coronavirus , my church took religious services online; and it was a pleasure to be in observance of it. Looking at my online record, I have not played online mahjong since Feb 24 - the day my cat died .  Did I quit mahjong?  In fact, I played with some real tiles within two days after that day.  That session was my first with Northwestern University's AOTOMO automatic table.  It was a good day, and I needed it.  The laughs were good and contributing to my coping that week.  My last game session due to coronavirus was a month ago on March 14.  That was a good session to send ourselves off to comply with the "stay-at-home" orders. How enthusiastic am I in going back to online play?   Not all that much, but I will play.  After all, I signed up for the USMA  CV Riichi Online Tournament 2020 ....

This was an old bit of writing dated: April 21, 2010.  Fast forward to today, I decided to include into this blog, as it is a piece of myself.  And yes, in terms of memory lane, I went as far back as my childhood life in the Philippines.  This was before 1986. Learning the Bicycle Here is a story of how I learned to ride a bike, and the pattern it had set me for life.  Yet, only recently, I had realized this pattern. My parents were buying a bicycle for my sister.  As for me, I was outright refusing a bicycle.  Yet, regrettably, it was I, not my sister, who ened up riding that bike more often.  Or at least, it appeared that way in my memory.  With the training wheels on, I rode it where ever I could.  Eventually, one or both of the training wheels would break.  If only one broke, then I still would ride it.  In the case of both, then I'd wait (or ask) for them to be replaced. One day, my neighbor decided to help me.  Wh...

November "officially" marks my tenth year of mahjong.  What does this mean?  Nothing really, other than I can compare riichi mahjong in 2009 vs 2019.  Ten is a round number; and we humans tend to point to things like that.  Here, I shall highlight some comparisons of then vs now.  Discord did not even exist, and the main chat communication was  IRC .  The old channel, #mahjong, is still there but very inactive.  We gathered here centered around the  Osamuko blog .  Naturally, Discord became rather popular, and a migration occurred.  As a side effect, numerous Discord servers exist for mahjong. The number of clubs across the North American continent was countable with one hand.  Now, a whole bunch of clubs have sprouted since then, each with their own collection of mahjong and non-mahjong related talent.  That talent pooled right into the riichi community.  In 2010, I was lucky enough to find Chicago Area Mahjong v...