Today is the day which our relatives all gather together at our grandparent's house and have a reunion dinner.
I had my lunch at 12pm, and at around 2pm, I went over to my grandparent's house for lunch. When I reached there, some of our relatives were already there! I sure was excited to see them as I couldn't wait to gam- I mean "play" with them :)
We watched some extremely amusing TV programs first, and as soon as our relatives were done with their lunch, the Mahjong tables and "poker stations" were set up!
Mahjong is a traditional game which involves skill, strategy, and calculation, as well as a certain degree of chance. Well, since I am not going to ramble on about how Mahjong works and etc (pointless and time consuming), I might as well get on with it.
As I play Mahjong weekly with my relatives (note : Its only during the family day of the week :)) This wasn't any different. I took my seat and the game started with my grandfather, my uncle and cousin taking the other seats. I was doing quite well and won some money, but soon I got bored and I gave my seat to my mother to play instead.
Looking around, I spotted the "poker station" and I went over to check out what my relatives were playing. Ooh, they were playing blackjack, or in my family, we call it the "21 point", whereby you receive 2 cards at first, and if you get an ace and a 10, Jack, Queen or King, you hit the jackpot! You will win two times the amount you betted in return. Sweet huh? There are also special cases whereby if you get TWO ACES at the start, you will receive THREE times the amount you bet. Wicked eh! Imagine if you bet $10! $30 in return! $_$. But that's just an extremely rare case and who would bet so much as $10 anyway? I mean like, hey, we aren't running a casino here. Oh, just so you know, having 3 sevens gives you SEVEN TIMES of what you bet. You can start dreaming now :P
Soon, it was time to have our reunion dinner! Wee! (new catchphrase) We had steamboat with all sorts of delicious food. There was fish, roast duck, etc etc and we dumped the raw food into the steamboat pot! After the steamboat, we had the famous and traditional, "yu sheng"!
Heres a picture of the yu sheng we ate
(before the messing up)Yu sheng usually consists of strips of raw fish, mixed with shredded vegetables and a variety of sauces and condiments, among other ingredients. Usually, this dish is served as an appetizer to raise 'good luck' for the new year whereby everyone uses chopsticks to toss it as it is said that the higher it is tossed, the better luck you will have for the year. After tossing, we took a bowl each and scooped the yu sheng into our bowls to eat. Soon, we finished the yu sheng and went back to playing cards.
On the overall, I won quite a bit of money, and when it was late, we all went home happily :) Happy Chinese New Year to everyone who's reading this! =D
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