nice combination of clouds and sunlight, rite? i'm always attracted by these nice nature scenery and such, but am always too lazy to for nature trails n such, had enuf of the forest back when i was serving the nation.

has my luck changed for the better?

been having a rather bad spell lately, when playing mahjong, lost everytime(almost), best was last fri at the bowling chalet, only played one round of 4 winds and lost $50, argh, fast and furious, i dun even earn that much in 2 hrs(approx time to fin 4 winds)

but then, yesterday was a different thing.

tried my hand at Tombola(Italian Bingo) at my dad's company clubhouse. it's a game where u purchase a set of tickets from the counter, each ticket consists of approx 15 random numbers from 1-90. then they will have this machine to produce random numbers one at a time, then they will announce the no, then u juz strike off the number that was called on your ticket. u win $ when u get four corners(all 4 corner numbers on your ticket) a line(all the numbers in a line are called) or full house(all 15 numbers on your ticket are called)
for more info, check out the hyperlink above.
i muz say that this is my 1st time playing this, i've had some impression of this game when i was young, but it was mostly my parents or relatives who were playing(i roughly remember one of my uncles winning several hundred dollars from this game on a cruise ship)
As we reached the clubhouse too late, we were only in time to play the last round, as it was the last round, might as well try luck mah. n in the last round, they had this special bonus jackpot of $50, so if normally u won a full house, u get $20, but last round add jackpot bonus so total winnings of $70.

and so the game started...
not long after, someone won the 4 corner thingy followed by another auntie with the line thingy, i was beginning to think that it would be a wasted investment. it was my mum who spotted that we were close to winning the full house(joint venture mah, family thingy n such) with one particular ticket in the centre(we bought a set of 6 tickets) we had 3 numbers left on the ticket, and slowly(by some really dunno from where luck) all of the numbers on our ticket were called and we won the jackpot, not bad ah, $6 investment in return for $70, buy 4D also that that easy to win $.(i still think it's beginners luck, think of all those poor ah peh n aunties who played every single round and only won $10 or $20, then in comes a young lad who plays the last round and walks away with the jackpot prize, argh, i'm evil... haha)
i should have at least taken a pic of the winning ticket, but at that time where got think so much one, win $ of course take $ and run away fast fast mah.(in case u are wondering wat happened to that $70, quarter of it was spent on dinner and the rest split among my family, i told u it was a family thingy already)

i followed up after this tombola thingy with a late nite mahjong session with the "4 original heavenly kings"(der.obh.fish.me) we are four heavenly kings because we started to gather to play mahjong when we had too much free time during the earlier part of last year as we were clearing leave/off n such. we even went for a group trip to Korea, and yes we brought along a mini mahjong set to play there also.(hopeless mahjong freaks)
and lately when i play with them, i realised that i was on a losing streak, had not won any $ in a few months. i had prepared $20 as expected losses, as it's just a game, we are playing more to talk cock and pass time rather than really gambling.

but tonight was different...

even though i paid $18 to fish for a 7 tai that i "bao", i still managed to comeback to win $38 in overall profit. nice ah? all thanks to the 9 tai that i "zi mo"

how to get 9 tai: 4 animals= 5 tai
1 west wind=1 tai
1 correct flower=1 tai
half/mixed colours=2 tai
total=9 tai

but luckily we set limit at 5 tai and anything after that we just add a dollar, if not it could add up to really a lot of $ even if we were only playing 20/40 cents.

1 tai = 20/40 cents
2 tai = 40/80 cents
3 tai = $0.80/$1.60
4 tai = $1.60/$3.20
5 tai = $3.20/$6.40
6 tai(if playing no limit) = $6.40/$12.80 6 tai(friendly play) = $4.20/$7.40
notice the difference?
we are friendly ppl, we dun play to kill one. if really count 13 tai for the 13 wonders, imagine how much it's gonna be lor.