Family Mah Jong

Playing Mah Jong with my parents is a hoot.

Not because their playing is bad. It really is because it's funny. Seriously.

For instance, today, my mum asked, "Has everybody poot fart (she meant bou fa or bu3 hua1) already?".

Then, I have this obsession with keeping the wall straight. I use my tile rack to straighten it while waiting my turn; a pastime my dad has also taken up.

When we play Mah Jong together, you can easily see the family resemblance. We are all really clumsy (and needless to say, really eccentric).

In our excitement to get tiles, we have: pushed over the wall, revealed our hand, shook the table, pushed over our chairs, etc etc.

In our reluctance to give our chips to the winner, we have: thrown the chips out the window, tore the bag we keep the chips in, narrowly missed injuring a fellow family member.

We also do this weird head-bobbing, finger-drumming thing while we play (to the accompaniment of Chinese New Year music).

I don't suppose anyone would care to join us for a game?

When I fall in love, it will be...with dance

Every once in a while, when I throw myself into dancing completely, what I experience reminds me why I love dance so much. It doesn't matter any more that I'm not that good a dancer.

While I am dancing, my whole conciousness is just fixed on getting the steps (not just getting the right steps, but understanding them in the deepest fibres of your being). I don't think about how I will look to other people. I don't think about anything else, except the dance. You don't actually think about it conciously while you dance, but you get the feeling that you're just a girl; just dancing.

You feel happy.

Despite what people say about happy being an over-used word, I have to say, happy is just the right word to use here. Simple, succint and powerful. I can't call it euphoria, because that gives you a sense of losing control. I feel completely in control.

It doesn't matter to me what I actually look like while I dance. I most probably look like a baboon trying to attract a mate. Somehow, though, I just don't care. Plenty of time after the dance to listen to any corrections.

My inhibitions and self-conciousness just slip away as I become the dance.

After the dance, I don't feel weary at all. True, I will feel a little exerted, but I also feel completely alert, awake, ready to try again. After a while, sure, I feel the pain of friction burns and pressure bruises, but it fades when you get into the dance again.

I won't say that there are no words to describe it, becuase I always get annoyed when other people say that. It's like, what's the point of trying if you know that there aren't (any words to descirbe it, I mean)? But it really does require you to experience it before you understand why it all becomes worthwhile.

I wanted to write about love,
But I have no one.

I wanted to write about happiness,
But I am lonely.

I wanted to write about life,
But it is empty in words.

Therefore I can only dance.

I dance for sunshine,
I dance for rain,
I dance for joy,
I dance for sadness,
when there are none of these things.

In dance you can live another life.
In dance you can live life.

---

I learned something interesting this weekend. At my singing lesson, my voice teacher remarked that the most important thing for a singer is his/her ears. It's what you use to tell whether you're singing right, or not. It's what other peole use to judge you. It's how she knows whether I'm singing right or not.

I realised that the same principle can be applied to dancing, only this time, it'd be the eyes. Without them, you wouldn't be able to learn new steps, dance in sync with the rest of the class, see if you're using the correct technique, and so much more.

It's all very well to say that, and feel blessed to have a pair of eyes and ears. But really, the thing about it is not whether you can see or hear, but whether you can discern and observe. You may be short-sighted, or long-sighted, or half-deaf, or colour-blind, but it isn't mere clarity of vision and hearing that I'm referring to. It's really the ability to pick out the nuances in what you hear and see and learn from them (although acuity of the senses is definitely helpful when it comes to this).