So last night, Jennie, Shengrong and I went to Chinatown for dinner. What was supposed to be a simple dinner among 3 individuals all headed toward different places upon graduation -- Jennie working in HK, Shengrong interning in New York and then staying for 1 more quarter in Chicago, while I make my way back to Biopolis in Singapore -- turned out to be more than entertaining. First, 3 of us ordered 4 dishes, culminating in Jennie forcefully stuffing unfinished food onto our plates to force us to finish up everything. That action of aggression was nothing compared to what was gonna happen back home in Regents.
So around 1030pm, Shengrong and I went up to Jennie's place for some Bahamas rum-drinking and 'Choi Dai Di' (Big 2, for those ang mohs out there). But everytime we play, there must be a punishment for the loser rite? Otherwise, there was no incentive, besides lots of suaning and whacking each other, to win. So after much disagreement it was concurred that the loser of each round was to drink rum, while the overall loser, ie the biggest loser after all the rounds, was to drink 1 Brita-pitcher full load of water. Jennie initially suggested 5 pitchers of water, but we knew she was always siao, so we (Shengrong, me and Tie [Lu's bf]) unanimously agreed on drinking 1 pitcher of water in 1 sitting as the punishment.
So the points scoring went like this: winner gets 0 point, while the losers total the number of cards remaining individually and this number is added as a positive score for each player. At the end of 30 rounds, the one with the highest number of points is the loser. Catch: the score is doubled for 10 cards remaining, doubled for 11 cards remaining, and tripled for 12 or 13 remaining cards. Eg. if you have 12 cards left after someone wins, you add 36 to your score. So unlike soccer tables, the more points you have, the suckier it is for you. Game on!
Surprisingly Jennie won the first few rounds, so the 3 guys all had a postive score at this point, while Jennie still had a score of 0. It's getting late here and I should be sleeping, so let me get to the exciting parts.
Halfway through, I managed to sneak into the lead, with Tie leading the pack, followed by Shengrong and then Jennie. So the 3 guys decided to collude to raise Jennie's score, to narrow the gap between her and Tie. But alas, she won big next round, with Shengrong and I ending up with 13 card each. This effectively put us out of reach of her, with Shengrong and I just behind Tie. More good luck essentially condemned the rankings as 1) Tie (118 points) 2) Shengrong (116 points) 3) Yongchun (109 points) entering the final round.
Essentially the position of loser was still up for grabs. It looked pretty much like a relegation battle between Shengrong and Tie for the last spot, but a 10 card or more remaining stash would catapault me to last place and a pitcher-full of water, so I could not afford not to concentrate. As I scanned through my cards, I realized that the biggest card I had was a J. Hong gan! I had a flush of 3,4,5,6,7 but how likely was I able to put that out, since that was the smallest possible 5-card suite. I could choose to play pairs, since single cards was a strict no-no, since J was my biggest card. My aim now was not to win, but to get rid of at least 4 cards. Having 9 cards remaining would give me a maximum score of 118 (tied with Tie, assuming he wins this round), but I was pretty certain 9 cards left would be sufficient to avoid last spot. Whatever happened, I couldn't be left with 10 cards or more. But with J as my biggest card, what was I to do?
So, everybody was jsut dumping cards, and I was just passing. I thought to myself, "Cannot be that suay, rite?" Then the critical moment came when it was Tie's turn to start. Needing to get rid of at least 2 more cards than Shengrong to avoid last place, he chose to throw out a flush. Since there was no chance of any pairs forthcoming, I decided to break up all pairs, and instead throw out a club suite. Heng ah! The moment I dumped those 5 cards, I knew I was safe. I could not lose with 8 cards remaining ... since the maximum score I could have would be 117.
Shengrong was getting flustered, but he managed to dump all cards but 1. With only 1 card remaining, there was no way Tie could overtake Shengrong. Thus it ended that Tie was to drink 1 Brita-full of water. When emptied out, the water was sufficient to fill up a large cooking bowl. Fortunately for Tie, Lu helped him out with the drinking. And Jennie took a video of their agonizing ordeal
Well, let's just hope their sleep tonite is not interrupted by constant visits to the toilet. Hopefully the next time we play, I will continue being the spectator when it's time to mete out the punishment.
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