The History of Games

I have always been a “gaming” girl since a very, very young age. Having a big brother, who’s five years older and was into everything and anything that involves using the brain (or a quick eye-hand reflex), influenced how I grew up big time. I’m sure he’d have loved to have a brother of similar age to compete against, but since he didn’t have one, a little sister five years younger would do too. What he didn’t realize was, when he lost (which happened a lot), it was just a tad more embarrassing.

Below is my “history of games”. I try to put up as complete a list as possible, to pay tribute to not only my childhood, but also my present, my continuing, though only occasional, fascination with new games and mind practices.

Childhood -> Adulthood:

• Nintendo (Super Mario, Contra, Bomberman, Tank City, Road Runners, Pac Man, Duck Hunt, various shooting games, arcade games, and tons of others)
• Chinese chess
• Chess
• Chinese checkers (跳棋)
• Go (围棋)
• 军棋，四国军棋
• 飞行棋(I think the English name of this game is called “Sorry!”)
• Connect Five(五子棋), Connect Four(四子棋), TicTac
• Various Chinese Card games (升级，争上游，捉黑叉，五十K，说瞎话，拉大车，翻对儿，51点，拱猪(Hearts), Tractor, and many others I don’t remember names for)
• Bridge
• Mahjong, of course
• Computer games (大富翁一二三代，Tronic, Pinball, Tetris, 3-D Tetris, 决战俄罗斯, Vikings, the Carnegie game(卡耐基人生指南), Sim, the Pipe connecting game, Freecell, Minesweeper, and many whose names are lost)

Games I learned/played after I came to the U.S. (most of them I now own):

• Skip-Bo
• Sequence
• Scattergory
• Scrable
• Pictionary
• Taboo
• 4 corners
• Uno
• Spite and Malice
• Sudoku
• Bejeweled, Bubbles, and many other variations of this type
• all the card games in Hoyle Card Games (Gin, Cribbage, Rummy, Pinochle, Solitaire, to name a few)
• all the board games in Hoyle Board Games (Backgammon, Mancala, Othello, Yahtzee…)
• all the casino games in Hoyle Casino Games
• all the word games in Hoyle Word Games (Anagrams, Enigma, DoubleCross, Word Yacht…)
• Super Nintendo/Nintendo 64 games (Dr Mario, Pokemon Puzzle League are my favorites)
• lots of PlayStation 2 games (Dead or Alive!)
• Wii (Wii Sports, Paper Mario, Wario, Wii Play, Legend of Zelda)

Now:

• all those stupid Facebook games I played lately :)
• Texas Hold’em Poker

Update on Jan 31, 2009:

I must add another two (newly learned and thoroughly fun) here: Carcassonne and 够级.

No Subject

Lately I’ve not been blogging much. There are a few reasons for that:

1. I’ve been spending lots of time on Facebook, which I just joined a month ago.
2. I got into poker, Texas Hold’em Poker. I’ve been playing (mostly on Facebook) and absolutely loved it. At the time of speaking, my poker status is “Poker Pro” with about $15,000 in my bag. My goal is to get to at least “Big Dog”, preferrably, “Shark”. :-)
   Texas Hold’em is a fascinating game, so many facets to it, full of strategies and a lot are based on observations.
3. I’ve spent quite some time reading and commenting on a couple of friends’ blogs, who have been blogging like crazy lately… (you know who you are!)
4. I’m in a lull.
5. A couple of other things that were occupying my mind, which I cannot blog about.

However I also remind myself that there are more than a few reasons that I should keep on blogging:

1. I want to keep a record of my life, my thoughts, my mind so in the future when I look back, I will truly experience that famous saying, “my whole life flashes in front of my eyes”. I just hope after that I would not die.
2. I want to engage my readers, however many, or few, there are.
3. I want to keep up a commitment I made when I started. There are few things in my life that have lasted for longer than ten years (with the exception of family, a husband and some friends). A personal blog may not be a very significant part of life, but a will to commit is.
4. I have a voice, I like to express, that makes me a great candidate for this modern creature called “blogger”.
5. I consider writing artistic expression. That would make one who writes an artist (whether a good or a bad one is another issue). It feels good to think of self as the creator of something meaningful.
6. I type fast.

A Poem

I like this poem. It’s different.

The New Poetry Handbook
by Mark Strand

1 If a man understands a poem,
he shall have troubles.

2 If a man lives with a poem,
he shall die lonely.

3 If a man lives with two poems,
he shall be unfaithful to one.

4 If a man conceives of a poem,
he shall have one less child.

5 If a man conceives of two poems,
he shall have two children less.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

What would you do if you cannot speak, cannot move, cannot feel, the only thing you are capable of doing is blink, and think?

Enter The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

I was searching for the best word to summarize this movie. Beautiful. Inspiring. Touching.

Then I found it.

Extraordinary.

It was an extraordinary story and an extraordinary cinematic experience.

Do yourself a favor, see this movie, and celebrate the even more extraordinary, the human spirit.

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• Summer 2007 Movies

Moonstruck

Just saw it last weekend. What a delight! Cher was fabulous. The whole family was hilarious (thanks to an Oscar winning script). And I’ve never seen Nicholas Cage look so young.

I don’t like spoiling movies for other people, so let me just say this is one of the best comedies I’ve seen in a long, long time. A timeless classic. It lightens up your spirit and warms your heart.

Why aren’t they making movies like this any more?

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• Lust, Caution
• Re-watching Hitch
• Ratatouille