Say Hello To My Little Friend!!!

Upon logging onto the internet (or interwebs, as I like to call it) for the first time since last Thursday, I was mildly amused to see my bank account balance - $1,999,046.

And that was only for a week I left my three fruit marts.

The above - without a doubt - does not portray my real financial status. In real life, I am a poorly medical student with only RM15 in my tattered wallet to see me through to the end of the week and dinner tonight is going to cost me RM8 since I am desperate for my interwebs.

So where on earth did I earn close to two million in just a week? In Mafia Wars on Facebook, of course. You might recall that I am an advocate of Facebook and its sometimes nonsensical quizzes but that fandom has just been escalated to newer heights after I was introduced into a Mafia family by Pakcik Hassan. What is an elderly Malay pakcik doing in an Italian organised crime syndicate? The first rule of the Mafia is you do not talk about the Mafia. The second rule is you DO NOT talk about the Mafia.

To it's credit, Mafia Wars is not a fancy looking game. You will be sorely disappointed if you were expecting to see highly detailed character designs in the form of men dressed in suits carrying tommy guns going all trigger happy while on a bank job. There is no blood, no gory executions and most certainly no Hot Coffee mod. In fact, the most you'll be given is an animated revolver being loaded with bullets. Hardly entertaining unless you're in the munitions business.

But even though it is a simple click-click clicking game, the real attraction lies in the decision making process which makes up the whole gaming experience. The player is given health points, energy points and stamina points to spend on doing hit jobs and launching all out attacks on other mafioso. Going all gung-ho on other Mafia families will not only almost ensure you get your arse handed over to you, but you will also lose a lot of money and as any good gangster knows, no money means no tommy gun ammunition.

Plus you will get punched in the face and receive 3 damage

So yes. This is my new obsession at the moment. Anybody who wants to fight the good fight may join my Mafia family and together we shall show the rest who's boss. Capiche?

What's The Meaning Of This?

Aren't you going to ask me what's my first impression of you after the first time meeting all these years?

"Well, are you going to answer that?" asked my brother. There was an impatient emoticon at the end of the sentence.

"Oh, yes. What was it again?" I typed back, with keyboard markings on my face.

*******************************************************

We had been talking about an incident which had happened earlier that day. He had gone out with a group of old friends from school and amongst them, was a girl whom he used to have a crush on. Have you ever been in that position? What did it feel like? Did you get butterflies in your stomach or was it more of like the sensation one might get had he unknowingly downed a plate of bad rice? Or were you all cool about it, not flinching a bit even when your eyes briefly met in a gaze which seemed to have lasted an eternity?

So they had lunch; a nice lunch at a nice chicken rice shop. Myself, I have some experience in attending these so-called 'small reunions' and I know that at the table, everybody will be talking at the same time and you get kind of lost trying to figure out who's listening to who, never mind what they're all talking about with their mouth full. Your best bet to indulge in some decent conversation would thus be to grab the partner of choice and make a getaway for it to another eatery, but since this is not practical at all, the second best option would be to sit next to the person of interest and make small talk then. Which is what my brother did.

They chatted a bit about what they've been up to the past few years when the girl suddenly popped the question above. "I mean, was she sincerely asking whether I wanted to know or was she merely stirring the bush, get what I mean?" my brother asked. "To be truthful, of course I am a teeny bit curious but shouldn't things like that be discussed in private without us being surrounded by onlookers? What gets me the most is when I texted her a bit later in the afternoon, asking about what she meant, I didn't get a reply. Strange." he continued.

Just because I was born two years earlier does not mean I am wiser in matters such as this. To me, girls are - and will always be - a puzzle wrapped in shrouds of mystery and locked up in a box of enigma.

Any girls out there care to give their two cents? Boys are welcomed too; I don't discriminate.