Stuck In The Moment

It's been a while since I last updated my blog. Well, lots of things been happening to my life, lately. It all started on 19th June, 2005. I was sitting beside some of my colleagues, waiting for a meeting to start. This is one really "informal" project that I was working in. We were waiting for some important people to arrive. Suddenly, I received a phone call. The number was not stored in my cell, and I was quite surprised. I don't receive calls during a meeting, but that one hadn't started till then. So I decided to receive the call. What I heard was really unexpected, and I was so surprised that the guy sitting beside me clearly noticed the change in my facial expression. I realized that I was behaving abnormaly, and hence I went out of the room. I finished the conversation in front of Lars Armyr's room.

The guy on the phone asked me to come to Landmark building, 3rd floor, at 4 PM. But I said that it'd be really challenging, and It'd be really appreciated if meeting could take place after office hours. He replied that he could shift it by 30 minutes, but not more than that. I thought for a while, and agreed to the proposition.

I felt like being an undercover cop, in a secret mission. One phone call, and life started feeling different. I felt like a traitor. Every promise I was making seemed frickle, and every work I was completing seemed useless. But I kept my cool.

At around 4:15, I presented a really, really lame excuse, and still I managed to get out of office. I went there, and I was sent to an Egyptian gentleman. He asked me a number of questions, mostly deriving hints from my cv. I answered them calmly. In my life, I have learnt one big lesson. I should never pretend to know something which I really don't know. If I don't know anything about a particular topic (although I was supposed to know about it), I simply admit my ignorance. This often creates inconvenience in the short run, but it keeps me away from embarrassments in the long run.

I came back at office at 5:15. It was not a busy day, and I started out for home at around 6 PM. After 15 minutes on the road, I received another phone call, from that same number, and the same person from Banglalink HR department. The last person who interviewed me was the head of International Roaming and Value Added Services (VAS). He told me that they were looking for a Senior Specialist for VAS. I told him that my expected salary was 40k.

Now I was asked to meet the head of Marketing. This person had a really pleasant personality, and we had an informal discussion. The last meeting did feel like an interview, but this one was nothing more than a chat session. I was warned by a friend not to get too friendly with him, and I remembered the advice. But overall, it was a nice session, and I was sure that I'm getting the job.

Later on, I met the HR guy a day after, and I informed him that I can't leave the current job without giving a 30 days notice. He said, okay, I'll give you the signing letter on 22nd June, and you can give them a 30 days notice and join on 22nd July. He gave me some papers, and asked me to take up a medical test at medinova. He would start processing the joining letter after receiving the medical report.

That was the time when I let my family know about the whole thing. I was firm in this. I didn't want people to know about it unless it's finalized. I came home, found my younger maternal uncle there. He also heard about it, and we went out together...destination being Medinova at Dhanmondi.

Before leaving, I called the doctor, and requested him to stay a while so that I can arrive late and yet get the tests done. He agreed, and I reached there at around 8 PM. Me and my mama came out of Medinova premises after 45 minutes, and went to cozmo lounge. There we had two bottles of mountain dew (costing 25 taka each; 150% higher than the maximum(!) retail price) and two brownies. I thought brownies would be something like biscuits, but they were actually nice, chocolatey cakes.

Came back home via rickshaw. It was a fun journey. I talked a lot with my soon to be married favorite mama. Ironically, he would join my department in GP after a few days. Actually he joined 2 days ago. Hehe, I would never ever think that my uncle would be substituting me, or he'd take up a job which I am leaving. That is not the case in reality. Although he also joined in MRD, he'll not be working in the same unit as mine.

Medinova people were supposed to prepare the reports and send them to Banglalink for processing.

Now starts the painful waiting game. A game of deception, and also a game of nerves.

Free As A Bird

Free as a bird,
It’s the next best thing to be free as a bird.
Home, home and dry
Like a homing bird I fly, as a bird on wings
Whatever happened to the life that we once knew
Can we really live without each other
Where did we lose the touch
That seemed to mean so much
It always made me feel so
Free as a bird,
It’s the next best thing to be free as a bird.
Home home and dry
Like a homing bird I fly--a bird on wing
Whatever happened to the life that we once knew
Always made me feel soooo
Free

Free as a bird
It’s the next best thing to be
Free as a bird
Free as a bird
Free as a bird

Test

Something is wrong here...

Board Walking...(part 5) : Caromba!

Carom board was not one of my favorite games, mostly because I was really bad at it. But it was an interesting game. For some reason, I used to find a lot of resemblance between Carom board and billiard. I used to know the game as billiard, not pool. However, now, after knowing the difference, I can see that the game is more related to pool. Anyways, why the resemblance? Because both in pool and carom, the balls (guti's, in carom's case) needs to be arranged in a pre-defined manner. In Carom, the striker needs to hit the arrangement of to begin the game. And similarly, in Billiard, the first player hits the arrangement with the cue ball (the white one) in order to start the game.

In pool, you add ballspin, and there's also a similar concept in Carom. In pool, you need to "pocket" all the balls of a type (striped or non-striped) in order to win. The first person to do so wins the game. In the traditional carom game, there are white and black gutis, and one red guti. All the gutis (tokens) are of circular nature, with a few layers within. A "striker" is used for aiming at the other tokens. The game board is a huge, wooden square board. You have four holes (pockets) at the four corners, and there is a somewhat complicated layout in the middle. The gutis need to be placed in an organized manner upon the layout. The red guti is placed in the middle, and three lines of white gutis are connected with it. The black gutis are scattered around this thing. A strategically and skillfully aimed first strike can pocket the 3 white gutis residing at the ends of the lines. That was one move for the masters of the game.

The player who strikes first gets white, and the other one gets black. Similar to pool, the person who pockets all the tokens of a particular color. along with the red one wins the game. If one pockets the red, he has to follow through with a guti of his own color. If failed, the red is returned back on the board. A person can keep on getting strikes until he keeps on pocketing at least one of his gutis. So theoritically, it is possible to finish the game without even letting the opponent touch the game. But I never seen such a match in my life. Maximum four players can play this game, with 2 people in each team. There is an "allowed striker placing area" for each player. You'll have to place your striker within this marked space, connected by 4 large circles and 2 straight lines placed above each other with equal distance between them.

I don't know anything about the origin of this game, but whoever invented it must've thought a lot before coming up with the final game board. Such a simple setup, and yet demanding so much strategy and skill! There were so many moves, and so much to do.

There was also a variant of this game, where 4 players could play independently. We used to call the game "Kolagach", that is Banana Tree, for a somewhat logical reason. This time around, the gutis were placed alternately, above each other. As far as I remember, there were 8 white and 8 black gutis. So the setup was like this:

W, b, w, b, w, b, w, b, red, w, b, w, b, w, b, w, b

White was pointed as 10, and black as 5, and red as 50. The person collecting the most points would win that round. But there was another aspect of this game, the aspect of making someone "fokir" (bankrupt). How this worked? After each game, all the person was supposed to contribute the same amount of tokens as the lowest earner received. If a person didn't earn anything, he'd get knocked out. And if he earned only 5, others would contribute 5 each, and the next game would have a 20 point stake. The game would continue up to everyone other than the winner becoming fokirs. Hehe..

In this game (Carom Board as a whole, not Kolagach in particular), dad would become my partner. I didn't have a carom board at home, but my uncles had one. The stage for the games would be Granny's, and this was the time when we stopped playing scrabble. I hated the fact, and I tried to lure the people towards scrabble. But my efforts weren't fruitful. I never became good at this game..never. I watched curiously and somewhat jealously(is that a word?) while others pocketed the gutis. I could seldom pocket gutis, and I was really bad when it came to pocketing distant gutis. So I had to be on constant scoldings from the paternal side :-

There was another aspect of the game. Sometimes the board would get too dry and stagnant. Kinda like a cricket pitch without grass, no bounce, and all balls coming low. In those times, "Boric Powder" was sprayed throughout the board, and the interface got more slippery, and it was easier to pocket the tokens. Sometimes when Boric Powder was not available, flour was applied. Special emphasis was given on the areas surroundint the "pockets". It was really frustrating to see gutis popping out of the pockets!

Later on, I got a carom board on my birthday, and I used to play it a lot at home, too. But again, I couldn't do well either. The carom board was around for quite a while. Eventually arcades and outdoor games came in, and it went to the back of a door. Oneday, the carom board was sold off to some scrap dealer, along with a lot of other wrecked furniture.

I didn't even think about it then, but now I am feeling kind of sad.

Board Walking...(part 4) : We're In Scrabble!

My mother has two sisters, an older sister and a younger sister. The husband of the younger sister, our choto khalu, is a very nice person. Compared to the other two jamai's (my dad and my boro khalu), he was quite different. First of all, he was young, energetic and athletic. He pleasantly lacked that "murubbu" bhaab, which is annoying. This khalu and his family spent their lives abroad for quite some time, on and off.

I had two hang out gangs during that phase of my life, one at home, and one at my Grandmother's (Home of my mother's parents). I'll call them "home" and "granny's" from now on. These references are technically incorrect, because my home was also "granny's", as my father's mother, as in dadu also lived with us. Anyways, at my granny's, my cousin and my youngest mama was my gang-partners. Mama being the senior one was the leader, and we were faithful followers. We used to do a lot of things for passing time, ranging from reading books to listening music. One day, choto khalu gave us a Scrabble board, and taught us how to play the game. Things changed drastically. We started spending all our time playing scrabble.

We used to split ourselves up in 2 teams, one would be me and mama, and the other would be my dad and my cousin. My dad wasn't really interested in these shoshurbari visits. We'd usually go there on Thursday afternoons and return on Friday evenings. After returning from Saudi Arabia, that was kind of a regular routine. He'd spend most of his time reading the newspaper (infact, memorizing it, literally!) and or reading books that were scattered here and there. Yeah, he'd read Tin Goenda books, too--just to kill boredom. But since the arrival of Scrabble, dad also found a good way of spending time.

Why I never paired with my dad? I can't really tell the reasons now...it's been a while. But during that time, these teams would appear the most logical choices. Oh yeah! There was one reason. My dad could never forget the fact that he was my dad. Hence, I'd get scolded every now and then. Maybe it was a 3 letter word, or maybe it was taking some more time--whatever. I always had some fault, and I needed to be pulverized instantly. I don't have much grievance against him. All these scolding sessions throughout my childhood has made me a scold resistant person, and I have learnt the wonderful technique of putting words through one ear and kicking them out off the other ear instantly. Hehe....

It won't be a complete story if I don't describe my relationship with this mama. I don't like mentioning names, as you might have noticed by now. I spent the first 9 years in KSA, but after that, I kind of grew up with him. Both of us were proud Scorpios, and both of our first favorite band was Scorpions. Scorpions was the band that really got me in to music. My granny's was a music loving family. Almost everyone liked music, and my two younger mamas were more than connoisseurs. They inspired me, and I picked up the heritage.

Hehe I used to think that people who have the starsign Scorpio were supposed to be called "Scorpions". I loved associating myself with that lovely(!) species.

I was mesmerized by the game Scrabble. I'd eagerly wait for "that next travel to granny's", not for meeting the folks, but for playing scrabble. I had a vocabulary rich enough to ashame lots of grown ups, thanks to Sesame Street and all the cartoon shows. This made the teams quite balanced. Infact, we were a bit stronger in a number of aspects. My father was way experienced than us. He is surprisingly good at English. Even today he manages to surprise me by using words that'd be totally alien to an average Architecture/Engineering background person.

Sometimes we'd made up words! Hehe, words that sound like a word, but are unknown to us, that is. Events like these needed to be verified via dictionary. That was the time when I first came across this marvellous book. I'd eagerly take up the task up finding out the words. That was a good training, cause I never felt uncomfortable with a dictionary when I actually needed that book for study purposes. As these imaginary words became superfluous, a rule was set upon mutual agreement. If a word couldn't be found in the dictionary, the team will lose their turn.

By the way, the team concept was that mine's and mama's points would be added together for the team's score. Sometime there'd be a 1vs1 game, too, where two person would jointly suggest the words. Pardon me for not describing what Scrabble is, it's a game where people are given 8 tiles, and different alphabets would appear on the tiles. Each tile had a distinct score, and these letters were to be strategically placed on the board. There were different options like "Double word score", "Triple Letter Score", etc. So if you managed to make Jaguar, and your J falls on a Triple letter score, your score for J with triple. After making a word, you could refill your deck with taking the same amount of tiles from a bag, without looking in to the contents. The game went on until all the tiles were finished up. The game would also stop when there was a stalemate, i.e. no more possible moves.

Later on, I was allowed to bring the board to my home. After numerous pleading events, and when my gang partners kind of lost interest in it. I taught the game to my paternal family, and they liked it, too. But things were less colorful here, and more formal. Elders couldn't stand the fact that I, a 10-12 year old lad can beat them in an educational game. So that never went too far. And there was my chess partner cousin as well. He wouldn't even want to play with me later on. He said I was too good, and I didn't feel good about it at all. It was like "Why the hell did I have to be so good? Now I'm out of partners!". Yes, I was pissed off.

I still love this game. I did play online Scrabble for a month or two, but it's turn based, and too much slow for me.

Where Do I Get So Much Time?

This has been a quiet week. I haven't done much in the last 4 days, and I wish to spend today in a similar manner. But for some reason, I think I won't be able to do so. I love these times, and I hate them, too.

The Government has decided to impose a flat 1200 TK tax on mobile SIM cards, here in Bangladesh. This step had a drastic effect on all our plans, and all four privately owned cell phone operators have decided to go back to the drawing boards and observe the situation for a while. The cheapest SIM card of GP comes in two variants, EASY Prepaid and djuice. They were previously priced at Tk 300 per unit. But now they'll be priced as 1,500 taka. Most of our subscribers don't even spend 1,500 taka for a cell phone in 12 months!

Thus we are now waiting for things to unfold, and we, the product team people are now goofing off, and or blogging :D

Yeah, I am lazy, and I am always on the lookout for fakibaji opportunitities. But you know, this is fun. A bit immature, but fun. To hell with all the industrious people. Not too many of'em even thought about working 10 hours a day at 24.

Some lessons:

1. If you really want to find faults, you can find faults.

e.g. You can say that Bill Gates is a chor cause he stole stuff from Steve Jobs, you can say nvidia is bad, cause they bought 3dfx and buried them--but that's business.

2. It's very easy to intimidate people from a higher position.

e.g. You are the owner of a car, and he's a simple rickshaw puller. You can threaten him to "ek thappore shob daat fele dibo" without much problem.

Back to business...

A Dream Job!

Job Description
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Job ID
2911
Title
Assistant Editor
Posting Date
03/21/2005
Department
Gamespot/MP3.com
Location
San Francisco
Requisition type
Full-Time

Summary: GameSpot News is seeking an assistant editor to join the exisitng news staff. This is a full time position at the CNET offices in San Francisco. The Reporter will be responsible for reporting, writing, and posting news stories throughout the day. The ideal candidate should have a background covering news (preferably the business and/or technology beats) and be comfortable writing under deadline pressure. The hire will also maintain close ties to the industry itself-including developers, publishers, and marketing and PR staff. Qualifications: Excellent writing skills are a must - A college degree in writing, English, journalism, or technology would be a plus, but is not a requirement - Time spent working for a city newspaper, a college newspaper, or Web site filing stories under deadline pressure is a necessity - The candidate should have an interest in the game beat and interested in writing game news over and above reviews or previews.Interested candidates should include clips (urls) with any reply to this job post.
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Board Walking...(part 3) : Round The World in 80 Minutes

"Desh Ludo"was a nice game. I guess not many of today's kids will even know what that game was all about. Basically it's a dice and token based game. The board had a world map in it, and almost 108 major cities from different countries and continents were marked in the map. Each city was numbered, and each of them were connected via imaginary roads. The game had a simple logic. The first person to go from Dhaka to Mekka would win.

The game started from "nowhere". Yes, all the players would be in "nowhere" (which I loved to refer to as Moon, or anywhere else in the universe) and they would throw the dice to get a 1. As soon as someone got a 1, he'd get an "International Visa",which'd allow them to travel around. The word Visa was actually mentioned in the game instructions. There was no separate manual for this. The instructions were adequately detailed, and printed on a box positioned in the lower right corner of the board (Just beside Australia, and below the Indian Sea).

The board was quite big. It was about 3 feet wide and 2 feet long. The map was nicely decorated with different colors used for separating different parts of the world. It was still USSR era, and that was reflected in the map. Anyways, players would throw the dice, and their respective tokens would advance accordingly. The tokens were made off cheap plastic, and the shape was round, with a couple of circular layers within (sub circles). There were caption boxes set against several locations on the map. When a player's token arrived at such a location, he or she would have to follow the instruction written in that caption box.

As an example, in Colombo (capital of Sri Lanka), it said "Colombo ashiya steamer joge Sydney gomon ". This means your token would take the naval route, and go directly to Sydney (from 9 to 15, as far as I remember). So before their turn, players would always hope for dropping by such "bonus" locations. However, all locations were not pleasant. In Algeria, you fall victim of a Sand storm, and you can't go anywhere for the next 3 turns. It was damn frustrating to sit idle while all other players would gallop around merrily. The worst peril was a location just 3/4 steps before the final destination. It'd send you all the way back to the beginning location. Basically that was the most undesired and unfortunate case in the whole game. The stated reason was "Omuk karone mrittu. Abar shuru korun". So whenever people got around that location, they'd start saying prayers!

The game involved a lot of fun.

"Brazil ey rubber chash korte giye lokshan. 3 na pora porjonto opekkha korun".

"Gari durghotonay ahoto. Switzerland er Zurich Hashpatal ey chikitshar jonno gomon korun. 2 na pora porjonto opekkha korun".

"Babylon er shunnoddan dekhe montro mugdho. 2 chal boshe thakun"

It was an educative game as well. Thanks to the game, when I was in class 5, I knew a lot of cities, and I also knew the location of those cities. The map was quite accurate. But it did gave a false impression that all the cities of the world are actually linked by roads.

I got two atlas books on a birthday, and soon after the guests had gone away, I tried to match the real map with the Desh Ludo map. It was fun. I am really thankful to this game. It injected a liking for geography in to me, and based on this liking, I moved on to other things like knowing the flags and currencies of different countries. And yes, I am no nerd. I did these things out of plain curiosity and it was a hobby, not a ritual.

I kept the board with me for a long time, but at end of my school life, I didn't have any partners to play with. My regular partners, the cousins, got tired of the game, and moved on to other more attractive games. One day, while reshuffling our rooms, the board was cramped under a bed, along with a lot of other stuffs. The next time I saw it, it was torn by the middle, and we had to trash it.

It was a sad day for me. Genuinely a sad day. Be it a silly board game, but I had a lot of emotions with it. It's been many years since I saw a Desh Ludo board, but when I close my eyes, I can still visualize it.

I've heard that this game was actually copied from some English board game (Risk or something), but I always liked to think that it's an innnovation by some unknown Bangladeshi person. It was a source of pride for a 10 year old kid. I don't want to take away that pride by googling and finding out the origin of the game.

I think I'll go and look for a Desh Ludo board in the markets. After all, nostalgia shouldn't be ignored.

Board Walking...(part 2) : Chessassination!

My dad had a magnetic chess board. The board was like a box. One could fold the board and lock it. The chess pieces could be stored within the box. Dad also had a backgammon board, which he never played. He, however, did play chess with some other people living in the same locale. The community consisted of some other Bangladeshi families, and also a few Bangla speaking Pakistani people.

I didn't know how to play chess, and nobody was interested to teach me. But the chess pieces (especially the rook and the knight) always intrigued me. When we came back to Bangladesh, one of my uncles taught me and my cousin (son of my Father's sister, as in fufato bhai) the art of chessplaying. Cousin received the chess set as a birthday present, and it became a duty for us to learn the game.

We spent a lot of time playing the game. Two 12 year old kids sitting on the floor, playing chess, giving frowned looks at each other, and passing momentary jokes--how weird a sight was that? Our favorite arenas included grandmother's bed, fufu's bed, chacha's bed, the verandah floor, roof, the small place in front of the entrance, etc. Most of the time we'd get driven out of the indoor locations, and we'd end up in the verandah and roof, quite a lot. It was quite comfortable playing chess in the verandah and roof during winter. The soft rays of the sun gave us ample pleasure to play for long hours.

I can't help smiling while I am writing this. To get better in the game, I used to play chess with my maternal uncle and another cousin (son of my mother's elder sister, as in khalato bhai). They taught me the "3 move check mate" trick. I still remember the surprised look in Rousseau's face, when I first applied the trick and won the game within 5 minutes. Soon his surprise turned in to anger, and like most other 12 year old's, he kicked the chess board and said I was cheating. I said no I am not, and I can do it again. So he gave a determined look, and sat down again. However, that 2nd game ended up with him stating that "I'm taking my board back home, and we won't be playing this game again." He lived a few houses away, but still quite near our's. Our's sheltered most of my grandmother's family. Almost alll of her children lived in our 3 storey building, occupying 5 out of 6 apartments of the building.

As all the games would take place in our building, I was responsible for keeping the board. But that ended that day. I kinda missed playing chess, but I never got myself one. He was the only person with whom I could play, and thus there was no point in getting another board. I don't quite remember how the problem was resolved, but after sometime, we started playing again.

I consider myself to be a lucky kid, because I spent my childhood with two joint families. Today's generation will never now what they missed from not being able to be part of a joint family. Joint family taught me some really important lessons. Among these lessons, perhaps the most important one is the tolerance ability.

Anyways, that was the story of chess. I competed in a chess competition during college, won one game, got 2 walk overs and lost 2 matches. Maybe I'll get back to that one later.

Board Walking...(part 1)

I spent the early 8 years of my life in Saudi Arabia. I lived in a small town called Dammam. The Bangladeshi community there wasn't that big, and the first embassy school was not established before 1988. As I didn't have friends to hang out with, I spent my childhood with matchbox cars and an Atari 800XL console . I also had a Monopoly board. But Monopoly was a game which couldn't be played without a partner. I think someone gifted me that board on my Birthday. I was wondering how to play and stuff (mind you, I was only 7 years old then), and then came the savior.

One friend of my dad didn't have a job at that time, and he decided to stay in our place and pursue the job-hunt from there. During this period, which lasted more than a month, we played Monopoloy and spent wonderful times. He always picked up the car stating "A car is what I'd really like to have now, so I'm picking the car". I dunno what made me such a humble kid, but I'd always ask him first to select a token. Here's a secret--on every instance, I wanted to pick the car, and I wished that he'd select some other token, for at least once. But nope, that never happened. Was I being sympathetic towards a jobless guy? Hehe, probably not. Maybe some child psychologist would like to take a deeper look into this.

After so many years, while writing this, I am realizing that I actually loved the uncle a lot. He was really fond of cars, and his favorite brand was Mazda. He even had an imaginary wife, called "Mazedabegom". He used to say that he'll introduce me to his wife, soon. But that never happened. I never thought that it's a lie, or a joke. We kinda lost contact after leaving KSA in 1989.

After another long break, I got to meet him again. He was now settled in BD, and he invited us in his true marriage. I almost forgot the Mazdabegom thingy, but it all came back after receiving the wedding invitation. I particularly remember this wedding, because this person embraced his mother and started a hysterical cry; just before entering the car which was supposed to take him and his wife to his home!

According to my mother, she never saw a guy cry on the day of marriage before. Actually marriage can be a crying incident for a guy. Because, after marriage, a son can't remain that close to his mother. Wife becomes first preference, and I've seen a lot of people acting weirdly with their parents for the sake of keeping their wives happy. This is sad. The parent's should also be less cruel towards the girls who leave their homes and join a totally new family. My mother had to go through a lot of obstacles. I've closely observed both families, and I must say, one is the opposite of the other. It must've been really hard for her to adopt with all the eccentricities of my dad's family.

As an example, in my mother's, Daal is eaten at the end of a meal. The sequence is like this:

1) Rice with dry vegetables,

2) Addition of vegetable curry

3) Fried Fish/Fish curry/Meat/Egg

4) Daal and rice only (none of the above gets accompanied with this combo)

In dad's:

1) Rice, Daal, vegetable curry (they never eat dry vegetables)

2) Fish curry/fried fish/meat/egg + daal

So my mother definitely had a tough time adopting to the fact that daal can come first! I can go either way, but whenever I tried taking daal in the beggining of a meal at my mother's, my maternal uncles would give me weird and surprised looks. As if, eating daal is a taboo!

Similary, at my dad's, I'd get weird looks if I rejected a daal offer(!) at the beginning of a meal.

Anyways, this was not actually what I wanted to write about. I wanted to write about board games and their infleunce on my life (lol). I spent a major portion of my childhood nibbling with fake cash, which made me really comfortable with real money (later on)(I believe).

That was not a great training. I spend way too much :s

So my first 8 years saw only one board game, i.e. Monopoly. I don't really remember much details, but the most expensive and sought after property was called "Mayfair" or something like that. I used to pick up the Hat token, but I used to crave for the Car. When I did get the chance to play with others (which never happened in KSA), I always picked the car.

The car is my favorite Monopoly token!

Will resume later...