Facebook gives me the creeps. Both in a good and bad way. Well, good news first, it sucks up idle time and keeps the sleepyhead in me up on my toes till the wee (and unholy) hours of the morning. Aside from the given plus of FB as we  all know, connecting friends, classmates, cousins, strangers for games and all the connections possible under the sun, I realized I could play a computer game.
Well, I did level up a few back then in a couple of Nintendo Game and Watch games called Egg and Donkey Kong but that was it.  A few years after that, with the now relic thing called family computer, I was also unsuccessfully desperate  to save the princess in Mario Bros. Then there was Ice Climber, LOL, that game was so funny I would always fall through the layers of ice before I reach the peak, and yeah, the paths were so slippery, I always tripped. Clumsy me.
Early 2009 when I was newbie in FB and the walls were boring like a ghost town ( I only had like 15 friends), I got busy cooking in Restaurant City , opened my own virtual cafe and increased my friends to 300, traded ingredients here and there and levelled up to the maximum. The virtual business was a success, expanded my space with the help of my virtual crew of 8. Â I got bored and left, and didn’t come back for a long time now. ( My crew is prolly be dead right now anyways).
Then I stumbled upon Mafia Wars by the end of June.  There, I was introduced to whole new world of robbers, hitlisters, fighters, killers. I played with the keys and started to increase my own mafia, slowly adding up till I reached 1ooo plus members, as of this writing. I don’t exactly understand at the beginning why it would be fun just clicking buttons to fight and use energy and stamina without seeing it in action, like we do in boxing matches or the like.
Apparently, Â I have learned to appreciate and love the game , because I am still clicking to master challenges and declare wars and ask for loots for almost 16 months now and counting.
Sure, it bothers me when I wake up to see my properties  being robbed big time in New York City but I don’t worry cause I can always rob them back. Yes, I do have virtual properties in New York, Bangkok, Moscow, Cuba and Las Vegas, the latest being Italy which opened officially today, Oct.22.
Also, it is only in Mafia where I own billions and millions in bank in all of those cities mentioned. Yes, only in Mafia. Drool.
Some hard lessons in Mafia are :
If you don’t want to be robbed, snuffed in fights and beaten till your iced , invest in good weapons and vehicles ( and loots), always remember to bank your money, increase your defense and attack stats; and never never leave your health above 20 before you sleep.
I can rant the whole day about Mafia but then there’s a very crucial thing called work and bills, jolting me back to the real world. Sometimes I play more than I work, that isn’t good eh, so it takes real discipline in keeping your fingers from logging in FB every 20 minutes or so.
But hey, it is fun while it lasts.