Friday, 21st August 2009
The winner takes it all....or a whistling kettle!
Last week’s Super 5 lottery was high enough for the peer pressure to get to me. Although the chances of winning were 1 in over 850,000, with the stake up at 1 million Euro I just had to take a chance at hitting the jackpot. So, against my better judgement, I pooled out 10 Euro for a joint ticket with a few of my colleagues.
Except for those tickets that are quite literally shoved down my throat by door-knocking scouts, biscuit-bearing girl guides, and over-enthusiastic local parish festa committees, this was only the third or perhaps the fourth time that I ever voluntarily bought a lottery ticket.
It’s not that I’m different, or indifferent, in fact just like everyone else, I too dream of winning the lottery, quitting my job and sailing into the sunset. Like everyone else I’ve rehearsed a variety of impolite farewell gestures with my colleagues, I’ve toyed with various styles of farewell notes, and I’ve also made mental lists of things that I would do with a million Euro.
But the truth is that I am just too grounded to even remotely believe that it would ever happen to me. Of course this could be slightly related to the fact that I do not gamble at all and can’t be bothered to go down to the lottery boot to buy a ticket. Possibly it is also related to the fact that I am even less bothered with choosing the ‘winning’ numbers, and always leave it up to the teller to randomly select them for me.
Lately I read the story of Brad Duke, the American who a few years ago, won 85 million dollars. Before winning, Duke was a gym manager and spinning instructor. He had spent years messing about (pronounced experimenting) with number probability schemes. He had tried his hand at different lotteries, and when he won the big prize he said that he knew he was going to win that time. He said that he was so sure that he had written it in his journal.
Duke had it all planned out. He was going to win and become a billionaire within ten years of winning. So instead of going crazy, he spent the first month undercover. He didn’t tell anyone about his winnings and consulted a team of financial advisors to help him make a billion. This is what he did with it:
- $45 million: Safe, low-risk investments
- $35 million: Aggressive investments like oil and gas and real estate
- $1.3 million: A family foundation
- $63,000: A trip to Tahiti with 17 friends
- $125,000: Mortgage retired on his 1,400-square-foot house
- $18,000: Student-loan repayment
- $65,000: New bicycles, including a $12,000 BMC road bike
- $14,500: A used black VW Jetta (apparently a rare find)
- $12,000: Annual gift to each family member
After reading this, I did some research and asked a few people what they would do had they to win a million Euro. I was most intrigued (for lack of a better term) by a woman who told another journalist of the Times that had she to win the lottery she would most certainly buy her sister a whistling kettle! A friend of mine said that he would change a 1000 Euro to 1 euro cent coins, put them in a sack and leave them behind the door of somebody he really dislikes. An ex-colleague said she would cruise around the Norwegian Fjords and visit Alaska, and a long lost second cousin in Australia said she would buy a beautiful house by the sea and spend Australian winters in Malta. It seems that no one has any loans to pay off, poor families to feed or sick unemployed relatives waiting for an organ!
I can only think of one sure thing that I would do had I to win – I would lobby and pay whatever I need to pay to introduce torture as a punishment against anyone who is remotely cruel to animals. Apart from that however I found it easier to compile a list of things I would not do had I to win the lottery. So here goes:
- I would not tell anyone (in fact for all you know, I’ve won it already).
- I would not pay off my home loan because that would let the cat out of the bag quicker than a hole in the sack.
- I would not quit my job until (at least) a year later. Not having to work for the money makes going to work a whole different ball game. In fact I would keep on rehearsing the farewell hand gestures with my colleagues.
- I would not invest money in anything that could possibly abuse more children, kill more animals, and exploit more women.
- I would not leave this beautiful country but I will not stop grumbling and criticizing either.
What would you do or not do?
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Comments
Are you not rather assuming that Paul was thinking my comment was irrelevant? You just don't know.
I was not boasting. Just advertising that there's nothing wrong with male nudity/homosexuality. Power to the people in other words. And for the record, I met a clique of married Maltese homosexuals men at the baths, escaping their stifling lifestyle. So people do travel Pat. I know that.
It was Alison Bezzina's blog I was 'abusing', not yours (as if). She's an intelligent woman. She'll understand.
So glad you amused yourself. So did I. Usefully, I gained more insights into the 'sometime' Maltese mindset.
Irrelevance is my middle name. Changed by proxy.
Useful knowing you.
It's Patrizia - female. I am not patronising Paul. Like him, I simply could not see what your piece had to do with the question Alison asked which was what would you do or not do if you had to win the lottery. My attempt at rewriting it was for my own amusement and because I could not believe that a grown man was actually boasting (boasting!!) because he went to places where people bathe nude.
Are you under the impression that you're the first person to catch a plane out of here?
I do not THINK that heterosexual men (whatever that may be) cannot 'enjoy' nudity with a clear (read guiltless) conscience. I KNOW that conscience, crystalline or otherwise, is immaterial as nude bathing (and free total nudity as in saunas) is hardly commonplace in Malta (in more enlightened countries, yes, definitely). There may be saunas attached to massage parlours (not in Malta surely?) but that is a different ball-game. And any hot-bloodied heterosexual male worth his salt, who chooses to be a paying mug at such joints has more than enough reason to have a less than pure conscience. So guys, I am afraid that my reality* is your unattainable fantasy. So dream on.
* For all it's worth. Exposure (pun intended Patrizio - or is it Patrizia?) causes immunity. Not for me the promise of one night of love in return for a lifetime's stranglehold (plus endless angst on divorce, secret trysts/massage parlours, school-fees and mothers-in-law).
I doubt Paul Farrugia is any the wiser - not from this summary(?). Hopefully he doesn't mind being patronised.
The rest does not bear comment.
Joe Xuereb is undoubtedly witty and enjoys a pun. Here is a summary of what he said:
1. He recently went to a spa in Budapest. The trip did not cost much.
2. He enjoys watching people bathe in the nude.
3. He is gay.
4. He thinks heterosexual men are not free to enjoy this with a clear conscience.
5. Until recently he regularly bought a ticket in the Camelot lottery.
6. He takes a break here to pun on the word 'stake' and its metaphorical implications as sexual innuendo.
7.He says that he avoids euphemisms (contradicting himself magnificently the while).
8. He recently shredded his old tickets in a machine bought from Oxfam.
9. He had not checked his tickets against the winning numbers so he may have won and did not know it.
10. This does not worry him as he does not have dependents.
11. He takes another break here to pun on 'dependents' (wife and chn/reproductive equipment)
12.He would not give any of his winnings to his family.
13. His conscience is clear.
Don't worry Paul, you didn't miss much... In the profession we call this articulate but irrelevant.
What?!!!!???
I was saying. Over a period of two years I staked £2 a week on Camelot (that's a lottery, not a guy). And for two years I could not be bothered to check the winning numbers against my feeble attempt at fortune-seeking. And I stopped staking. And recently I went on a paper-shredding spree. Very therapeutic. I love the whirr of the machine, bought in Oxfam, the charity shop. Maybe I was a millionaire without knowing it. Or a multi one. Who cares. I can only eat one meal at a time. And wallow in one Turkish Bath (Budapest or Istanbul depending on my mood) at a time. Dependants? Do not have any, nudge! nudge! They would have to work and earn their keep like I did. Like everyone does. But I told you, I don't have any. Conscience is cristalline like the water at the spa.
For a couple of years until fairly recently, I staked £2 on Camelot, the National Lottery. Prior to this, I won the occasional £10. Big deal! As I was saying, for a couple of years I staked but could not be arsed (no apologies for calling a spade a spade. It is a gay blade thing. We do not handle stuff using tissue paper, to use a popular Maltese quip. In any case, an ass, supplanting the more honest posterior - tissue please - is a beast in a manger, Bezzina might approve. Or one of burden. cont./