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It’s all in the numbers!

(This post is not about these “Numbers”. Poster source: www.mundoplus.tv)

My colleague had an accident couple days ago – her “month old” car was hit from the back.

Being seasoned gamblers investors that we are, the first question that we asked her was “so, what’s your car number?” The next question that was posed was “so, what’s the other car number? The questions like “how it did happen” or “how bad is the damage” or “were you all right?” probably came in at the 5th or 6th question. Yes, it sounds mean. Of course, during the lunch time, we made a pit stop at the “investment centres” nearest to the office.

Its funny how some 4 digit of numbers can get a large of number of us all worked up and excited. Sometimes it does not – just yesterday, I was quietly doing work when one of my colleagues shouted “Oh Shit!” Thinking that he must have crashed his computer, I turned around to look and noticed that he had his hands on top of his head and the computer screen was showing the Sports Toto’s results. He missed winning the 3rd prize because he missed out buying one of his regular numbers. He had this guilt look the whole of that afternoon.

Ya, the prospect of getting some returns is there but sometimes the hardest part is “interpreting” something to get the numbers. The source can be a plate numbers of the cars involved in an accident (or at the scene of criminal – police shoot outs), dreams and tips from friends. Probably interpreting dreams is hardest because firstly it is so vague (Sherlock Holmes would have tough time interpreting the clues) and secondly often we don’t remember our dreams (that well) when we wake up.

There is one dream that I remember well though. I dreamt that I was in the 4D shop, queuing up to buy my predicted numbers. The queue was long. As I was waiting for my turn, I was looking at the prize money snowballed for the jackpot game – it was RM14 million. Huge amount there and I was not the only one looking at it. The rest of the people in the shop were looking at it as well. Just about few rows away from my turn, one of the guy who was buying numbers suddenly exclaimed “I won RM14 million”.

I somehow remembered that number 14 and went bought the number 1400 the next day (I could have permuted the numbers and bought more but I didn’t – I was a small time gambler then). When I looked the result the day after, the number “0014” won the first prize. Damn, I missed winning due to misplaced zeros.

If you think that was bad, what about this “kisah benar” (true story) from my old work place? There is an old security guard who used work at my old office. One day, he came in and tendered his resignation. He was smiling and even offered to take us for fish head curry lunch. He had won the first prize and the money was more than enough for him to have a very pleasant retirement. When asked about the winning number, he told us (much to our regret) that he got the number from the serial number (prominently displayed near the “Start” button) of the office’s photostat machine – the machine that we often visit at least 6 times a day.

I admit that heavy gambling can wreck people’s lives and we are well aware of it. So, we limit to spending couple of ringgit in a week to test our luck buying numbers. Amount spend on buying numbers has gone down drastically after I got married. Other expenses are more pressing that spending money on numbers. But that does not stop a group of us here from pooling our little allocated money to buy on some set of numbers once a week.

Think about this – gambling investing small time is still cost effective than spending RM50 – RM100 for beers. Yes, the “kick” comes in after that 6th mug of cold beer but with rising cost of living, buying numbers makes more sense; after all there is this slim chance of some winning money along the way (ya don’t tell me about odds of winning). More so when the jackpot swelled to RM7 or more million ringgit – despite the odds of winning, it always is tempting to spent that RM1 that could win the jackpot.

It’s all in the numbers – the right one of course.

Read also:

Gambling – only at 4D shops?

Will it be a Volvo or a Mercedes Benz?

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