Frenzied betters play God

Humans on their own are usually insignificant, but they all have one similarity. They all like to play god. Nowhere is this more evident then at a World Cup, an event long on irrational fervour and short on rational logic. For the one thing bigger than the World Cup itself is the World Cup betting frenzy.

Do you seriously think this world cup would be so big if there weren't obscene amounts of money being wagered on the outcomes of every match, on whether certain teams would score a certain amount of goals? Humans all like to think they know better. I see people doing stupid things like putting hundreds on matches, only to tell me after the match that they should have known better. Well, sorry, but I thought you did.

Even thinking that putting money on matches will win you money in the long run is just stupid, Just think about it, if betting were a money-losing business, (I.E. you will always win money so the betting houses would lose theirs), would there be so many betting houses around? Would the government actually want to legalise gambiling even at the cost of their squeaky clean public image? Money has a way of making people give up their moral values. Actually any form of a carrot can do that if you're narrow-minded enough.

You want proof? Live for a week in a certain ISP platoon in a certain signal battalion and watch how people fight for offs and other petty advantages. Morals go out of the window. The devil would be proud.

If I had the money I would start a betting house too. Before I can even open the door of my new shop hundreds of people would be rushing to throw their cash at me, then spend the next few days scrimping and saving just to throw more cash at me. What a life. I won't even be able to enjoy the money you people are throwing at me fast enough before more will be thrown at me again. Then I'll open a few more shops and the number of people throwing cash at me would increase tenfold. Soon I'll start New SingPools and the number would increase to national proportions. I would then pay Gurkhas or African child soldiers to serve in the SAF. They are fitter and more motivated for the same amount of cash. And I wouldn't have to serve reservist, which is just a 10-day or so kopi-drinking exercise.

Yes my dear OC, my attitude may be bad but I'm not here by choice. I would however recommend my Gurkha or African brethen to you. They would really love to take my place, which I would be so willing to give, to essentially do nothing for a living while still being able to enjoy the privilege of reporting sick too! And they even get lots of off days! If only in the signal formation. Its a win-win situation, something I've learnt from my secondary school days which still guides me to this day.

Allow me now to take a 5 minute break to expunge my disgust and suspend my disbelief. Oops!

But not serving in the army is all a conjecture and a fantasy. Till someone gives me enough cash to start my own betting house.

But back to my topic, it is seriously dumb that people still want to place money in bets. I guess humans like to go for the short term high where you feel vindicated for thinking you knew better, while losing money in the long run. Probability shows that you will probably win a few times in placing bets. but probability also shows that you can never win money in the long run from bets. You'd be better sitting on your cash and not touching it. How can people claim to pass A-level maths and not know this? Its just something about humans that still puzzles me.

Travelling

It takes some getting used to living on two sides of an island. In the ancient past when ancient villagers lived on islands, I'm pretty sure they didn't traverse from one end of the island to the other without good reason. For one its a pain getting from one end to the other, unless your island is the "cartoon" island, the one with one coconut tree and one unlucky marooned guy often depicted in cartoons.

Which reminds me, people like to ask others the question of what'd they'd bring if they were suddenly marooned on a deserted island. People tend to say stuff like the most beautiful lady in the world, a book, an mp3 player or whatever. I can tell you these people are either really stupid or just horny. The first thing I'd bring is a working auto-roaming handphone with GPS. The second would probably be a spare battery for that phone. The third would be another spare battery. You get the idea. Only idiots would choose to actually continue staying on that island. You can't eat coconuts forever, nor would you want to.

Back to the topic of travelling cross-island, as much of a pain as it is travelling around in an MRT, I still have to do it to get home from camp. However last friday the trip home on the MRT proved a little different. While I was daydreaming on the MRT this large extended family came in and sat on the row of seats opposite me. Well, it would have been just another family had it not been for this one little girl with two ponytails who just refused to sit still. One moment she would be climbing the metal pole, and the next moment she'd be hanging by her hands on the overhead handles and swinging around. Sometimes she would look at her own reflection in the wall and shake her head while making monkey faces at herself. Otherwise she would be swopping seats with the rest of her family members. If there ever was a tireless ball of energy I think she would be close to it.

I watched her antics with a sense of amusement and a tinge of sadness. The amusement probably stemmed from the fact that I was getting a free circus show from a very enthusiastic performer who never stopped laughing and smiling. The sadness probably came from the realisation that I was once a little kid like this girl who swung round the poles and ran helter-skelter from end to end of the train, laughing and carefree as I did so.

Somewhere along that line I became more reserved till I wouldn't be caught dead doing what this girl was doing, although there was this part of me that really wanted to play along like this little girl. It seems that as one grows up, one gets robbed out of a very basic need to just have fun. Why does it even seem wrong to enjoy one of life's simplest joys, to do what the heart wants? Its as though that as one grows up, one forgets how to have fun, however much we know about time being money and making pots of it.

The thing I noted about this family was, no matter how much of a "disturbance" this girl was, her parents never once stepped in to stop her, only watching from the sides to make sure she didn't get hurt. The amazing thing was, nobody seemed to mind the girl either, despite the fact that she was definitely quite prominent. The family didn't seem to care whether their face would be lost because of their little girl, like the typical chinese family. To them it was more important that their little girl was happy. And surprisingly, it was the same case for the rest of the occupants in the cabin, although people were giving up their peaceful rides for her. Maybe the occupants were just bochap, but I think there was more than that. It gave me a lot to think about.

The end of my teenage years, on the cusp of adulthood

Reality hits hardest when you don't want to believe it. In my mind I'm still a teenager but with a 2 in front of my age in the tens place I have to accept that I'll never be one again. Not that age has anything to do with one's behaviour. It just isn't true that people get wiser as they get older. They just get older. The wiser part is optional.

Getting back to the topic, seeing that I'm now officially older, I'm supposed to do frightening things like planning, commitment and decisions that I never thought about because it always seems that these were adult stuff. Whew. Before you know it you're already in it. I am actually responsible for "shaping the world in time to come". A huge mouthful and definitely a hyperbole in every sense of the word. I think I'll be quite satisfied if I get through my daily routine without meeting any of the unholy trinity of bootlickers, hypocrites and anals.

I tried to defy my age and go back into time but I find that I am getting more distant with the teenagers of this age. They communicate in intelligible gibberish in their sms-es which I can read but I don't enjoy reading. I can understand them using words like "biatch" because it feels better to call a bitch a "bee-yatch". It has that kick about it.

But when your whole sms is full of words like "hv" "2moro" and "cn" and long abbreviations (an oxymoron) like roflmao and worse examples that I can't recall as of now, it is just tedious. Can you believe they actually summarise Shakespeare into sms langugage in London? Its a good thing he isn't alive anymore as that would be the equivalent of using the canvas of the Mona Lisa as toilet paper. I really think he'd die a second time.

In addition I find that this generation seems to enjoy sleeping around. Well to some teens that might seem like heaven, but I can tell you I'm not really comfortable with it. I think I might be one of the last surviving members of a generation that was taught only how to "window shop" It seems the in thing now is "trying for size".

It must have something to do with rising affluence. Just as people try their clothes for size, now they do the same with their boyfriends and girlfriends. Its all about having more choice isn't it? I guess this generation will have less excuse to claim that they were cheated after "making their choice", in a warped way. However it seems that the returning of "unsatisfactory goods" to the market is also becoming in vogue, when people of the past would just pretend that the clothes they bought actually fit, or try to cut them down to size. Well, I guess its all in the package.

Trying to act older than I actually am doesn't work either. The people older than me all seem like they have seen better days. I don't think I want to go down that very weathered and depressing path. It has an effect on your quality of life. In any case, I'll rather be younger than older, because I'm just not ready to do adult stuff like commitment, planning and decisions. Oh who am I kidding. I should try my best not to end up anal, bootlicking or hypocritical.

So while I mull over this topic, I shall do the thing NSFs do best. Slacking.