“Let’s go someplace with snow!” the person I For Better Or For Worse With enthuses.
I blink. We leave for Melbourne in less than a week. But I’m not surprised:
“Let’s buy an apartment” (we did, in Singapore – never got to live in it)
“Let’s move to Hong Kong” (eventually sold the Singapore apartment for tiny net profit)
“Let’s buy an apartment” (we did, in Hong Kong – eventually took profit on it. Little early though – look at where the market is now – but we won’t complain, we did well.)
“Will you marry me?” (ok fine, this one seems to be working out for the moment)
So I guess we will be looking for snow. I’ve never even seen real snow. Just never got round to it. Never been into the Disneyland theme park, either (but have camped out in their café to read – I blame the dealing room days, I read and write better with noise and action going on around me). I’d much rather catch Zumanity in Vegas (the risqué version of Cirque De Soleil) again
Don’t like gambling in Macau either, after my last experience couple years back – they take your money too fast and are just too business-like about it. If you’re slow, the dealer might cluck in impatience. They don’t want to make small talk, they just want to take your money.
We gamble only for entertainment, or to be social (when there’s a pool of 100 lottery tickets at one go and someone builds a spreadsheet to check them all. A structurer told me he once honed his skills by figuring the number of tickets in an average lottery that one had to buy, to win – it was something like 15 million. So what happens if you bought 14 million? If you had that much money why would you be hoping to win the lottery in the first place?)
Therefore, the money we budget for gambling we consider “entertainment costs”, rather than any chance to turn a profit.
This cavalier attitude might not be welcome at the tables in Macau where you can sometimes feel the irritation emanating out of the seasoned gambler next to you when you do something they consider dumb. We’ve been told off nicely by another gambler for not thinking before we laid down our cards. (In contrast, a Vegas dealer might say “Aww, honey – are you sure you wanna do that?”
A girlfriend got into a VIP room of one of the major Macau casinos years ago by virtue of the story she was writing with another journalist at the time. They laughed in private at the shirt a guy was wearing, were amazed at the instant noodles the women in the entourage were consuming, considering it was the VIP lounge – then caught their breath at the chips in front of Guy With Curtain Cloth For Shirt – he had at least USD 1mil erm, “entertainment cost” on his table. That they could see, that is. No wonder they don’t want us to waste their time.
Anyway. Rockstar came back from Seremban with a fever and diarrhea, and we are trying to get on a 9-hour flight in a few days. He’s napping on the sofa with his bum in the air as I type to a background of CNBC news.
At Seremban City Park before he got sick
Even if he weren’t sedate, the fever would keep him out of school, not to mention major play areas like PlayTown and Wisekids Playroom who are all serious about temperature checks (they allow coughs and colds though – but some conscientious local parents put facemasks on their children).
I even got a call from Rockstar’s school suggesting I take him home early one day, after he registered a higher temperature because we had been swimming in the sun all morning (where were they when he contracted full-blown Foot Mouth Disease, I would like to know.)
People put a lot more facemasks on here than say, Malaysia. I caught myself apologizing to another mum when Rockstar coughed (from running around too much) near her small baby the other day.
“If he never gets sick, he’ll be a very weak adult when he grows up,”Rockstar’s pediatrician always says. Now, if only there were no killer flus waiting around the corner as the next epidemic here.
On the offchance we make our vaccie (Dr Wong thinks we will), I went looking for a waterproof coat (it almost never rains in Hong Kong winter – none of his cold wear is waterproof) for Rockstar:
D & G puffer jacket: HKD 2950
Diesel puffer: HKD 1490 (It’s. Just. Diesel!! What gives?)
FOR CHILDREN’S JACKETS??
Find Paul & Shark waterproof jacket in Ap Lei Chau warehouse for HKD 1400.
Original price: HKD 3500. Unbelievable.
Will borrow what I can from a girlfriend.
