RSSA bird in hand is worth more than flock in the horizon
Apr 03
I love mangling sayings. 😀
Last March 28, I had a very good and very disappointing event. I almost became a millionaire!
My wife and I had this private joke that I will someday hit the jackpot but since I rarely place bets I will just be lucky to pick up a winning ticket in the street. Just imagine a newspaper/tabloid headline stating “One lucky millionaire from a picked-up stray ticket” and then the following day will have a news item about a person who committed suicide for losing a winning lottery ticket. /lol
I keep on saying to my wife that I will place my bets but long queue lines never ceases to turn my interest off. At the sight of a long queue in the Lotto terminals I usually revert to sour graping that I won’t win anyway and I will just place my bets the next time. Nobody can blame me since my luck in chance drawings is almost dismal. One time I attended a dev seminar during a stormy night. Only five attendants were able to come and they raffled 3 books. I was one of the two persons who came away empty-handed. 😀
Before the holy week I was frequently in the northern office that is close to a mall. I was there for meetings and there is a Lotto terminal on my way to MRT. Since the queue was very short and the jackpot price was greater than Php 150 million then I made good with my pledge and place my bets. The first time I painstakingly selected my set of six numbers out of the 49 possibilities. On the day after the draw I checked my tickets and I usually have my smattering of single hits per frame.
On the Tuesday of the holy week I was once in the area so I placed another bet. This time I just opted to go for the lucky pick method wherein the lottery terminal picks the six numbers for me. I am thinking the actual draw is random so why not match it with a random way of selecting numbers? The disadvantage of lucky picks is that the numbers are usually so close to each other but who can say that it won’t be the actual numbers to come out of the draw?
By the time of the draw (March 27, since there were no draw during the Holy Week) the pot had already reached more than Php 200 million. On the morning of the 28th my wife said that the news announced that nobody won the jackpot. I left my ticket in the office so when I arrived I gamely checked how many consecutive numbers I got this time through the results posted in this site. The drawn numbers were pretty close (7-21-24-27-42-43) that my eyes were immediately zoned into the fourth frame since I got the last two numbers. I went back to the site and noted the numbers 24 and 27 which I also had on the fourth frame. Wow, so I won Php500! Then my eyes went to the first number on my ticket and it was a 7! I already have five out of the six numbers and my heart was now racing. And then when I looked at the last number my world slowed to a crawl. After that, the closes way to describe my state of mind was that I was in The Zone. The last number was a 21 and I had a 39!
After a minute my mind went out of The Zone and all hell broke loose. I think it was only natural to feel a bit disappointed since who doesn’t want to get Php200M+? That is a dream come true for anybody. Money can’t buy happiness but having lots of it does help. 🙂 With that money we would be able to start my dream of having my own bee and rock lobster farm. And maybe sleep in a bed of money. 😛
After a few minutes I calmed myself down and tried to analyze the situation (like what I sometimes tend to do). I can be disappointed or I can look at this as the first time I have won anything other than a gift certificate from the company. I prefer to do the latter. At least this way I now have a means of getting that sub-notebook to which I now have become fixated for weeks. And we can now buy that 32″ LCD TV that we were planning to buy with my mid-year bonus. 🙂
Sleeping in a bed of money is still a dream, but at least I got a bit of that dream into a reality. I guess if I change my winnings into five peso bills then I can still make that bed of money come true. But it will still be a small bed. 🙂
ciao!
May 09, 2008 @ 01:08:01
Wow, 5 out of 6 lotto numbers? di ba medyo malaki na rin ang prize nun? Congrats!
May 09, 2008 @ 10:13:46
hi allister,
yup. i collected around 50+K for the winnings. as stated above, we were able to buy an LCD tv and have some saved for an atom or isaiah based ultraportable, maybe on September when the supply for the next-gen ULV processors stabilizes.
like i said above, there are two ways to look at it (like the half-empty/half-full analogy). i prefer looking at it as an unexpected windfall rather than losing out millions.
come to think of it, i just read this programming article about sudden riches yesterday so winning only that much might really be a blessing.
thanks for dropping by and hope to read/hear from you again. 🙂
ciao!