Sekarang beli besok kaya! Sekarang beli besok kaya! (Buy now, tomorrow rich! Buy now, tomorrow rich!)
I hear this familiar call every morning from Muthu, my friend who goes around table to table selling lottery tickets at the coffee shops near my area.
Always with a sense of humor, he once told me this joke.
Do you know that how Malays, Chinese and Indians play their music is similar to how they see business?
In Chinese lion dance music, the drums sound like a rapid "untong.... untong.... untong untong untong."
For the Malays its a slow and easy "tak untong, tak untong, tak untong."
For the Indians its a medium-paced "kadang-kadang untong, kadang-kadang untong, kadang-kadang untong."
Ha ha ha. Well, cultural music bears no relation to how successful people are in business I can assure you. I have listened to some lethargic Japanese cultural music before and as industrialists they are anything but lethargic.
Coming back to the lottery tickets, I've never bought one before but for some strange reason, I am fascinated when I see people buy one. You don't just buy one apparently. You buy 3 or 4, even 10 of them. Once I actually heard someone in the coffee shop, while flipping through the 4 digit results section in the newspaper cry out, "Aiyah... first prize is 1016 wor and mine is 1015!!! Aiyah... so regret!!"
That is why you don't just buy one ticket.
But in some ways I envy my friend Muthu. For a ringgit or two, he sells you hope and a dream. What would I do if I win RM 500,000? Or that figure in the neatly folded poster he showed me today, "RM 9 juta!!" What will I buy... a big house? A big car? Or better yet, what wouldn't I buy?
I don't have the luck in sweepstakes but I have no shortage of dreams. So what does one do when he has dreams but no luck?
Work hard.
Sometimes that's not so bad. I think the assurance of having an income, even though small, is still better than harboring big dreams that turn out to be nothing but a dream. You need to be a natural born gambler to survive that emotional roller coaster of buying, hoping, getting disappointed (actually that sounds like a whole lot of things in life doesn't it). Otherwise you might find yourself seeking comfort in the bottle, and that's when everything starts sliding downhill.
But Muthu can afford to smile. If you win he makes money. If you don't win he also makes money. And who can fault him for selling dreams. After all, isn't dreams - however they come - what we all live for?
Yeah, Muthu the 'Dream Pedlar'.
ReplyDeleteI never had the luck of numbers, so like you said I worked hard and found my own luck. And I never envy those who bought their dreams.
Some pushed their luck too far. They ended up with their homes splashed with red paint. And that's only the preliminary warning...
Seems like everyone has to find his own way through life... BTW anyone know of any short cuts?
I know many short cuts to hell. Whenever I go to town, I see all the stickers by the roadside that say, "Kami bukan Ah Long, kami hanya mahu tolong." Actually I do know one short cut to having no worries. That is to stop wanting things that lead you to more trouble. I think contentment is the word, one of those that's easier to say than to do.
ReplyDeleteThe trouble is nobody preaches contentment these days because it doesn't sell. The bottom line is always the same. Sell. Make money. Get rich. Or, borrow, use other people's money to make money. That's the sermon that congregations everywhere want to hear.
ReplyDeleteYes, how to have economic growth when everyone is content with what they have.
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