Daily Lessons from Life 17 February 2010

"Man stole after casino losses - Wed, Feb 17, 2010 The Straits Times

AN INDONESIAN man who lost all his money at the Resorts World Sentosa casino stole a mobile phone from an undergraduate at Changi Airport.


Paulus Djohar, 49, unemployed, was jailed for four weeks on Wednesday after pleading guilty to stealing a $500 phone from Ms Lim Tse Min at Terminal 1 on Tuesday."

Well this is not exactly a shocking news considering that the RWS Casino was just opened on 14 Feb 2010 and attracted ten of thousands of visitors in the last 3 days! Surely there will be people who should never be neared a casino to gamble were actually deep into it once the casino opened its doors!

Lessons for me are:

1. human being are given a free will to decide what they want to do with their money - hard earned or through whatever means. The uninitiated or the addicts will make poor judgment and gambled their money away. This will happen anytime there is gambling in a casino. The probability always work in the casino's favour. This is the fact no matter how the gamblers think they can outsmart the casino!;

2. the disciplined or professional gamblers know when to chase and when to fold their hands and wait out or retreat. This takes a lot of careful training of the mind and developed the right behaviors. Not many are able to achieve it as most of us will just go 'hot around the collar', lost our senses and keep referring to our luck when Lady Luck clearly has left us a long long time ago!;

3. when a gambler lost his or her shirt or dress, all kind of behaviors become possible. To steal, to rob, to cheat, to exchange oneself for some capital to gamble some more, to borrow from loan sharks that charged exorbitant interest rates, etc. This case best illustrate the 'expected behaviors' of a desperate gambler.

It causes me to shudder in fear what it would be like if MORE gamblers take to this path and to think that the casino is just 3 days old. I am sure we have all anticipated this possibility. But to actually see someone behaving the worst we feared, does not make us feel any more comforted.

People have to exercise their judgment - to gamble or not to gamble, to gamble senselessly or sensibly?

May the Casinos thrive and create more jobs and may less gamblers become senseless!!