Football betting week 2 part 2

I have deviated from my policy and every time I do that there will be consequences. I usually bet when top teams meet lousy teams but I actually deviated when I bought Leverkusen to beat Karlsruhe. So the bottom side has won. I should be very wary of bottom sides at the end of the season because bottom sides are usually the ones with more motivation than mid table sides. I broke the rule that said that mid table sides do not have anything to play for at the end of the season.

I'm glad I didn't bet Everton vs Man City. Normally Everton would win because Man City are shit away. But it's always dangerous to bet against sides which have Stephen Ireland and Robinho in them. It's dangerous to bet on a side who have just played Chelsea and Man U, and are tired. Another rule: Brazillians are better when winter is over. Except when, like Elano, they are Brazilians from the Ukraine.

I'm also glad I didn't bet Fulham vs Stoke - Stoke to eat 1.5. Yes, I would have won, but that would be cutting it close. Maybe I should have bet on Fulham to beat Stoke. Except that Stoke are such a hardy team I don't like betting against them.

So Liverpool beat Hull. Good. And I have lost $10 betting on Leverkusen. If Arsenal win against Middlesborough tomorrow I will cut my losses. Otherwise I would have lost back all the money I won last week.

The other thing is that I have made an extremely foolish gamble. In the middle of the week I drove to a kopitiam to watch Liverpool vs Arsenal. There was a parking warden in the carpark next to the kopitiam. At 3 in the morning! So I drove off and parked at a further away multi storey car park - without the coupon and I was safe. But today I went to the same car park, blithely ignored the fact that the carpark was empty - and I got punished for taking a stupid risk.

OK, the match that I watched was good. Just like the Liverpool - Arsenal match. I missed the first 3 goals but there were also 4 great goals. Man U have their mojo back, and their form no longer suggests that they will screw up.

Edit: Arsenal beat Middlesborough. What a relief!

Computer Games / A Series of Unfortunate Events

I read this post from Shingot about him beating his computer game addiction. OK I make it sound worse than it is but he’s spending more time away from computer games and that’s a good thing. So I got a computer game story of my own to tell.

I had a friend who was coming over to my place to use the facilities. I dun mean the toilet, but the swimming pool. I guess that includes the toilet too but you know what I mean.

I don’t invite friends home in any case, but if they stay downstairs there’s no problem. But that means no dinner or anything.

So I was checking out the swimming pool and trying to figure out what time they have swimming lessons for kids. It’s very irritating because they take up the whole pool, they swim breadth-wise and make it impossible for you to do laps. I asked the security guard about the swimming lessons. He knew nothing. I concluded that he was an idiot.

I went into my condo clubhouse to check it out. There were no posters about swimming lessons anywhere, so I couldn’t find out. I suppose you had to find the swimming instructor and ask him. I saw the arcade machines, so I thought I would go in for some Bubble Bobble. Tried to change a $2 into 50 cent coins, but the machine wasn’t working.

Never mind, I still had 2 50 cent coins on me. So I popped one into the arcade machine. It didn’t go through. I raised up the arcade machine a few cm and slammed it down. No reaction. Never mind, I thought. Maybe if I put my second coin in, both will go in at the same time. It has happened before. I put it in. No action. I was furious.

I was about to kick the machine, when a thought reined me back. What happens if the security guard finds out? But didn’t I just conclude that he was lazy and stupid, so I kicked the machine a few times. Nothing happened, as in the coins didn’t unjam, and the security guard didn’t come for me. But my right slipper broke. It was a bad day for me.

I shuffled out of the clubhouse and back home. It’s hard to walk when you’re wearing flip flops with broken straps. At one point I was walking on asphalt, in the mid day sun, it felt like an Indian fire walking ceremony.

I remembered that I had another pair of slippers which broke – 5 years ago. But I never threw it out – probably it didn’t take any living space since it was outside the door. But I went to check which side was broken. Miracle of miracles, it was the left one that broke. So now I can throw away the right of a pair, the left of another pair, and I still have one (albeit mismatched) pair to work with. This is great!

Football betting week 2 part 1

Leverkusen to win Karlsruhe.
Liverpool to win Hull City.
Arsenal to win Middlesborough.

I will bet on the above 3.

I'm confident enough that Everton will beat Man City but not confident enough to put money on it. I think that Stoke City should not lose to Fulham by more than 1 goal but Stoke City are lousy away from home.

This week there are not that many matches which fit the 90% rule. Not much for me to bet on.

Football betting week 1 part 1

I might turn out to be a regular gambler after all. I have a theory that it's possible to beat the Singapore Pools system, so wish me luck.

The conventional wisdom is that you shouldn't bet on games which have a very low return, because the amount you could win is small compared to the amount that you could get. But I don't think that's true. My rule of thumb is to bet on outcomes where you are 90% sure they will happen. I will give you a fuller exposition of this in the weeks to come. Until then I will keep on posting my bets.

There aren't many 90% bets. In fact I think I broke my own rule a few times. But anyway I bought based on whether I thought that the odds offered were higher than the probability of success.

There weren't that many high probability matches in the EPL, but I didn't think that Sunderland were going to thrash Hull, so I bought Hull to eat 1.5 ball vs Sunderland. Sunderland scored first, and I endured a very tense 1 hour that was compounded when I saw another team in red and white stripes score another goal. (Luckily for me that was Stoke). But no more goals, fortunately. So good for me, I won narrowly. After reading the match report, my hunch was right: Hull were fighting all the way.

I should not be worried about whether I win bets comfortably or by the skin of my teeth as I did in this one. If you bargain to win 90% of the time, then of that 90%, some wins will be comfortable margins, and some will not. A win is still a win.

Borussia Dortmund to beat Bochum. I was surprised that Dortmund beat Berlin 2 weeks ago and I suppose they were in good form. They gave me good odds at 2.2 so I got it, and as expected it was a comfortable 2-0 victory.

I thought that Munich would be another shoo-in to beat Bielefeld, who is near the bottom. Yes, Bayern Munich are back from Europe but I don't think Barcelona gave them much exertion - it was a lost cause anyway. I was nervous about this match so I only bet $5 for it, but I got back $7, so good for me.

The bet I lost was on Hoffenheim to beat Karlsruhe. I suppose I had a weak spot for both Hull and Hoffenheim because they were minnows who had a great first half of the season. As it is, both teams are fading fast. Hull, if they keep on losing, will go down. Hoffenheim are more comfortable but you would expect them to beat the bottom team - they didn't.

The last bet is on a match that's not been played yet - I bet on Tottenham to beat Newcastle. Yes, they are talking about the Alan Shearer effect but it's yet to kick in. I don't know if it ever will. Yes, this is not a 90% bet but I suppose all the alternatives were worse. I need a little more discipline to avoid breaking my own rules. Anyway, wish me luck.

Edit: Tottenham beat Newcastle. Ka-ching!

Structure

OK, for a few times I have taken the Myers Briggs test, and usually the result is INTP. I’m a little borderline on the I/E, and on the P/J, so there is a bit of the ENTP or the INTJ in me but basically I am an INTP.

So like most INTPs I am concerned with structure. I may come across as a bit of a joker but my chosen subject of study is the most serious subject around: Mathematics. The one subject with which it is impossible to fuck around. If you get it you get it. If you don’t or maybe you are not so clear you get caught out.

But I’m not here to talk about Mathematics. I’m here to talk about structure. It’s a good thing to understand structure, because once you get it, you get the gist of most things. I feel that if you really want to demonstrate that you understand music, you got to be a composer, but I’m biased. If you want to understand visual arts, you got to understand composition. And if you want to know how to write a play you got to understand plot.

So when I made a claim to a friend that I am a playwright, he asked me what I knew about theatre. (Actually not much. I would rather be writing short stories. But writing plays gets you noticed more than writing short stories. So I wrote plays.) He asked me if I understood dramatics, if I got the lighting and mood. If I heard about all those games that actors play when they get warmed up. I said no. But for me (again I’m biased) there is the one element which is important above everything else: plot. Plot is king.

Now I know that there are 3 main players involved: the writer(s), the cast and the crew (and the king of the crew is the director). OK, I may actually be saying that the plot is the most important thing to the writer.

Whatever it is, the plot is the first thing that a writer must get right. It is the skeleton of the whole thing. If a play is a model with clothes on, the plot is the naked model. Every thing else is the clothes. If the model does not have a nice body the clothes won’t look good either. So have a nice body. Even when we study literature, the first thing we talk about is the plot. When there is a trial, the first thing they talk about is the fact finding. Then they talk about character (probably not very much – in fact they don’t want to let the judges’ perception of the actors to colour the judgement about the case. In fact only one thing is relevant – who’s telling the truth.) and themes (how to frame the case so that we know which laws apply). Whatever it is, regardless of whether you think the plot is the most important, it definitely comes first.

You should design the plot first. Always start with the story. Never start with character, unless that character has something to do with the plot. The Little Red Riding Hood: a girl goes into the forest to visit the grandmother. A wolf eats up the grandmother, and then disguises himself in order to eat Little Red Riding Hood up. She runs away in a nick of time, and is rescued by the woodcutter. What happens to the wolf differs upon the telling of the story.

Later on, now that you have the story, then comes the other parts. What does the plot tell you about the character? The wolf? What are the themes?
The thing you should not do is to start with the themes. You can’t say, let’s make a play about suicide. And then later on you try to fit that into a storyline. One of the first plays I was involved in, my seniors decided to make a story about homosexuality. It was a legendary play, and it won the competition (in conjunction with 1 other play) but I didn’t like it because the story felt that it was tacked on. It’s the most clichéd thing you could think of. Somebody in school outs himself to his best friend. Suddenly his best friend is not his best friend anymore. Duh. Yes, this was 1991, and during that era anything that had anything at all to do with homosexuality was very daring. Well there were 2 prizes given out that year: one to us and the other probably to the one that the judges thought should have won.

Anyway it is true that sometimes even before you have a plot, you have a premise, and part of that premise is one of the characters. The one person in the Little Red Riding Hood that really has a character is the wolf. All other characters are not fully formed. It is the character of the wolf that determines everything. The other part of the premise is the forest, a setting for a dangerous place, the scene for everything that takes place, including providing a hero to rescue the Red Riding Hood in that situation. The premise, the set up of the story is to place a young innocent girl in a dangerous and treacherous place, and later have her rescued. Set up an interesting situation: put the innocent heroine in harm’s way and see how she wriggles out of it. Cross the luscious pre-pubescent with the lecherous wolf, and suddenly the story writes itself.

Why is it that bad people usually have more character in stories? It is because the good person in a good vs evil story has to be liked. The viewer has to be able to identify with the good person. Because one of the easiest ways to identify with a person is to provide that person with no personality at all, so that the viewer can project whatever he wants upon that person, the Little Red Riding Hood.

There are other reasons, of course. The only people in that story who are doing things are the guys. This was probably the sexist days when women were there to be, like children, seen and not heard. The ladies in the story are only there to get eaten up or raped.

There are a lot of meanings in that story. But they come from the plot. In a way, after the plot is formed, you might notice a few patterns, and you can expound upon them to enhance the storyline. But you should do that only after the basic plot is done.

One of the ways to deepen the impression about the plot is to have a few aspects of the plot that reinforce a certain idea again and again. What is the main theme of the Little Red Riding Hood? Betrayal and treachery. For treachery, there is the danger lurking in what seems to be a safe place. Your grandmother’s house is a safe place, but it is situated in a forest. You thought that the person on the bed was your grandmother, but instead it is the wolf, in the grandmother’s clothing. You play an innocent little game with the funny looking grandma (“My what big eyes you have…”). Then the forest is supposed to be the home of the wolf, but in it hides the woodcutter with the axe. Things are not what they seem to be, and it is a treacherous game.

Of course, now that we are grown up, we understand the one aspect of the Little Red Riding Hood. It is also about sex. Sex is about children growing up to become adults, the way that the Little Red Riding Hood making the first trip into the forest is a rite of passage into adulthood. The forest is the metaphor for adulthood, because things are not so clear cut and straightforward after all. The little teasing game that they play (“my what a big and hairy dick you have…”) is now recognized as foreplay. The grandma, a symbol of the childhood (since most grandmothers during those days did not live to see the grandchildren grow up) is taken over by the wolf. (Yes it is possible to interpret the wolf’s eating up of the grandmother as a rape but first who would want to rape her and secondly I don’t want to give myself a headache thinking about it.) Then the wolf is taken over by the woodcutter when he cuts the wolf's stomach open. In reality, they might even be the same person. Notice that the woodcutter is holding in his hand an instrument of castration. OK, maybe this is overkill but maybe it is really a huge dick. In any case, the conquest of the woodcutter over the wolf represents how the good husband unselfishly puts aside his raging lust to fulfil his duties as a good man. (But he probably needs to go somewhere private to grind his axe I’ll bet).

In a way, the other 3 main characters are the guardians of the Little Red Riding Hood. First your parents take care of you, then your horny boyfriend (the wolf) and finally the responsible husband (the woodcutter).

Also, note that the Little Red Riding Hood is both little and red. Also she is hooded. Little, because she is innocent at first and contrasted with the big bad wolf. Big dick and little pussy: a great combination. OK seriously. Little Red Riding Hood is childhood. Big Bad Wolf is adulthood. Getting fucked for the first time is a rite of passage. Is it rape? Possibly. But I would say that the little “my how big your … is” game that they play beforehand hints that it just might be consensual. Point is, both scenarios are controversial. Anybody who is outraged that a wolf would fuck a poor innocent kid should be reminded that the poor innocent kid fucking a wolf of her own volition is equally outrageous.

But importantly, she starts out as a child, or at least you know that she is a virgin, at least before she goes into the forest. (Recall that Napoleon used to nickname Josephine’s pussy “the forest”) OK, maybe the implications of child rape are a little disturbing here. But she’s wearing red. This is a giveaway. It’s not because this is Chinese New Year and there is no year of the wolf. Yes, this is about sex. Yes, this is about the unpleasant surprises that await the child during adulthood. Everybody knows about the relationship between food and sex. Also both involve the lust for human flesh.

OK, we’ve taken care of little and red. Hooded? She’s hooded because she’s sheltered. She’s wearing clothes. She’s chaste (in the beginning). The point of her being hooded in the beginning: if you want to have sex with her you got to take off her clothes. The disrobing parallels the sexual awakening. She’s sheltered, sort of. The grandma, the wolf and the woodcutter are all her guardians. And last of all, you can’t see her. She’s the only person whose face you can’t see. (OK, the wolf is disguised but can you seriously believe that a person smart enough not to get lost in a forest can’t tell a wolf from her grandma?) Point is, you are the only person whose face you can’t see. She is you.

So, this is a great story. It has survived from generation to generation because, even if not all tellers are aware of it, every detail in it is loaded with meaning. All the parts fit nicely, there is no flaw in the storyline, because every piece of the plot leads nicely into the next. The architecture of the plot, even the architecture of the ideas is good: adolescence, loss of innocence, sexuality, treachery. These things go together, and are found in the same place. The naked body under the clothes is a supple and muscular one. Great job, guys!

The other thing to note is that there is a good relationship between the plot and the themes, the characters. The characters drive the plot: the wolf in his insatiable desires, the woodcutter in his anal retentive self righteousness. But at the same time there is the influence that the plot has on the characters. There is a new, powerful psychological theory that a personality is influenced by the setting, the context, the environment. In other words, the plot drives the characters too. This goes back to the deeper philosophical principle that who you are is determined by what you do. Your actions determine what you are. Therefore a wolf is a wolf because he’s always looking for something to eat. A wood cutter is a wood cutter because he’s always the hero you can call upon for help. And Little Red Riding Hood is Little Red Riding Hood because she’s always getting into trouble.

So the question is, why does the plot have to come first? Let’s go back to the naked body metaphor again. When you see the naked body, what comes to mind? That’s right boys, ACTION. A naturalistic storyline is one where things happen. If you want a storyline, just borrow something from somewhere, and transplant it into a different setting. Or just remember something that happened to you, because the human memory usually remembers the exciting things. The sensational things. Mortimer Adler, in his great books series, said that there are only very few stories and plots in this world. All you have to do is to choose one.

And what is it about the Little Red Riding Hood that makes it a good narrative? Let’s go through the various actions of the tale, livejournal style. In the morning, she packs a picnic, some food, and heads into the jungle. Mood: nervous, excited. Wolf chases away the grandmother. Mood: tension for the audience because they have a foreboding about what happens next. She gets to her grandmother’s house. Mood: happy. Expects to have a jolly good time. Sees the wolf and his big whatever. Mood: nervous? Frightened? Horny? The child version would have her being scared. The adult version is much more complicated. It is also funny. Real life people do not have such conversations. Then, when all seems lost, when Little Red Riding Hood looks set to be digested, in comes Mr father figure, axeman himself.

OK, a little too much rambling towards the end, but the moral of the story is: when you are writing a story, come up with the story first, then come up with the moral of the story. Never do it the other way around because it would seem too artificial.

Anger management

Another long long distance chat with my sister. My sister is infamous for having an explosive temper. My mother commented that we are very scary when we fought each other. We came to blows quite often. Yes, I used to hit her, but I never used maximum force. And my sister – what she lacked in size she would make up for in ferocity.

A lot of top athletes used to have asthma when they were younger. My sister also had asthma when young, and even though she’s not an athlete that put the fighting spirit in her. (Actually in the 1 or 2 years before her back operation made various forms of physical activity impossible for her she went on some trips with her primary school to play some friendlies with Malaysians. I think that if not for her back operation she would have been some form of athlete later on in life.)

So we threw punches at each other. We fought, like they say, like brothers. There were shouting matches. Somebody commented that I had the uncanny ability to calculate the most offensive things to say at various times. I had plenty of practice with my sister. In turn she would beat the crap out of me.

I remember once learning the meaning of the word “cynic”. Then I called her a cynical person. She beat the crap out of me. Then I asked her if she knew the meaning of the word “cynical”. She said no. I said, haha you get angry for what you’re such an idiot. Then she beat the crap out of me again. There was another fight after I learnt the meaning of the word “lesbian”.

Some encounters I have had with some of my more grumpy friends remind me of how I used to deal with my sister. The way I meet their aggression with icy scorn and contempt, those are patterns established long ago.

So in that phone call she finally admitted that she was bad at anger management, and quite a few unpleasant incidents in the states (including one episode where she went berserk and slashed at herself with a chopper, requiring a visit to the A+E) came about because of bad anger management. She was lamenting that she never learnt to control her temper properly – this is a rare admission, because one of the big rows I had with her recently came about when I suggested she had bad luck with guys because of her temper.

But some events that took place over the holidays also led me to realise that I have a bad temper too. I don’t lash out at people like other people who are more obviously bad tempered. I wind them up bit by bit and hope that they explode. But this is also another form of aggression, something that I’ve had to curb.

It was often easier to overlook my own bad temper. I could never compare with my sister in this regard. Also the earlier part of my life was really easy going for me so there was never that much to get angry about, unlike now. My tendency to wind people up is quite dangerous. Even if you explode at people you aren’t necessarily going to make him an enemy. He might figure out that you care about him enough to get angry with him. But if you do what I do, and poke and prod him until he blows up, there’s something more evil about that. Subjecting a person to humiliation is more likely to make him an enemy.

My extended family (both sides) have always visited each other for Chinese New Year. They are close – especially my father’s side who went through all that shit you read about over there. So I feel a little guilty about jeopardising this wonderful arrangement. The uncle I was winding up has an attitude problem but it wasn’t completely right for me because he’s usually always been a very generous guy. But I also didn’t think that he should carry on having an attitude problem. I was deeply conflicted. Suddenly, at the next gathering, we both acted as though nothing had happened. I guess the incident is over.

Yes, I think that maybe my mother should have taught us a little more about controlling our tempers, except that she’s probably as bad as the both of us and frankly she has nothing to teach us when she couldn’t even solve her own problems with her mother in law. A lot of the people in my household are prone to explosive rages*. But it is not a bad thing. Sometimes a bit of a temper is evidence of some drive in your personality.

After listening to her gripe about how she wasn't taught to control her rages, I suddenly realised that controlling your anger is probably one of the most important aspects of having a good EQ. EQ and anger management are so crucial. When somebody slips up, it is so important to not make them feel bad about it unnecessarily. There's no need to be so impatient if a friend doesn't get in tune with what you're thinking. You can also bridge the gap. When somebody says something it is a crucial split second decision to take it the right or wrong way. These small things add up to your EQ.

* All the screaming at each other that goes on in kampong cultures rather easily translates into a HDB / condo environment. When you want somebody to answer the phone, why do you walk across the flat when you can scream at him without leaving the phone? When it is dinner time, why do you go from room to room to tell it when you can scream it out from the kitchen? Why talk softly when you can yell it all out? I actually like it better this way, instead of when you have to tread carefully around other people. 2 people in my family are hard of hearing and you just have to talk loudly to them so that they get it. There's nothing personal I guess.

Adventures at the coffee shop

We often think of Singapore as a nice and safe place. But you will occasionally find some bad hats around, especially after midnight. Yes, the convenience stores are not allowed to sell alcohol beyond a certain hour, but you still get crazies. When McD's started having their 24 hour joints, there were a lot of tramps hanging around at 3 in the morning, and I've seen more than 1 occasion where the police had to be called in. Now you know why the Al Fresco sections of the restaurants are all closed after midnight.

There was once, when I was watching a match in Euro 2008, between Austria and some other team. I was sitting in the middle, in front of me were a bunch of Chinese cab drivers (or may hauliers) and behind me were a gang of Malay schoolkids. This was 4 in the morning, and yes I did work the next day but I already had my beauty sleep.

The Malay boys were loud and rowdy. Harmless, I suppose, but this was a football match after all. Suddenly one of the cabbies started a staring match with the Malay boys. "You there. You got a problem here?" I got a little nervous. The Malay boy knew he was a hair's breath from getting beaten up. It doesn't matter if there were around 6 or 7 of them, because in the end it would be a gang fight, hardly a pleasant alternative. Another of the cabbies didn't want trouble either, and was prompting the guy to just say "there's no problem" and walk away. Another person was cajoling the confronter to take it easy, but the rest of them were just watching.

I was trying to concentrate on watching the match, but I occupied the distinctly uncomfortable position of sitting in between the 2 gangs.

In the end, the Malays left. And afterwards, the bad tempered cabbie was darkly muttering under his breath stuff like "All Malays are thieves". It was quite uncomfortable. This is not Kuala Lumpur in 1969...

At another time, we were having lunch at the usual place in - let's call it Liverpool coffee shop. As usual since I was there we were talking cock. Then Mr Fisherman appeared, he was later than us because the colonel had wanted to meet the managers. So he wanted to join us at our rather cramped table but I asked him if he wanted to go join hot and cold water taps instead. (There is someone called water tap, and then another person who always goes out to lunch with him. I'll call them hot and cold water taps because they are always seen together.) We were about to finish up and go.

Suddenly I spied at the corner of my eye this Indian guy who was walking around topless and holding a bottle of Chinese rice wine. I thought that was weird, but I knew that he was cuckoo. So as Mr Fisherman was tucking in, suddenly he railed at the lot of us who was nearby. Rapidly a few tables around us whose occupants had been shaking legs and talking cock after lunch cleared out. And Mr Fisherman was eating so fast he was almost choking.

At first he said a few things in Tamil. I almost wanted to ask Nat, as the only Tamil speaker at our table to translate, before I realised that it was probably a terrible idea. I don't know if he picked up on us saying something about a "report", but he screamed out that people were out there "reporting" on him for stuff he didn't do. And ranting about how they put him in there for (can't remember how many years) and had 24 strokes. Then he yelled at us, as we urged Mr Fisherman on to hurry up, he asked us if we wanted to see his backside. Later on some of us pondered what would happen if we were to say yes. At that time, we just wanted to get the hell out of there.

I suppose funny things happen at coffeeshops, especially with the economy now being what it is - funny how us middle class folks design things so that it's always the low end workers who lose their jobs first. Anyway, whatever. Like my sister told me recently, life is a little boring if there are no scandals.