James Mok’s Soliloquy

My extended Chinese New Year holidays is almost over. It has been a relaxing, and slightly constructive one.

I have managed to DIY some sort of a fix for the new spilling problem of my new bath tub. The new tub is about 3 inches shallower than the old Jacuzzi tub and the shower curtain is too long hanging inside the tub. I believe the problem is that the water in the tub is squeezed through between the shower curtain and the tub and spilled over.

I bought a nice long flat type self-adhesive HKD$9 electrical wire tubing and had it taped along the entire side of the tub with water and mildew proof silicon sealant for a more permanent fixture to act as a dam. It seems to be working quite well, but the sealant cost much more than the tube.

On another note.

I am not a gambler and I would only play the very odd games every now and then but never play the ponies. It has been a family tradition that several groups of the family with my cousins, aunties, and uncles have games of cards as well as other types of light wagering games only during the first couple of days of Chinese New Year holidays. Since Alec is very fond of numbers and moneys, naturally he became fascinated with these games.

This is the first year that Alec started paying attention on our games and my letting him getting in on it a little. Cousin William showed him Blackjack and a couple of dice games and Alec was quickly attracted. It took him just a few minutes to learn and got overly excited in the games, and took me a couple of days and several hours worth of prep talks the day after to let him know the difference between playing and gambling.

On the second and last night (2nd night of the year), I only allowed Alec the bring HK$10 to cousin William’s and warned him that only a gambler would kept wagering without a limit. Alec wanted to be the dealer of the dice game “fish-prawn-crab”! I told William, who was entertaining a few kids only with the game at the time, that Alec only has HKD$10 and after that he has no money whatsoever.

As it turned out, Alec won over HKD$300! The funny thing was, William while almost letting Alec to win yet at the same time, there were quite a few games in the middle that William would only bet on crab and Alec rolled no crab at all until the one time that William forgot to bet. Then the next game on, he rolled no crab at all again! That gathered us spectators around and laughed our heads off.

Luckily, Alec has always strived to be good, so although there were many questions from him about the good and bad of the games, we had finally got through to him and got him off the obsession despite the big win. Alec has never asked or tempted to play those games since.