Mentalechoes

So I feel pretty lucky today, I reckon I’m going to win the Dutch National Lottery which is a whopping big 4 million euro jackpot this evening. Now I don’t usually go in for buying lottery tickets because more often than not you just lose your money. Over 40 odd years this means you lost the amount you could have won if you won big. That doesn’t seem like gambling so much as it seems like just giving your money away to complete strangers with more luck than you. I don’t see that fun in that really. But saturday morning a couple of weeks ago as I was drinking coffee the phone rang and it was some nice telesales bloke flogging 5 week subscriptions to the National Lottery. I was feeling in the mood for a chat with someone, and he seemed decent enough so after about 30 minutes on the phone and lots of digressing onto other topics of conversation not about the lottery, I was the proud owner of 5 weeks worth of tickets (for 14.99). Sure I may have paid for a conversation with a telesales whore, but I didn’t feel any less of a man for it, so where’s the harm?!

Now I’ve been dreaming about how to spend a big lottery jackpot since the time I went into one with my mum back home at the naive age of 16. Over the years since then when I’ve had a flutter I have these big ideas about what things I would do, an how I would bring about world peace and the end of global famine. When I win tonight, this is how I will go about spending up that sweet sweet loot to acheive these lofty philanthropic goals!

-1- Give my mum and dad a half a million each. In Aussie dollars they will now be multibillionaires and able to live out their old bugger lives very comfortably.

-2- Buy a new house for my sister and her husband. I will even spring for the awning option on the 5-man tent so they have a gazebo area. Very shiek!

-3- Buy that new pair of jeans I wanted from the Levi store in town at 65.99.

-4- Get a haircut. And one that costs more than 15 euro.

-5- Get a new CD. Doesn’t matter which, just get one so that I can say at least I bought one before they completely dissappeared because of the next big thing in music media.

-6- Pay off my flat in Amsterdam and soundproof it so I can play fuckoff loud music and not have the neighbours go all red faced blah blah zombie on me.

-7- Pack my backpack and head down to Schiphol airport and buy a one way ticket to anywhere.

-8- Travel for 5 years.

-9- Come back to my soundproofed flat and buy a new Apple powerbook laptop.

-10- Spend a year putting my - now travel - blog into an award winning travel book bestseller and publish it myself.

-11- Buy my own island and make a commune like what that bunch of lunatic hippies had going in The Beach, except without the lunatics and Thai marijuana farmers. Well maybe just a couple of Thai marijuana farmers, but no guns!

-12- Die happy knowing my book solved world peace and ended global famine.

I just hope Destiny or Fate reads my blog and sees what good things I will do with the cash if I win the lottery and give it to me. Because I’ll use it to make the world a better place, not just spend it on crap like the next guy!

Padwanna.