Gambling is the worse habit!

Most of us are bound to become parents one day. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that we ensure our children never take up the gambling habit.

To be very sure my children never get addicted to gambling, they were never given the opportunity to gamble even on special occasions such as Chinese New Year. To me and my wife, it is an unnecessary activity.Of course, as the parents, to show a good example, neither of us ever gamble, buying lottery tickets only once in a blue moon.

Even buying lottery numbers, hoping to strike it rich can lead a person astray. In an earlier posting I have told about a relative, a Chinese Physician, who was already very rich with lots of money from the many clients who seek treatment from him. He had this idea of compiling all the numbers that appeared in the results of each lottery draw throughout the whole of ten years. With that he pointed out to me that certain numbers seem to appear regularly. And with that he planned on betting on that number to appear in a few months' time, with him placing a higher and higher amount on it so that when it did appear he would be a sure winner. Sad to say, he lost too much for him to ever return the sum he owed. One night his whole family disappeared into the night never to return.

Was it greed? Or was it the mind that thought it had a fool-proof idea of becoming rich the easy way? Was he too confidence in his mental capability? Whatever it is, he lost too much at a time when his career was going full swing.

When it comes to gambling, in order not to give the habit the chance to develop, we must ensure our children do not mix with the wrong company. Mixing with the wrong company can take our children to disaster. If it is a group of drug addicts, the child could be doing drugs soon, if it is loiters, it would be loss of education and advancement opportunities for the child; and if it is a group of gamblers, no doubt the child would turn to gambling.

Where would gambling lead a person? Well, newspapers very often carry stories of gamblers who borrow money to support their habit. The latest was a young man, one working in a bank, who developed an addiction to gambling. So you see, it does not matter what a person's job is, how intelligent he can be, he is just as susceptible to the thrill of gambling. Gambling caused the young man to lose all control of his senses, enough to have him get into a debt of RM70,000. Unable to return the loan he got from loan sharks, he did the miserable deed of exposing his own family to harm by providing those loan sharks a photocopy of his own mother's identity card so that they could go after her.

As a result of that action the loan sharks demanded money from the poor mother and when she could not return the money, the amount escalating with each day, the family was threatened with harm, paint splashed on the car and part of the house. Eventually they even tried to burn the house! Their lives were certainly at stake, all because of a gambling son.

As for the gambling, he became a fugitive from those loan sharks. To do that he had to leave a good job and disappear God knows where. Look at all the problems and the bleak future for this gambler. Like that relative of mine, this gambler would also have to disappear for good.

So, how much effort are we willing to put in to prevent such a destructive habit from ever surfacing? If you look at the above young man, he has lost everything that his parents had helped him to establish. As for the parents, they have lost a son, at least for the next foreseeable future.

“My son gave one of these loan sharks a photocopy of my identity card and asked them to recover the money from me,” said Lim’s mother Chong Shue Koon, 60.
She said her son had left her and her husband Lim Loi, 58, a note saying that he owed loan sharks RM170,000, and that he was leaving.
Lim Loi said his son, who works as a bank clerk in Kuala Lumpur, had developed an addiction to gambling last year.

How good is our self control?

A few days ago there was this news report in Malaysia concerning a rich director of a City Council owning a low cost apartment. And low cost apartments are subsidised apartments built to help the poor families who have a total income of less than RM2,500.00. Looks like she is not the only one as there are, according to her, other directors and assistant directors who own such low cost apartments.

According to the report, these rich, not eligible, low cost apartment owners pay installments of RM300 plus for the apartments which they rent out to the poor for about RM500. If that is not blood-sucking, then what is?

When asked why she bought what she was not eligible for, she said that many high-income people, directors and assistant directors, are also in possession of such low cost apartments. I have heard of 'Might making it right' but here there is this 'Numbers make it right.' So, as thieves increase in number, more will find it easier in their conscience to become thieves. Similarly, when more and more politicians get away with corruption, people will tend to become corrupted. Well, I must admit that there is some truth in the saying. Thus, if we live among thieves, we may even eventually take pride in being a competent thief.

Then again, there was this excuse that there was a policy allowing her and other staff of the City Council to own the low cost apartments. And the policy has yet to be seen. Even if there was such a policy, who had authorised it? Was that not an abuse of power, an act of corruption?

And it was not because there were no poor Malaysians who refused the low cost apartments. In fact, squatters and the poor had applied for them as they were eligible, been interviewed but were not given the low cost units. So, if there was a policy to approve and let rich people get the low cost units which were built to help the poor own homes, that policy took away opportunities for the poor to own homes and, since rental of such units exceed the installments for the units, enrich the rich.

And to make such rich people eligible for the less than RM2,500 income condition for application of such apartments, they said they have only less than RM2,500 after paying for their properties, their maids, their children's schooling and other expenses. Poor them! Imagine having less than RM2,500 after all those deductions. How can we expect them to survive on such meagre savings? Of course, they need other sources of income and milking the poor is just one of the available sources.

The surprising fact is that our Anti-Corruption body does not seem to act fast although it is obvious that something is very wrong. Nobody has been summoned for questioning. So, can we blame the citizens for feeling that the anti-corruption only acts when told to do so. And let us not hear that they are not aware when everyone in Malaysia is talking about it.