A Better Title

I spent my Hari Raya Haji holiday spending for doodads.

Oh, by the way, Happy Belated Hari Raya Haji for the hajis who happen to read my blog.
Anyway… The first doodad was, well, the introduction to what doodad actually means. It was a Cashflow 101 competition held at Ang Mo Kio. Cashflow 101 is a board game not unlike Monopoly, but with a lot more rules and restrictions.

In this game, which tries to simulate real life, you’re a person trying to escape from the Rat Race, which is an illustration of how a poor man lives–working all his life for employers, buying things without thinking about the liabilities that these items brought in to his balance sheet. He basically work for his money.

The rich man, in contrast, makes his money work for him. Wait a minute… How does his money work for him? Simple. By buying assets which generate an income (via rent or otherwise) to the owner, one will receive what is called passive income. When this passive income exceeds the owner’s expenses, he doesn’t even have to work anymore and he will still have a positive net cash flow.

The things I’m saying right now is actually published in the book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which is where this game is based on. I myself haven’t read the book yet, but it sounds rather interesting.

So what actually is a doodad? It’s basically just something that you spend some money on, and doesn’t contribute to any financial gain. It’s like those things that you buy on impulse. You know, those times when you were walking around in a shopping mall, entered the music shop, and then picked up a Charlotte Church or Budak Pantai or John Mayer or Avril Lavigne or S.H.E. album just because it was playing on the shop’s audio system and you thought the song being played was nice.

So why is this competition where I learnt about doodad a doodad? It’s because it’s also one of those impulse thing. I was told of this competition by Herry (there you go again; a link just for you, Her! :P). The thing that attracted me was (what else) the prize. SGD 100 is not a small amount for a student like me, and thinking of the doodads I could buy with the money, I thought I might as well try my luck.

Only one problem: I didn’t know the game at all. Neither have I read the book. I knew that there was going to be a video presentation on how to play the game before the competition actually started, but I was still at a disadvantage. Fortunately, neither Herry nor Eddy, who also went with us, knew the game, so I was not the only one at this disadvantage.

It turned out that quite a few of the other participants of the competition also didn’t know a single thing about the game.

Most of them picked up pretty quickly.

Unfortunately, yours truly had some troubles picking up the game, and so by the end of the day he was the only one left on the table to play against… himself. Yes, for the last five minutes or so I was playing all by myself, rolling dice, getting paychecks and using up opportunities to get myself out of the rat race.

I still failed to get out of the rat race at the end of the competition.

But my table was apparently the one with the most people coming out of the rat race, so we won the mystery prize of–drumrolls please–a free entry to another game of Cashflow!

Sigh…

What I didn’t understand about the game though was that there was a constant need of yelling. Like when the game started, everyone like cheering. We even had table cheers in the competition!

Then when it was time for you to move your piece, everyone will start counting “ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!” with each step. (The quote was purposely written in uppercase to illustrate the intensity of the voices). This is followed by an enthusiastic “OPPORTUNITY!” or “MARKET!” or “YOU’VE GOT A BABY! CONGRATULATIONS!”. The latter precedes a session of shaking hands between the ‘lucky’ (or rather ‘unlucky’) player and the other players as well as the table leaders.

These and the fast pace of the game due to the fact that there was a time limit didn’t do well to the newbie’s confidence and concentration. Many times I took really super long just to try to concentrate and decide whether to sell that “OK4U” stock or whether I should kill my baby buy that 3 bedroom/2 bathroom house.

At least I learnt something–how the rich man and the poor man think–in that competition so the doodad wasn’t really totally wasted.

Another doodad I paid for today was a 572-page Rod Machado’s Private Pilot Handbook, a book which has been in my wishlist for quite some time. Woohoo!

But the price was a rip-off though. It was sold at SGD 69.01 while the original price is USD 34.95 (~ SGD 55.92). Amazon.com is selling it at a reduced price of USD 22.02 (~ SGD 35.23) excluding shipping.

But I was happy to get this book. There are still things I need to learn about aviation.

So when you’re happy it’s alright… Right?

Sigh… But it’s still a doodad leh… No good. Gotta start saving. Gotta start fasting for the next two weeks or so. Or take up part time jobs maybe… to cover up the purchase.
Right… Then afterwards I bought another doodad in the form of Breadtalk’s Golden Rooster, and Bah Kwa Delight, thinking I would eat the latter for supper and the first for tomorrow’s breakfast.

I also bought Pepsi Fire and Pepsi Ice which were on promotion in 7-Eleven–you can actually buy the two bottles for the price of SGD 1.30. Not bad… I bought these at the chain’s branch at Jurong Point on our way home.

Then went home, and visited Indo Supper–another Indonesian undergrads gathering to raise funds for Indo Prom and choose the committee for next semester’s PON (Pekan Olahraga NTU or NTU Sports Week–for Indonesian students, of course) and GTD (Get Together Day–an Indonesian orientation for NTU students).

It didn’t take me long to get bored, and so I went home after about ten minutes.

So that concludes my day of doodads…

bcc

Note to self: Buy a bigger dust bin.

Song: Bob Ricci - Constipated

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 22nd, 2005 at 3:00 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.