砂漠のJeffire

Jeffirean Stories

Friday, August 12, 2005

Punters Galore~

As we all know, the new football season has already started with the Champions already into the final round of qualifiers - Today I have put up a new blog called Winning With Jeffire to fulfil my sideline aspirations - as a tipster! Haha. Nowadays there are so many prediction columns, each giving their own analysis of the games. I want a slice of the pie too! Well actually, it is not the winning predictions that are important to me, but a channel to know the people who are truly interested into knowing about football economics, just like the way we have our regular economics, demand, supply, blah blah. Punting is just like the stock market - study your teams (companies), put up your money (capital) and win money (capital gains, currently have yet to seen 'dividend-like' betting options). Other similar terms like 'hedging', 'arbitrage' and the likes are applicable as well. It's a real big business across the world, and can even be studied as a major (but which university will offer such a course?).

Of course, like the stock market, there are people who 'speculate' and there are those who use 'insider info', etc. There's a dark side to betting. While I don't advocate betting, nor I think it's easy money, but, a little punt here and there with a cool bit of analysis, research, allows one to gain satisfaction (with real returns) when you get your numbers right.

Nonetheless, it is also as important to view 'The Beautiful Game' as an art, and not just dollars and cents. I do watch football for the sake of the emotions it can bring, and I do play football often in a bid to keep myself immersed in the beauty of the game. It's a huge part of life, I guess. Oh ya, as usual, there will be the weekend football watching - sometimes if you like, you can always pop over to watch with us if you don't have cable tv. Just inform me beforehand since I may not be always at home on the weekends.

Leaving the topic of football in its own destined circle (there's a dedicated blog to it, right?), and back to the dailies of the Jeffirean life, the new school term is only 1 week and 3 days away!

I never had an enjoyable holiday ever since the days of primary school ended.

The demands of survival has engineered us into people who have to integrate ourselves into others' systems. You cannot have your own world, and yet survive. Worse still, we are all stuck in the myriad of life-draining cycles, emerging in the forms of 'bureaucracy', 'politics', 'business', 'education', 'factionalism', 'separatism', 'elitism', and much more to list. Life is no longer a simple case of eat, sleep, drink, natural calls, sex, birth and death. Every bit of life now is linked to something that will either support or eliminate the existence of another bit of life. For example, since half of the world eats rice as a staple, the rice producing communities have an impetus to grow more rice as a result of the increasing demand (with the increasing populations of rice consuming countries). We no longer plant because we need to eat. We plant because others need to eat. In the world today, there may be a billion reasons as to why we exist. In the past, it may be just because birth is just about continuing the family line. But now, birth can be accidental, can be engineered, and can be induced (through the use of birth incentives) or refused (through the use of abortion methods).

Have you ever wondered why did you exist in the first place? Why did your parents add you to this world which is no longer as simple as it actually was?

While we are trying to make living simpler, living has actually got more complicated. Food is very accessible, yes, only if you work and get the money to buy it. You no longer just pluck fruits off trees to eat when you feel hungry. You wait for the end of the month to get your paycheck (or allowance, if you are unemployed or in the army), you budget the amount to ensure you are able to buy the food you need to eat over the month. Add the other necessary stuff for survival, you will realise that living has indeed become more troublesome than it was.

One day I suppose I will hole myself up in some countryside of some inaccessible country, plant stuff for eating, and drink water that falls from heaven, get electricity from the movement of nature (wind, solar and water energy), and die and rot and return to nature as perhaps nutrients in the soil, rather than be stuck in coffins that don't rot (they are lacquered), and return nothing to nature at all.

Is that what life is supposed to be? Dream on...we no longer exist due to nature, that's why.

Philosphical thoughts
Jeffire

Acknowledged my existence at
7:50 PM