Thursday, 11 December 2014

An ex-millionaire



A man spoke in a loud voice at the end of the MTR train. He walked from carriage to carriage, asking the passengers a question one by one. His question was, ‘How much money is a lot for you?’ Some of the passengers held their heads down, or pretended to be sleeping. Some walked to the other carriages. The man was in his early thirties and plump. His shirt was hanging out, so his gut was faintly visible. 

The train began to fill with people and he had to stay in one place.  So he started asking the same question to the people around him. Since nobody answered, he started to talk to himself. He clearly believed he had won the Mark Six at some time, and on this theme he rambled on from one subject to another: his manager had upset him by asking him to pay attention to his work instead of the Mark Six prize money; his landlord had asked him to find money to pay his rent if he wasn’t going to win the mark six again; if he was rich, his friends would not criticise his ideas and personality; he had given one or two million dollars to his father, but his father had spent it all; he shouldn’t have listened to his father’s advice, he should have bought a house rather than putting the money in the bank; he had won nothing on the Mark Six since 2009.

He must have won several million dollars on the Mark Six, but he was young, so he can’t have managed his money very well or else he had wasted it. Whatever, there was nothing left. Maybe he thought he could win the money again rather than using his hands to make his millions.

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