I’m back

Hi long time no blog I know first off the new office has no telephone lines as yet so our cell phones have now become the office’s official telephone it is fun if you look at it I get telephone calls routinely some are funny other are inquiries about matters I do not have any idea of. But it did get the staff together as we would either text message [thank you ETC for coming through finally] each other or call to tell them that their friend called or somebody called enquiring about them. Second no telephone lines implies that we have not internet so we solved this problem by being regulars at this internet café up the road oh did I mention that the new office is somewhat located in a quiet residential area – a far cry from our previous office which was at the center of busting Addis. Then there is the issue of my wordpress account not opening I do not know why [a friend commented that the government has also clamped down on bloggers on wordpress]. true? I do not really know I usually keep my rants about the boring day to day stuff. The office is pretty cool we have kitchen but the only thing we have succeeded in making is tea not a very encouraging prospect with a hotel down the road that make a nice macchiato coupled with a very accommodating staff. The restaurant is not that bad as well they like to give out large portions and they bring the food to the office as well.
Speaking of rants I lost an investment of 500,000 birr!!! -yes you read right I bought the elephant a.k.a zihon special lottery ticket set me back six birr only to end up as a dud. I do not know why but cashing in on a big win through the lotto is a venture that I have yet to build up resistance to. I have been doing this for I don’t know the past eight to nine years I do not buy the regular 1 birr lotto too lame the jackpot is set at 100,000. My friends often snicker whenever I loose out but somehow it has yet to discourage me. I usually have a regular dealer we know each other by name and joke about splitting the win in the likely event I win one of these days. I have also hooked some of buddies on this hope inspired venture we can each buy our own ticket or split the expenses pledging that 10% of our winnings will go towards celebrations and the rest we split 50-50. I do love it when the drawing day comes like the 2 million birr jackpot that was scheduled for September 11 but cancelled to mid November. On that drawing date I was in a taxi and the winning numbers were being read out live on radio the taxi driver who is also into lotto tickets pulled out his ticket and asked me to check his winning as well. We commented on how it was a big move and that the national lottery administrations should increase the winning in some places people actually can win as much as 69 million USD in one winning at oen go. We both did not win anything. Now the 2 million birr was a lotto ticket that one would look forward to with anticipation and dread. Besides the potential to winning- I forget what the odds but I love the moments of hope that come in our way when you are low on cash and go through your wallet desperately looking for that one hundred birr note that you might have put away for a rainy day in some secret compartment in your wallet. You search and make mental calculations about your expenses the past few weeks you use various calculations using your digits on your finger, grab a a piece of paper and add and subtract, calculate how much you could have saved this month had you not succumbed to your erratic spending ways ….. and then you find your lotto ticket at this point you say ‘okay I know I need to save more but once the jackpot comes my way I would not have to worry so much on expenses I could put a chunk of my winnings in the bank and live off the interest- interest rates are somewhere around 3 % in Ethiopia some banks actually pay interest every month.
Incidentally the lottery ticket vendors earn 0.10 cents per regular lotto tickets and 0.35 for special tickets. That is not much incentive from going around town on foot enticing people to buy a ticket but they seem to keep at it and do garner lots of regulars. I think they divide their sales on beats like someone would work around the Dembel area another around stadium but I have yet to see territorial fights as one can see among shoe shine boys. There is this scratch lotto where you can know your winnings on the spot usually they come with a simple game like looking for a certain amount of similar numbers, pictures or and adding game. I do not get my kicks from them because the maximum winning these guys have is 28,000 birr.
Have any of you guys actually been bitten by the lotto bug please share. Oh in the likely case that I vanish yet again happy western Christmas and New Year and happy Ethiopian Christmas. I might attend the Akon and Rhiana concert but I do not think that I can stomach another concert concerts and clubs are not my scene these days. But I still do appreciate the small pubs where the crowd is much tamer and predictable.