My Date with Lady Luck

Almost 99.8% of the population residing in the Middle East especially UAE are great believers in LUCK. The remaining 0.2%, I assume, are either too rich to care or too poor to dare….

Out of the 12 months in a year, every Mall retailer devotes atleast

10 months to Festivals, Sales & Promotions. For every 200dhs the customers spend, they get a Raffle ticket for 10 Cars, 100 Diamond Jewellery Sets, 1000 Mobile Phones & 10,000 Home Appliances. Ok maybe I’m exaggerating a bit but the jist of the above sentence is clear.

One of the biggest crowd puller is the Dubai Shopping Festival(DSF). It’s a 1 month extravaganza in Dec-Jan with super sales promotions. It’s a win-win situation everywhere….u spend money, you win. Depending on your luck, you can win a Lexus Car or it can be a spatula.

The reason I mention a vague item like spatula is because I won this very same spatula on the very first year of my stay here. My father-in-law was almost delirious with excitement & when he saw me silently questioning his mental stability, he was like “I’ve been in Dubai 23 yrs & haven’t won a pin till today”. And believe me, he has never lost hope…he is convinced that the BIG Prize is just waiting for him around the corner.

Every one of us secretly believes the same. Oh yes we poke fun at ourselves but all the same, very dutifully fill up the coupons, slip it thru the slit on the rotating glassbox & spin it atleast once to scatter our coupons into different corners as to give them all an equal chance.

One can’t help but believe the hype coz almost every other day Companies publish the photos & details of people who have won prizes from their promotions. And I know friends & acquaintances who have won refrigerators, cameras & home appliances in these promotions. And when last counted UAE had 59,000 millionaires in 2005 & 1/8th of the prizewinners fall into this bracket by default.

My better-half loves to buy tickets from the Duty-Free. These raffle tickets are valued at dhs.500 & the prize is 1 Million Dollars(the prizes sometimes vary). He is convinced that he’ll win it ‘atleast’ once. Huh!!! I call it a colossal waste of money & tell him to donate it to the poor. Atleast a few blessings will come our way. He just grins & says “Ok we’ll give the poor & buy the ticket”.

I never believed in these promotions where you just pay money & get a ticket, I’d rather make necessary monthly purchases & get a raffle ticket. Or invest it in the Bank & draw some interest on it. Ofcourse anybody living here can confirm that the interest rates at the banks here are a joke. And I guess 9 years in Dubai has rubbed some of the stardust into my eyes too.

Every month, on the day I get my salary I pick up a Postcard Millionaire Pack. For dhs.30 we get 4 postcards of Dubai with free postage which we can be mailed anywhere in the world. If you are lucky you get to win 100,000dhs & if are not then you win other small stuff.
I have been buying these packs for almost a year now and I have won 3 Hamburgers from Burger King & a grand total of 900 cash points(dhs 9.00 which can be redeemed at certain shops).
My relatives & friends are quite tired of receiving the same “gheesi-peeti” Dubaaaaiiii postcards which by now they are quite sure I must be getting free from somewhere.

But I haven’t lost hope…I’m very convinced that sooner or later Lady Luck will come my way.


p.s – So do you believe in Luck? Have you won anything to reinforce your belief in the Lady??

p.p.s – Anybody want to send me their address???? I can post some marvelous postcards from here.

p.p.p.s – FYI: Dhs 1.00 = Rs.10.50 on good days.