Those of you who have only gotten to know me in the last 5 years or so will probably not know that among my many 'vices', I had also an avid interest in horse racing.
Quite apart from enjoying the odd flutter or two, I very much liked watching those graceful yet sleek animals muscle their way over distances ranging from 1000m to 2400m at speeds that would not be out of place on an expressway.
And what better place to experience racing than the legendary race tracks of Hong Kong, upon which many an epic Chinese movie or film saga was based.
I had laid off for many years but I was quite happy to see whether I still "had it in me".
The day's races were held in Shatin. The place looked very much like the Singapore Turf Club, except for a few exceptions.
Notice that the seats closest to the track have foldable table-tops, much like those in lecture theatres. Certainly makes filling in those complicated bet slips more easy.
Hong Kong-ers are also famous for being superstitious, so this "Good-Luck Horse" is not something we see in Singapore...
But enough of the trivialities. I came here to make money... And like any punter, I placed my bets (all HK 270 worth of them) full of confidence. I placed HK50 on a win for Horse No 3, HK 100 on it placing and a series of combination bets. Apologies to those who haven't a clue as to what I'm talking about...
There's always that lingering doubt that it could all go wrong...
But not much time for that once the race gets underway...
In the end, the winning horses were 1-3-5-7, in that order. If it had been 1-3-7-5, I would have hit it big... Darn Darn Darn....
But in the end, because of my keen acumen, I still managed to recoup 216, for an overall loss of HK 56, so I guess we could say that I have still got 'half-of-it'. Not enough for me to stay on though, and so we were off onto the next leg of our journey...
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