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renatoobeidsworld   Sunday, December 23, 2007   Just got back from my walk to Jounieh. The taxi driver on the way back was a young man from the north on his first foray into the big city. He told me that his family are poor and that his father was ill so he was driving his father’s taxi to help out. He’d worked for three days – sleeping in the car – and had made three hundred thousand lira (which isn’t too bad at all). He then went to the casino hoping to increase that money to help his family out, make it a good Christmas, etc, and promptly lost of all of that money (surprise, surprise!) and now barely had enough money to get back to the north and didn’t know what he was going to tell his father. Shades of Jack and the Beanstalk. He lamented the fact that Israel didn’t bomb the casino during the war last year. I didn’t want to sound like a wowser Victorian but I told him that if he wanted to try his luck he should try it in his taxi and wished him all the best of luck in that venture but wished him even worse luck at the casino if he was ever foolish enough to go there again so that he’d be put off it for good. Besides, even if he won some money he’d end up loosing it and more anyway. I also told him that, on the bright side, all was not lost if he learnt from this lesson and never set foot in a casino ever again he’d still emerge from this a big winner. The house always wins in the end and there’s a house somewhere in the north that’s lost big time this Christmas because of that and because of the foolishness and naivety of it’s scion. 4:45 am

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