I was at the cashier counter of a roti prata shop in Jalan Kayu. It was not yet noon, and the crowds were only just streaming in. The cashier handed me my change -- $4.
Should I get the tickets?
"I'll take two," I muttered.
I ran my fingers through the piles, picked out two slips which felt right and made a quick getaway, feeling as though a hundred eyes were piercing into me.
It is not often that I buy Big Sweep tickets and hope to strike it rich.
In fact, that was only the second time. The first was a few fears back, when the purchase was made in an equally remote corner of the island where I was unlikely to meet friends, and the transaction performed in a similarly furtive manner.
The coyness had nothing to do with any religious or moral disfavour I have for gambling.
Rather, it was because I knew it was silly to think I could make a pile of money without having to work for it.
In other words, that I should belong to that breed of gullible and lazy people who lay their hopes, and money, on that intangible, elusive thing called Luck.
For what else can the person who wins the top Big Sweep raffle of $1 million attribute his windfall to, but Luck?
Hitting that jackpot is a one in 2.8 million chance. It has nothing to do with how clever you are, or how much work you put in to get the ticket, or even street savviness in choosing the right one. It has everything to do with Lady Luck deciding, for whatever reason, to smile on you.
Still, hope springs eternal in the human breast, which was why I -- who don't gamble, beyond taking part in the office football or horseracing pool (and that is for the fun of it) -- decided to test my luck that day.
Luck, I suspect, is what many stock market investors are banking on.
Newspapers have been reporting the fall-out of the stock market fever which seized the country last year.
With prices tumbling like tenpins, at least two remisiers and a dealer have gone missing. People are also pawning their jewellery to settle their losses.
How much of these losses were made by people who had researched their stocks, yet made the wrong judgments? Or how much was a result of them taking a fancy to a stock and buying it, blithely, in the blind hope that the stars would shine on them? My guess is that the second group is the bigger one.
Of course, gambling is a universal phenomenon and as old as the hills. Carved pebbles for gambling, for example, have been unearthed in the caves of the Pyrenees, dating from 10,000 BC. And how many of us have not played that private game of chance: "If the next car I see is red, I will get my promotion"?
What is it that draws people to racecourses and roulette tables? Many theories abound, and Sigmund Freud's version is that gamblers are trying to get the love denied them when they were young.
Whatever the reason, Singaporeans, too, are champion gamblers, going by the takings of the Big Sweep, 4-D, Toto and horseracing.
But then, this should not come as a surprise. After all, what are most of us but descendants of life's biggest risk-takers -- migrants who left their homelands to stake their fortunes in a distant island?
In my book, gambling is akin to a belief in astrology, as both see people placing their faith in the unknown.
Can the stars really predict what is in store for us?
I don't like cooking a snook at anything, least of all the hoary belief of astrology, but I find it hard to accept that my destiny can depend on how the moon, stars and planets move.
There are 12 zodiac signs and 5.5 billion people in this world. Wouldn't this mean that I share personality traits, and a fate, with roughtly one-twelfth of them?
I mean, my birthday coincides with that of American actress Jane Fonda. Can our fortunes be similar? And if I had been born a few days later, would I have been a totally different person?
Still, this scepticism has not prevented me from trying to gaze into the crystal ball.
Last year, I visited the Taj Mahal city of Agra in India, and stayed in a lovely hotel with long dark corridors illuminated by hundreds of tiny lights.
The group of us toured the Taj Mahal at midnight. A slight breeze brushed our faces and a full moon beamed down at us. The excitement and romance of it all left me craving for more magic.
There was an astrologer stationed in the hotel lobby, a fat man with tattered books depicting far-flung galaxies and strange mathematical formulae. I sat cross-legged on a mattress and he told me my future. Most of the news was good or, at worst, vague.
This, I realised when I had left Agra, and returned to a calmer frame of mind, is also the case with the horoscopes I have read.
I suppose that people who want a glimpse of their future only like to hear the good things that will come their way. But therein lies the danger of putting too much faith on Luck or the stars.
If we rely so much on the unknown to fulfil our dreams, won't we neglect the more down-to-earth tasks at hand? Won't we just wait for Luck or Fate to intervene and solve our problems?
That is too precarious a way of living, I think. As someone once said, and I agree: "I am a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work the more I have of it."
I didn't win anything, of course.
The numbers on my two Big Sweep tickets were nowhere near any winning combination. Still, my heart had been heavy with hope.
Will I ever buy those tickets again? Well, from next year, there will be more winners in the Sweep, plus a new Premium Prize which, in January, will be a whopping $599,000.
Knowing mu luck, I will never win a prize. But, er, shall we bet on that?