Remember the Beach Boys’ song, “Wouldn’t it be Nice If…”? All Aussies know it really well because it became a ditty on a famous tv ad. It’s the soundtrack to our common daydream, the one where we rise gleefully from the couch – in slow motion – our mouths opening wide as the balls fall and our numbers come up one after the other on the screen in front of us, glorious visions of tropical island beaches or paying off that bloody mortgage swirling in front of our eyes.
In Lombok things are a little different, but also the same-same. There’s no tv ad or song that you can’t get out of your head, and there’s hardly a couch to be found, but people still daydream of winning. And they love to think they can!
One night in my first year in Indonesia, Made and I were at his place in Tanjung (a village in North Lombok) and he lay sprawled out on the tiled floor looking at a long scroll full of lists of numbers. I was busy on my Ipad, and he just laid there staring at this scroll for a good couple of hours. Eventually curiosity got the better of me so I asked what he was doing.
He tried to explain by showing me patterns he was looking at in the numbers. “Ok,” I said, “I can see that if you add up the four here and the five there they make nine, and yes, ok, the three here and the six would also add up to nine…”.
“YES!” Made said. “See?! It’s the pattern, right?!” His face lit up with his massive smile and I could see he was thrilled about sharing this apparent deduction! But I was mystified. I asked more questions, slowly, and just got more specific but completely mystifying responses as he showed me more numerical patterns.
“Soooo,” he said kindly and patiently, like he would perhaps to an idiot. “That means the next numbers will be 5 and 4! See?!”
I look again, and yes, when you have a scroll over a metre long, full of numbers, of course you can add up some of them to get the same result. And yep, there were some patterns, if you really used your imagination. And I tried to be all new-agey, or perhaps old-spirituality like… to see if the explanation would just psychically reveal itself… but nup. I. Had. No. Idea.
“So… what is the point of this Made?” I asked again, still mystified. “I mean, is it a game? Is it like crosswords but with numbers, or like sudoku or something??”
“Erm… I don’t know whacha call it??” he struggled, screwing up his face, and then he reached for his phone and googled it. When all else fails, google saves!
It turned out that what he was looking at were the past results of one of the Singapore 4D lotteries. About 30 something weeks worth! Now why didn’t I guess that! Instead of just telling me it was the Lotto results, he’d been stumped because he couldn’t find the English to explain the intricacies of prediction.
It took me a while to stop rolling around on that hard tile floor, in stitches… (maybe it was one of those ‘you had to be there’ moments, so just trust me, it was hilarious). Made’s English is very good, better than he often lets on, and he is fluent in three other languages, but a proficient translator he is not, and if he has trouble finding English words to explain things, he often begs off silently, hoping I will just miraculously get it.
So it turns out each column on the scroll represented one of the five days of the week on which this lotto is held, and each row represented a week, and each of the 4 digit numbers were the numbers that had fallen on that day (4D stands for 4 digit). By looking at past draws, scanning down the columns and across the rows, finding patterns and making connections, the trick is to predict which numbers will fall in tomorrow’s draw.
The locals don’t often bet, but they try to predict just the last 2 of the 4 numbers drawn (you can buy 2 or 3 or 4 numbers, at a stake and increasing difficulty… and the winnings go up accordingly of course). Made only ever predicts the last two of the four digits.
On this night he was adamant those two numbers needed to add up to 8, according to a prediction made by his cousin. Based on the patterns he had just spent hours looking at, he chose 8,0. And by now I was into it. Based on those same patterns he showed me, I felt 0,8 would stand a better chance. We agreed to have a small bet each, just for the fun of it.
The next morning we went to the gambling centre of Tanjung (lol) which turns out to be at the teensiest of warungs just around the corner, between Made’s place and his closest cousins; a warung we’d eaten at before and driven past many times. There sat an old wrinkled man who took our 50,000 rupiahs – 25k for Made’s bet and 25k for mine. This was a pretty big bet for Made. The old man gave us nothing in return, but I was assured our bet was safe. We also bought 22 yummy spicy fish satay sticks for 20k (total amount spent about $7aud).
The payout on either bet would be about 1.8mill rupiah, or roughly $180aud, which aren’t bad odds.
That night when we were back on Gili Meno, we sat down together and Made checked the results online and what do you know…
we didn’t win!
Our numbers did come up though… 08, but as the first two digits. Paa-paam! So close, but yet so far, as is typical in gambling. But still fun :). And close enough to tempt us to try again. ‘Cos, wouldn’t it be nice?!
I think I once read somewhere that the Lotto was created to give people an alternative to illegal gambling, which was often associated with drinking alcohol, and which was often a tragic mix with poverty. Like people everywhere, Indonesians love gambling, and a common but now illegal gambling activity is cock fighting. In Bali you can see it on your travels, often held in small amphitheatres beside temples, as it’s still sort of legal if associated with a Hindu ceremony. Cockfighting occurs in Lombok too (illegally) and the streets are often lined by roosters waiting in basket cages, but I’ve never seen it there. I did once on Bali and it’s not an activity that I want to be a part of or sanction in any way, despite its significance in traditional Indonesian culture.
Made’s father was a gambler on the cockfights. Despite his mother and his grandparents pleading with him to stop, his father eventually lost everything they owned, including land, throwing his wife (who divorced him soon after) and his 7 surviving young children, into poverty.
Probably because of this Made is against gambling, and he hates cockfighting. But the lotto is a different story. Five nights a week he eagerly checks the results online. Even though he doesn’t bet, he still gets excited if his numbers come up, which they do from time to time, and disappointed if they don’t. “God Damn It!” is his usual outcry, said with genuine angst (and a slight twinkle in his eye).
Mostly the Tanjung locals can’t afford to actually place a bet either. Instead they go cross-eyed spending hour after hour staring at the scroll of numbers simply because it’s ‘mathematica’, they all say. To keep the old brain cells active!
If we are in Lombok Made will often disappear for a little while. Invariably he’s ducked around to his next-door neighbour’s place, the village mangku (HIndu priest) and local school teacher, for a quick comparison of predictions, or any tips they can give each other, and he often comes back with Pak Mangku’s scroll of results to pour over for the entire evening.
Often when we first arrive his stepmum will greet us and before we’ve even turned the bike off, she is telling Made the numbers she predicts, or the ones that came up last night. Sometimes aunties come by and talk about their predictions and results, in very loud and animated discussions, the way Indonesian women typically do.
Once we visited Pak Mangku’s mum, who looks about 90 in the shade, and she gave us a scrappy, much screwed-up piece of paper that has her favourite numbers on it, and asked us if we could go and put a bet on for her. I think she’s more like most Aussies; not into predictions or mathematical patterns, just hopeful her favourite numbers will come up someday… ‘cos, wouldn’t it be nice. And from time to time she does win, after all, it’s only two numbers that need to fall!
Perusing the scroll is a very social thing to do. Sitting on their berugak (the traditional wooden gazebo structures), with their tiny cups of kopi and smoking cigarette after cigarette, they all lean over the scroll and together discuss the patterns and decide what numbers will come up tomorrow.
I’ve learnt that almost all of the people in Made’s village love the lotto (cousins, uncles, and aunties that live around the block, second and third cousins, granduncles and grandfather’s brothers that live up the road, the sister of his step-mum’s uncle’s father-in-law who lives around the corner). They are all quite obsessed with it. I don’t think it’s something tourists are normally exposed to, but stay here long enough and you will see.
But wait, there’s more! Being Indonesia, a land where superstition is still very much embedded in their culture, the predictions are not just based on determining mathematical patterns and probabilities (as dubious as that is). The predictions are also based on dreams.
Yep, dreams.
When Made and I first got together he would sometimes ask me in the mornings what I had dreamt about the night before. I found his interest in my subconscious touching. It took some time – like I’ve said, Made is super quiet – for me to realize WHY he was so interested. Actually it all came together that funny night when I first saw the scroll of numbers. You see, the theme or subject of a dream comes with an associated number! For example, if I dreamt about butterflies the best number would be 46, or if my dream was about jealousy, the best number would be 03.
With the advent of the Lotto a book was published which is filled with small pictures and a number that goes with each. So you flick through the book and find the picture that shows what you dreamt about, and it gives you the relevant number. Somehow the Singaporean Lotto marketing lords managed to tap into the Indonesians’ age-old fascination with the meaning of dreams and their predictive messages about life, with the “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” dream. There is, in hardcopy and online form, a book called Buku Mimpi 2D SGP (= Book of Dreams 2D Singapore Pools).
The locals don’t guard this knowledge, or what they dream about, jealously. They share. Sharing is woven through their entire community; it is the strongest cultural fabric. (Hmmm, now I come to think about it, it’s about as strong as their jealousy and competitiveness!) So just like they share their scrolls and their predictions, they also share their dreams and Dream Books.
You’ve got to play to win right? Almost every night, ONE of Made’s two numbers come up. Which reassures him, rightly or wrongly, that he is on the right track. It keeps him hooked. But I think it might have something to do with the fact that he usually has a selection of about 5 double digits from which he says one set will come up, and so in my mind it’s hardly rocket science to figure out that of course one number from one of the pairs will come up more often than not!
But he won’t have a bar of my cynicism. The ONLY reason his numbers come up is because of his dogged determination, his superior intellect at detecting numerical patterns, and his strong psychic nature. He is unequivocal in this conviction. In fact he is known throughout Tanjung village as being “good with the numbers” and gives his predictions, via SMS, to a friend, one uncle and even Pak Mangku, who do place bets. If Made’s numbers come up, he gets a little commission ;). They keep coming back to him, even though the results, in my mind, are pretty lacklustre.
One day last week Made was extra sure of his predictions. 77 or 72. Absolutely sure, he was. So he made a bet with me. For 100,000 rupiah ($10), if his numbers came up I would pay him 3,500,000 rupiah ($350). A lot of money, but between you and me I wasn’t too worried. That was on Monday, for Wednesday’s draw. He could hardly contain his excitement for the two days. He would put the winnings into a little fund for his son’s education. Wouldn’t that be nice?! Needless to say neither a 7 nor a 2 came up, and he still owes me the 100,000 as he never got around to paying me for the bet ;-).
And as long as we don’t actually place any bets, it is the source of daily mirth – aka hilarity – in my life. It is simply, nice.
(NB. Boy am I glad I finished this bloggy so that I can get that darned ditty out of my head at last!)