Wednesday, December 30, 2009

LottoFever in Brazil

When I was a kid, there was this TV program my sister and I enjoyed, called Lottery. It was about this mythical national lottery. Two guys, one from the lottery and another from the IRS would travel around the country, informing the winners and the taxman would then take his cut. This show provided one of the great family memories. it was Christmastime. This one particular show dealt with a cameraman at a local news station. The anchor woman was a real nasty piece of work who belittled all her coworkers, but was loved by the audience who only got to see her perky personality. The important thing here is, the camera man won the lottery. To get back at the anchor woman, he flipped the camera on during one of her tirades, and it gets transmitted on air, for everyone to see what she really is like. My sister and I must have really enjoyed this for some reason, because we started cheering and saying "oooh, burn, burn burn.." For reasons we never really understood then, and I doubt we ever will, this led my father to believe the Christmas tree was on fire, and he ran out of the bathroom in a panic. Anyways, lotto fever has hit Brazil. They are giving away a mega jackpot for the end of the year. The prize is R$120,000,000. And someone HAS to win. If no one picks all 6 numbers, they will distribute it to those who picked 5 of the 6 numbers. If no one has 5 numbers, they will distribute it among tose who picked 4, etc.. Now I really don't play MegaSena. I prefer the two soccer lotteries. One is called Loteca, where they give you 14 games, and you have to pick one team or the other, or a tie. If you pick 14 you get the grand prize, 13 also wins, but not near as much. LotoGol has only 5 games, but here you pick the muber of goals each team will score, 0, 1, 2, 3, or more than 3 (3+). Here you win with 5, 4, or 3 correct scores. The kids saw all the media hype with this end of year drawing and asked to buy one ticket. Everyone picked one number, except for Eric, who could not decide who his favorite player is, Ronaldo (#9) or Kaka, (#10), so we threw both of his in. You never know when lady luck knocks on your door...

No comments: