Melbourne: Casino

NOTE:
[the financial blog is here]

On Wed, K and T and I went to the Crown Casino, a very large, upscale casino next to the river. I didn't bring my camera [actually it's M's camera] and missed getting pictures of the fire display along the river bank within the city. Massive flames leap from the tops of several pillars positioned along the walkway lined by outdoor restaurants. The flames are so hot that you feel the radiating heat immediately. It's quite alarming. The casino was quite big and snaked off into various directions to some unknown distance. In the food court was a Krispy Kreme.

Inside the casino, I lost all of my $20 on the roulette wheel. I think T lost the same amount. K did better. Some guy was obsessively placing huge bets on various roulette wheels in an odd sort of system involving lots of individual bets in patterns.

When you think of an upscale city casino like this one, you think of James Bond wearing a tuxedo keeping cool while making large bets next to mysterious bad guys with eye patches. In reality, it was three non-trendy engineers in standard business casual placing two dollar bets and anti-climactically running out of money. No background music. No mysterious bad guys... unless you count the obsessive guy shifting from table to table losing money. The moral of the story is that casinos make money.

At one point, I boldly chose not to place $100 on the number 1 on another roulette wheel. If the number 1 had come up, I would have essentially lost $3,500! Otherwise, I would have gained $100. I won! So overall, I gained $80 at the casino.

The funny part was that K had planned to show us both the flames and what must be an amazing indoor water show inside a huge open space in the casino area. The water show was turned off due to water restrictions from the current drought. So we went outside to see the flames which would happen at 8:00. Several minutes beforehand, we sat down at a strategic point near one of the pillars. I noticed that no one else seemed to expect this show. People walked by just as always. No one was stopping for the show. At 8:00, nothing happened. Time slowly ticked forward with no fire. K was getting a bit concerned about two non-events in a row when there was a faint hissing sound at the top of the pillar. Slowly the fire rose and then there was a choreographed show among the various pillars, with loud bursts of flame. Apparently, R calls these things "pigeon burners" or something like that.