Receipt mania

A special time of the month is coming. Time to rummage the wallets, purses, bags and garbage bins for receipt slips from shops and stores. Time to painstakingly check the numbers on dozens or hundreds of the slips, hoping for a positive match. Time to dream about the exotic vacations in a faraway land. Six times a year, this is what we do here. The lucky ones get 200 NTD out of all that, the less lucky ones go over the slip numbers once again, thinking they must have missed something, read the number wrong. The winning ticket must be somewhere in the pile!

What am I talking about? It is a well-kept secret for many newcomers to Taiwan that all official receipt slips are involved in a government lottery. Every two months, winning numbers are announced. Whoever finds that the eight-digit number on their slip matches the winning number, walks away with 2 million NTD. Only a partial match carries lower prize money. Last three matching digits mean winning 200 NTD. I've played the game twice. Collected 60 or 70 slips. Didn't win anything on either occasion, despite using modern technology (MS Excel) to make sure I didn't miss anything. Sure, the odds were against me - 3 three-digit combinations, out of a thousand possibilities, mean that only one ticket in 333 wins. I think I'm almost due my (200 NTD) payday. I've heard of people who have done it. One friend won 4000 dollars once.. But that was karma giving him a small reconciliation as he had been robbed of 8000 dollars one week prior to that.