My Dream Jobs (2)

I want to be a professional gamer. This is such a no-brainer. I’ve been paying to play video games throughout my life, and I certainly don’t mind doing the same while earning some serious bucks. It is reported that the top pro-gamers in Korea are able to bank around $150,000 a year. I know it’s not Donald Trump’s type of money, but hey, I can live with that. But the catch is that you have to win tournaments. Beside rigorous trainings (at least 8 hours a day for most pros), you need to have super-human reflexes and be able to have APM (Action Per Minute) of 300+. Since I am just an average man with average reflexes, I probably end up wasting all my time without earning a dime. I may even earn myself the title of "The most good looking pro-gamer who never wins" if I am lucky enough. I can certain try the Kournikova way - rich, famous, but sucks at what s/he does. However, given the demographic distribution of those avid gamers, namely 20-something heterosexual male nerds, I doubt if I will have any sexual appeal whatsoever. My parents definitely will throw my computer, XBOX, PS2, or whatever device that I have, out of the window to end my short-lived career.

I want to be an underground racer. I love to drive fast and furious. I believe I am a good driver and have some intuitions about driving. I enjoy the idea of upgrading my cars in the after-market, modifying the exhaust system, fooling around with the computer chips in the engine, increasing horsepower by adding a turbine… and etc... etc... all sound wonderful to me. For any given night, these illegal races can bring me north of $5K, which is really sweet. But the problem is that I need to have a really decent car to start with. Subaru WRX STI will do but it will at least cost me $35K. I will try to deliver pizza to earn some money, since delivering pizza helps me familiarize the streets. However, since that job really doesn’t pay well, I probably have to deliver a lot of pizza to afford a STI, and then deliver more pizza to afford any after-market upgrades. Then, given the high gas prices, I need to deliver even more pizza to cover the gas money (I need to practice a lot in local streets and Subaru’s low gas mileage doesn’t help either.) I most likely will receive quite a few speeding tickets during my practice and in order to pay those fines, my pizza delivery career just gets longer and longer. I probably will never make it to the underground since I am delivering the fucking pizza all the time. Also I will never be able to afford any buy-in money. I am more likely to end up owning a pizza store than anything else. I am also likely to be remembered as the fastest pizza delivery boy ever in the history of New York. Yeah, how glorious is that!

(To be continued)