Series. Puntopia.

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Title: Up, down, left or right. Countdown Hotel. Crown Towers Estr. do Istmo, Taipa. Macau.

(fiction)

©richard mark dobson

Life is a game of choices. Good decisions. Bad decisions. Decisions that can make or break us. Take us up, or down. Or horizontally. Sometimes we need to take a left turn in order to get to that place where a right turn is the right turn.

But for those who end up in Puntopia, choices are made for them. For very quickly they are asked to sign up for the Puntopia loyalty program. A decision most punters readily accept. Because they are the type of people who can’t dismiss a good discount. And discounts is what they get. On their hotel rooms, meals, their booze. Shopping vouchers are handed out like confetti. Punters are encouraged to return to the same hotel, same restaurants, shops, bars, massage parlours. They get discounts galore. But not on the roulette tables and slot machines of course.

You see, it’s all part of the establishments addiction agenda. Get the masses into something, onto something, over something. Under something. Then they return again and again and again.

The men young and old, love to be under the plethora of floozies that hang around in the hotel lobbies or along the Cotai strip. The women young and old are into wandering the glitzy shopping malls looking at the things many can’t afford themselves but know their husbands or boyfriends can. Or rather must. The universal law applies around here. No money honey. No honey, honey. Everyone knows the rule.

Senior citizens predominantly, mostly women, come to Puntopia to keep themselves busy while getting over the loss of their partner. Usually something they celebrate. Not mourn.

Divorce or pre-mature death are common causes for the abundance of single, aged women around Puntopia. Their husbands have either run off with one of the bar floozies or died a pre-mature death, due to excessive alcohol and nicotine intake. So the old Tai Tai’s come here alone to spend the proceeds of their late husbands estate or the divorce settlement. Either way they still love a good discount. And rummage around in their handbags for their mobiles, which contain the QR Code discount coupons.

Elevator up. Elevator down. Which way? Left or right? It doesn’t really matter. They all end up in the same place eventually. The place they were yesterday and the day before that. Ultimately Puntopia is onto the fact that Punters are into the fact, that the as long at the system appears to be taking their best interests to heart, they’ll happily keep coming back. Again and again and again.

to see more of this series and peruse the fine art giclee prints, please visit the artists website at;

https://richardmarkdobson.com/photographer/personal-work/existential/puntopia/1

Written by Richard Mark Dobson / The RMD Gallery

The Existential Artist. “There is light and darkness, all and nothingness”

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