Somehow I managed to lock myself and my wife out of our bedroom last night due to a faulty door lock. Quite an adventure considering the fact that we are in our own home and had to spend the night sleeping in the living room.

One thing turned out interesting though. I learned about lock-picking!

With no locksmith to call at 11pm (well, I can call them but they’ll charge a bomb!), I decided to go on to Youtube and search for “door-lock picking” and wah-la! So many clips that shows how to pick a lock. And I spent the rest of the night bending paper-clips and looking through the small keyhole… with no success.

I slept at almost 3am but didn’t feel tired at all! The joy of learning something and putting it to use immediately is such a motivator.

The next morning I called the locksmith nearby. He came to my apartment in 15 minutes, picked and opened the lock in less than 5 minutes. From what I observed, the method I learned from Youtube is correct and with the right tools, I could have picked and opened the door lock myself. That’ll be such fun. : )

I was charged HK$150 for the job. Wow, think about it: HK$150 for 5 minutes of work. That makes HK$1,800 per hour!

This reminded me of our Summer resume-writing special offer of HK$150 per resume. It takes us at least an hour to draft a fresh resume plus adjustments after getting more details to fill in the blanks from the client. But the difference between this HK$150 is that it is an investment for a better chance of getting a job interview. Whereas the HK$150 for opening the door lock is just for opening the door lock. No return on investment whatsoever.