Friday, August 08, 2008

08.08.08.

To make things a little more auspicious, I stepped into the office at 08:08:08 am and somehow only managed to head off around 8pm, so the chinese in me convinced myself to only step out at 08:08:08 pm, hence, missing the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 29th edition, since I was already that late, bah.

Oh, did you know that in actual fact, the date 08.08.08 has been predicted as one of the worst days, in terms of auspiciousness, in the chinese calendar according to some feng shui practitioners? Well, one of the reasons might be due to the month August on the Gregorian calendar falling on the Hungry Ghost month in the chinese lunar calendar, which is kinda bad. Its those days when the elders would warn their younglings to not stay out so late at night and stuff.


Anyway, rather than being overwhelmed with superstitions let's just hope for the best with Malaysia finally ending the gold-less draught, winning in both the badminton singles and doubles and female singles and also the cycling events, woo-hoo.


Note: The Hungry Ghost Festival falling on the 7th month of the chinese lunar calendar is believed to be the time when the gate between the spirit world and the world of the livings are opened, with the exact day falling on the 14th. This would be the time where you will be able to witness chinese burning paper money, paper gold, paper clothes, food and many other stuff as an offering to the spirits (was prohibited from taking pictures of those stuff), if you don't practise them yourselves.

It is said that, once you've started the offerings, one should continue with it as spirits are believed to remember these locations and would return to the same spot every year. I have heard stories of people hearing sorrowful cries late at night after stopping with their offerings though I have no idea how true they are. During the offerings, one should not shout or raise their voices as well, it is believed that by doing so, the spirits (if not mistaken, especially the child ones) might be frightened from approaching thus more crying at late nights.


The above are solely based on my personal knowledge, it might or might not be totally accurate and I hope I did not scare anyone.

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