Friday five: Feeling lucky?
\<!\[CDATA **1\. Are you superstitious?** Not really, no. On the other hand, I don’t like to tempt fate, so I avoid walking under ladders and stuff like that.
2. What extremes have you heard of someone going to in the name of superstition? My favourite example is the number 8. Chinese culture says that 8 is good luck. Vancouver has a very large number of Chinese immigrants, and real estate agents and property developers bend over backwards to have an 8 in their phone number or address. Four is the number of death, and that’s studiously avoided. For example, the newish buildings I lived in all had addresses with 8s in them: 1188 Howe, 1008 Cambie.
3. Believer or not, what’s your favorite superstition? I like the salt one, just because it seems so random: spill salt, take a pinch of it and throw it over your right shoulder. The walking under a ladder thing I can understand – someone might drop something on you. But salt? Bizarre.
4. Do you believe in luck? If yes, do you have a lucky number/article of clothing/ritual? I don’t think luck is something to be believed or not – some people have it, some people don’t. Generally, it works itself out to charisma or something a wee bit more measurable. I don’t really have a “lucky number” or anything. That being said, however, a bunch of weird things used to happen to me on the 16th of every month. Started to really freak me out.
5. Do you believe in astrology? Why or why not? Jury’s still out. There’s one guy, Tim Stevens, who wrote in a local paper in Vancouver. He was eerily correct, except one week out. He would always describe the week that just happened to me, rather than the week that was about to happen. I do think that a “Sagittarius person” would have certain traits, but I’m less convinced that it has something to do with the stars in the heavens as it has to do with things that happen to babies in wombs and cultural stuff that happens outside. Chaos theory might one day explain the complex interrelations between all us humans.]]>