In Continuum.

Paraskavedekatriaphobia is the phobia for the fear of Friday the 13th, and I bet a lot of people are uncomfortable right now. All you superstitious people out there, freaking out because 13 isn't the most encouraging number ever created in human history. It's not really fair for Friday because, I think Friday is the best day of the week, or maybe second best after Saturday. Still, it is unfair to tag a few Fridays in a year with the number 13 and call them the worst days of the year. It is all superstition to begin with anyway, but it's not like people ignore the supposedly implications of the number on this day anyway. People do not take the number lightly, and it still feels right to release a horror movie on Friday the 13th, because it is supposed to make things creepier. The Happening was released in America today, but then I don't suppose - spoiler alert - killer plants are going to scare anybody out there really. Can you imagine that pot of ferns in your backyard coming to get you in the middle of the night, perhaps suffocating you with the carbon dioxide that it emits due to the lack of photosynthesis? The horrors! Well, maybe not.

Well, aside from the number 13 on this fateful Friday, we have other superstitions that don't really make a lot of sense. There's the one about seven years of bad luck with a broken mirror, the one about walking under staircases, and the one about the black cat crossing your path or something like that. I just heard one today about rubbing salt on your left shoulder because that is where the devil sits, as oppose to the angel being on your right. First of all, why should the devil restrict himself to these lame left and right rules made up by the humans if he is so powerful anyway. Besides, what makes you think that the devil is afraid of salt? Maybe the devil is health-conscious and doesn't want too much salt in his diet, and would rather eat himself silly with boxes after boxes of Swiss chocolates because they are supposed to be, well, sinful. Anyway, superstitions like that make no sense, but it's not like the voice in the back of your head is not going to gasp when you break a mirror in your house or something like that. You start to think about the next seven years living in bad luck, and all those dreadful hours in the night crying over the broken mirror you accidentally hit with your elbow while combing the hair of your black...cat! It must have been your black cat named Felix, it must have crossed your path and caused you to break that mirror a few minutes later. It is all collateral, and you think you are beginning to see a pattern surfacing. 

Well, not really. You are not seeing a pattern, everything is just superstition. It's not like breaking a mirror is going to stop you from cursing the guy that scratched your brand new car with his keys. I mean, nobody is going to find a long deep scratch on his car doors and go "Damn that mirror!" If superstitions are true then, then I guess we'd be able to blame everything on broken mirrors and innocent black kittens. If all the bad lucks accumulated in my life so far can be tabulated, then I'd probably be six feet under by now judging from the sheer amount of bad luck. I do like the number 13, I think it is highly under-rated. It is the sixth prime number, and 13 is also the second happy prime, following 7, and the rethorical 1. It's not like everybody is going to go home on a Friday the 13th anyway, everybody is still going to let their hairs down and go out on a Friday night. Maybe not those people suffering from paraskavedekatriaphobia, which leads to me to wonder if it is a legitimate reason to skip any subsequent in-camp training that happens to fall on a Friday the 13th. A note to self: work on that idea. 

At the end of the day, I think the fear for the number 13 is a very western thing. In the eastern culture, however, we have our number 4 since it sounds like "death" in Chinese. Come to think about it, the number 4 has brought me more harm than anything in my army life, the fact that so many things were related to that accursed number. I lived on block 44, and I was from platoon 4, section 4. My friend Varun was on bed 4 and I was on bed 2, but I guess Chinese superstitions bothered him little since he was more concerned about making coffee in camp and making sure that his toilet crew do their job. There is also that thing about fengshui that the Chinese is so obsessed about as well, a belief that changing the positions of the furniture in your family is going to change the fortune, or something along the lines of that. My mother may seem like a pretty modern woman, but she is a believer of fengshui - a devoted believer at that. My home is probably the model home for the best fengshui, since she has already paid a generous amount of money for things to be checked up, repositioned, repositioned some more, and subsequently blessed by holy water. 

We begin from the front door of the home, and it used to lead directly to the balcony in a straight line. That is not supposed to be very good for the family's income, which is also why my family bought a giant fish tank and placed it in between the living room and the front door. In that way, you block the "chi" that flows into the family and makes sure that it does not exit through the balcony doors. Then there are the screens my parents bought so many years ago to put right at the end of their beds to block their view of the bathroom. It is not lucky to have your bed face the bathroom, which is also why it is good to buy screens to block the unlucky "chi". You cannot move the bed either, because any other angle in the room is going to cause the bed to be situated right underneath a beam in the ceiling, which is also bad luck for the family. If can see the water tank at the top of the neighboring apartments from your balcony or bedroom windows, it is supposed to be bad luck as well because the rooftop of the opposite apartment, along with the water tank, is shaped like the hat of one of those ancient Chinese judges in court. That is also why my mother has done precautions to prevent bad things from happening to the family.

We have one of those mirrors placed in the balcony, on top of the front door, and outside my old bedroom window that faces the West. It has strange words and patterns written on it which I cannot read, and other weird curvy lines that don't seem to mean anything at all. I am sure there are other little superstitious things my mother has done with the house that I am not aware about, but then it's not like my mother forces them down my throat anyway - not anymore. She used to have me drink burned paper when I was younger to help me with my examinations. I am sure a lot of superstitious parents have done that for their children, to burn yellow strips of paper with strange handwritings on them. Different inscriptions have different meanings, and I had one stuffed underneath my pillow for a period of time because I was having constant nightmares for a while. My mother also used to burn a piece of those yellow strips of paper and then wave it around my head. I am pretty sure I am not painting a very good picture of my mother here, and I have probably made her look somewhat like a loon. I can assure you, however, that she is the most sensible person I know. Really.

It is up to you whether or not you want to believe it anyway, but superstition has saved the life of my uncle, that other uncle I blogged about nearly two years ago. My father's second brother suffered from a tumor in the livers, the same as my cousin's liver problem these days. Anyway, my uncle was a very rich businessman, and the idea of him dying in two weeks was not a part of his daily plan. When you are desperate like that, any method that may save your life works in your books. Which was why he suddenly became a devoted buddhist, and he donated a large sum of money to a bunch of charities in Taiwan and stuff like that. The doctor gave him two weeks to live two years ago, and he is still alive and kicking right now in Taiwan. He is calmer these days, allowing his body to rest, and he thanks his superstitions - the ones that saved his life. Whether or not you believe in karma is one thing, the fact that he is still alive is another. Superstition may seem stupid to you at times, but sometimes the faith in superstitions can last a human being even longer. 

So whether or not you have broken a mirror, had a black cat cross your path, or have drank a cup of water with burned paper in it - like me, I guess there really isn't a point in thinking about the darker side of life. I mean, why do we blame our bad luck on badly placed furniture in our houses or some innocent black kitten anyway. Why don't we ever look at ourselves and go, "Well, maybe it's just me". I guess it's just easier to point fingers, although it is sometimes silly to point at inanimate objects, such as that sofa or that toilet bowl. Either way, everybody can laugh at you for being silly to believe in a certain thing or another, but it all comes down to whether or not you view it with optimism or pessimism. It is up to you whether or not, at the edge of death, to look at life from a different perspective or to cower yourself in the corner of the room and weep for your impending doom. In times like these, I say drink those awful tasting water and have burning strips of paper completely surround you. If it helps you look on the brighter side of life, then by all means - do it. If it doesn't harm, it doesn't harm.