Fun with figures

1456 seems normal enough to one of my relatives, until one day, he overheard someone commented that it sounds like “yat sai ng lou” in Cantonese, which translates into “whole life do not want to do business”. The next thing he did was he sold the car!

Recently, in Johore, the successful tender for the registration number “JJJ 1” was over Rm150,000! It seems the record was much higher for a Selangor plate “BBB 8888” many years ago.

To others not into numerology, these people who tendered exceptionally high prices for just some car numbers must be crazy. Personally, I would have more respect for those who are more willing to donate to deserving charities. Even with charitable organizations, there are problems of people taking advantage of the donations. So we have to be careful when donating too.

I used to own a car with registration numbers 967 and I have seen people laughing over it. If car numbers are potent forces, then would girls feel more secure going into a new friend’s car with registration “5967”?

I think it is more to do with the mind more than anything else. If we are aware of certain things and if we can help it, we would rather avoid anything that sounds bad and go for anything that sounds good.

I have seen a friend’s husband who chose all the nice numbers, like No.9 for his house, 8668 and later 6363 for his cars, and other nice numbers for their telephone numbers. Yet he is on the run from loan sharks and she had to register as a single mum to be eligible for state help.

There is also a commercial reason for choosing propitious numbers. Even though we do not care about what sounds good or bad, when it comes to selling our house or car, it matters!

If Chinese, in general, do not like numbers “4” or “44” and so on, on our house or car, then we are in effect, limiting our market to those who do not mind. In some cases, that could well be the deciding factor to buy the house or car! Similarly, with numbers “8” or “88” and so on, the seller has the advantage over another person without such numbers.

Fortunately, most town or city councils are sympathetic to house-owners who wish to change their house numbers. For example, number “4” can be changed to “2A”.

The police have been complaining about traffic jams whenever there are car accidents. It seems most cars slowed down to see what was happening. Some actually wanted to see the car registration numbers so that they can buy “Empat Ekor”. To overcome this type of traffic congestion, the Penang bridge had a high divider made!