overheard? overread? :: synchronicities

from an email i read on a list-serv i'm on. the email wasn't to me, but i found it very clever and interesting... enough to pass on...

----begin email----

I also try to read the messages from the phenomenal world. For example the hottest summer in recorded history in Australia, with bush fires in the papers every day. I would read the headlines and think, "what does it all mean?" Bush fires. Bush fires? That's it I decided one day, the message is, "Fire Bush!"

Then there the matter of the UN resolution on Iraq. The Chinese take numbers and sound very seriously and numbers have homonyms --like 8 (ba) sounds exactly like "money comes" and 6 (liu) sounds like "everything goes smoothly." To get a phone number in China or a car license plate with 666 888 would be very very expensive. Another number people like is 9 because it is big yang, the dragon number. 1 (yao) is ok, it sounds like "I want." The number no one wants is 4, since it is pronounced exactly like the word for death, "si" (pronounced suh).

So the UN Resolution that gives the US the right to invade Iraq is 1441, which in Mandarin Chinese is yao si si yao, meaning "I want to die, death is what I want." No Chinese person would every agree to such a number. In fact no Chinese person would ever live in a hotel room with a number like that.

L.W.

----end email----