Oh Pacey, you idiot!

S finally called me to tell me that he would be coming to my house this weekend. He most probably wants to check out the new home entertainment system I bought. I would most probably be spending a lot of time in front of it since I finally got my copy of “Dawson’s Creek: Complete Season 2” yesterday. It would be fun revisiting the whole Capeside crew again as well as getting a fix for my Josh Jackson addiction. BTW ... Season 2 was when they introduced Jack who later in the same season came out of the closet. The character would continue for many seasons of the series but the rumor was the actor who was playing Jack was really upset that he had to play a gay character. He may not like it in the beginning but we get to watch him grow into and became more comfortable with the character over the years.

It took me a while to figure out why they choose “Superstitions” for the theme for this week’s Friday Five. I kept on wondering about it until I happened to glance at the calendar on my desk in the office and realized what date it was. Very sneaky of them.

1. Are you superstitious?
I guess that you can say that I am a bit superstitious about some stuff. The way I see it some of the more popular superstitions do actually have some grounding in real life if you look at them closely. Some of the more famous examples of this are the superstition about walking under the ladder or the one about breaking a mirror. Both could be seen as a warning to avoid unnecessary accidents. Of course there are other superstitions that are really out there and are hard to understand how they come to be. Of course living in Asia just adds on several layers of fun superstitions to the mix. The main point of it all is that, while it is good and well that we have all these superstitions, we should not let them rule/control how we operate in our daily lives.

2. What extremes have you heard of someone going to in the name of superstition?
I personally know someone who bought a house and renovated it at 10 times the cost of the house he purchased all because the feng-shui of the house was all wrong. He basically tore the whole house down and built it up with the goal of maximizing the feng-shui results. Every piece of brink, furniture, paint color, tree and even the fish in the house had to be approved by a feng-shui master before he allowed it into the house plan. I asked him why he even bought the house in the first place if he had to tear in down and spend the obscene amount of money he did and he told me that it was because the location the house was located was good for feng-shui. For something that was designed to attract wealth, the house really put a dent in his pocket that I have to wonder if it is really worth the time.

3. Believer or not, what's your favorite superstition?
My favorite superstition is a local Malaysian superstition that if you hear or smell anything strange in the dead of the night, especially at Thursday nights, you should never comment on them lest something supernatural/undead followed you home because you called to them by your comment. This used to scare the crap out of me as a kid especially when I started sleeping on my own bed alone. I still believe in this superstition till today and would never make a comment about anything out of place at nights if I don’t have to. I mean ... why tempt fate?

4. Do you believe in luck? If yes, do you have a lucky number/article of clothing/ritual?
I absolutely believe in luck and lucky items. Some days it seems that I need to get all the luck tokens cashed in to just get through it. My lucky number is 7, my lucky color is navy blue and I have a piece of petrified wood set in a ring of gold and bronze alloy that my late grandmother gave me which I consider to be my lucky charm that I wear always.

5. Do you believe in astrology? Why or why not?
I do sometimes read those astrology predictions and some have uncanny parallels to what was happening in my real life that it is hard not to think that there is something more to it. I would say that I don’t discount them out of the gate but I would never let it rule my daily life.