Today was a very productive day – we managed to visit a lot of places, thanks to Cheryl and her soon-to-be-husband Kah Weng who kindly drove us around Penang to visit all the heritage sites. Cheryl has been a long reader of sixthseal.com (since 2003) so it’s great to finally meet up with her. One of the places we did today was the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion in Georgetown.
The mansion does not allow photography inside the premises, but I discreetly (okay, blatantly, sixthseal.com does not do subtle :p) roamed around the interior and snapped a lot of photos. Simon followed suit when he saw me doing that and he was reprimanded by the tour guide. I’ve always wondered how I managed to get away with a lot of shit (probably broke more than a few rules today) and the revelation came during the 1 hour tour.
I finally found out why I’ve been so lucky. My car license plate is QAG 4114. The tour guide at Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion mentioned that the address of the mansion is 14, Leah Street. 4 is considered an inauspicious number for the Chinese coz it’s a phoneme for “death”. However, 1+4 is 5. 5 is considered lucky coz it represents “wu fu ling men” meaning “five kinds of luck entering your door”. Heh! That explains A LOT of things. 😉
Another thing I picked up during the tour is that six is associated with the phrase “lu lu wu cheong” which is literally translated as “road road no poverty”. It’s a couplet articulating that you won’t be left wanting in your life. It’s a good thing I picked sixthseal.com as my domain name – twice the luck for me. LOL!
I also kissed a Laughing Buddha effigy today (no touching the statues) – now it’s thrice the luck! w00t! =D
