Thursday 19th of January 2006

My amaranthin duel

A nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future.

Time. Another Salvi-year is about to pass and I still haven´t been able to stop time. Maybe I should change methods and instead of trying to stop it, I should try to reverse it.

This last year has been very interesting. It brought about many changes and while it took away many precious things, it also gave me in return some others that I never knew were there to be had in the first place. I feel in general it has been all for the better and I can definetly say I am content with the way that things are going. This is good.

The other day we where touching the subject of Asian culture, as we seem to do every other day, and Jorge mentioned how some Asian countries see death in a totally different way than we do in the Western side of things. While they embrace it, we mostly seem to just fear it. I myself am penitent of such a sin.

This spurred another of my google searches and I´ve come accross some interesting faux passes related to death and funerals:

China

• Giving someone a timepiece as a gift. Traditional superstitions regard this as counting the seconds to the recipient’s death. Another possible interpretation of this is that the phrase “to give clock” in Chinese is “song zhong,” which is a homophone of a phrase for “attending a funeral.”
• Never stick your chopsticks into your rice and leave them there. This looks like sticks of incense in a bowl used to honor dead ancestors, and such a symbol of death is extremely offensive at the dinner table.

Japan

• Sending a New Year’s postcard to someone who suffered a death in the family during the past year.
• Holding anything with chopsticks by two people at the same time, or passing an item from chopsticks to chopsticks is considered very impolite, as it will remind bystanders of the Japanese funeral ritual. Sticking them into food (and especially rice) has similar connotations.

Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Serbia, and Poland

• Giving somebody an even number of flowers. This should only be done in funerals.

Right.. back to the issue at hand, this saturday it´s my birthday once again, and once again pretendo pasarmelo pipas. :D

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