Malayisa is an interesting mix of indigenous Malay, Chinese, Indian / Punjabi / Tamil* and Western cultures and it has inherited some of the quirks of each one. The building I'm working in at the minute was built by a Chinese-heritage company and when they labelled the floors they considered the Chinese view that four is an unlucky number (it sounds a lot like the Chinese word for 'Death' - never a good selling point).
Look closely and you can see floors 4 & 14 have been replaced by 3A and 13A. Incidentally floor 2 is missing because the bottom of the building is a two-level shopping centre. It would be silly to miss it for any other reason.
Conversely, eight is a lucky number as it sounds like 'Prosper'. When I was in Hong Kong I read about a hotel that had a floor '88' (doubly lucky) where the apartments were priced far higher than in the rest of the building. There were only 69 floors in the building, they'd just relabelled the top one as floor 88.
*Apologies to any Indians, Punjabi & Tamils for lumping them together so casually.....
Conversely, eight is a lucky number as it sounds like 'Prosper'. When I was in Hong Kong I read about a hotel that had a floor '88' (doubly lucky) where the apartments were priced far higher than in the rest of the building. There were only 69 floors in the building, they'd just relabelled the top one as floor 88.
*Apologies to any Indians, Punjabi & Tamils for lumping them together so casually.....
No comments:
Post a Comment