Martin World news: luck edition

 

Sunday I was meandering through articles when I found the story of "How a snack protects Taiwan's high-tech. "  The snack is called Kuai Kuai; it is a coconut/corn puff snack, and comes in a green bag.  How does it protect tech?  Apparently, it's all about luck.

Wrapped about crucial machines in hospitals and even space research, it 'prevents' things from malfunctioning; here, it guards the entrance of a Taipei police station "to ward off evil."

And what was once a geek subculture has today gone mainstream — there is even a Wikipedia entry for it called “Kuaikuai culture” (乖乖文化). Researchers at Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s top research institute, for example, place bags of Kuaikuai in their labs; nurses tape them to respirators and other life-saving devices to ensure that they don’t break down; and museums place them next to sound systems so that announcements will go off without a hitch.(Taiwan Times)

I found out that this was a pretty endemic thing in Taiwan; there was a research paper done looking into all the things Taiwanese nurses believed.  Included in this list were:

- No eating pineapples- its Chinese name involves a character that's bad mojo for patients.

-No eating mangoes at work.  The Chinese word sounds like the word for 'busy', which they don't want to be.  Similar to this is a sanction against eating beef noodles (beef=cattle, which work hard), and never saying you are 'not busy' after your shift.

- No drinking anything with vitamin c added or featured, because, I understand, c is the first letter in CPR, which no one wants to have to perform.

- No refilling the red ink for stamping official papers on duty, or else you'll be stamping stuff all day due to the connection of red to blood.

All of this made me curious about other workplace 'good luck charms', although I don't know why you'd need to do anything other than tape bags of coconut corn puffs everywhere.  Here are items from one article on the 'top six symbols' to use:

1- The "Nazar Bongcugu" from our Turkish and Arab friends, which is essentially a bright blue evil eye...

2- Frogs.  One of which I stumbled onto had to be red, three-legged, and either have a quarter in its mouth to bring you money, or facing away from your home so it doesn't "suck all the money out".

3- Lady bugs.  Because back in the Middle Ages, they symbolized a prayer to the Virgin Mary to protect your crops from devastation. The practical applications today should be obvious.*

(*Snark mode engaged.)

4- Garlic.  What a lovely way to tell your co-workers they are a bunch of bloodsuckers.

5- White Heather...

..because, MacTavish, in Scotland it is believed only to grow on a battlefield in a spot no one was killed, and what could be luckier than that?  And if you don't like that explanation, how about the one that says it grows on a spot where a faerie died, although I fail to see how that would exactly be lucky.  At least to the faerie.

6- And, of course, the horseshoe- make sure you turn it up so the luck doesn't 'run out.'

Among other good luck stuff I turned up was that shaking the hand of a chimney sweep was great luck...

 

"Oi, or you c'n pat me on me head!"

 ...uh, yes, as well as that a hangman's noose....

Sick people would wrap the ropes around their heads as a cure for headaches and fevers, but the talisman was most popular among gamblers and cardsharps, many of whom believed that owning a piece of a noose would keep them in good standing with Lady Luck. The ropes were so valuable that hangmen were even known to cut them into pieces for sale as good luck charms. (History Channel)

"Sure wish I'd have known that before... I might have won that race!"

 Don't worry it, Bubba, none of it actually works!  I'd like to close with something said on the subject on the Compelling Truth website that pretty much sums it up for me...

 

That being said, should a Christian own a lucky charm or engage in superstitious actions such as wearing the same socks to every baseball game? If the charms, such as a rabbit's foot, a horseshoe, or an elephant with an up-raised trunk, are non-religious and used in a way that represents a culture and not in a way that causes another to stumble or attempts to gather actual fortune, it's probably all right. Rituals can be used to calm nerves or mentally prepare for an event. But we should all recognize that nothing is truly random, and God cannot be manipulated by four-leafed clovers or dirty socks. Time would be better spent by following God, preparing for that game, and not risking anything too dear in poker.