Ok, here are some beliefs of the hoteliers...
There is at least one permanent room which should be left vacant at all times. No matter how full the hotel is, they are not to sell that room(s) to any guest. It is said that the special room is 'reserved' for those 'special visitors'.
So, if you plan to stay in some hotel, always book in advance. Try to avoid walk-ins. If the receptionist tells you there's no more room available, do not insist to get one anymore or try to bribe them to give you a room. If you do that, most of the time the room you have will be that 'special room'.
Sometimes those 'special visitors' might go to other rooms also, so here's some tips on how to protect yourself.
Before entering your room, always knock on the door first, even if you know the room is vacant.
After you enter the room, if you feel very cold suddenly and have 'chicken spore', leave the room quietly immediately and go to the reception to request to change room. Most of the time, the receptionist will understand what's happening.
After you enter the room, immediately switch on all of the lights, and open the curtain to let the sunlight in.
Before you go to bed, arrange your shoes so that one of them is upside down. Some say this represents yin and yang to protect you while you're asleep.
Always leave at least a lamp on while you're sleeping, preferably the toilet lamp.
If you' re staying alone and they have give you a twin bed, do not sleep with the other bed vacant, try to put your things like luggage, on the other bed before you sleep.
When you enter your hotel room, look for the Bible. Most hotels place the Bible inside a drawer, however, if upon entering, you see the Bible on the table, DON'T STAY IN THAT ROOM. It means 'special visitors' are there.
If you see the Bible opened up on the table, LEAVE THAT ROOM IMMEDIATELY and request for a change of room! It means the 'special visitor' is really creating trouble in that room!
Monday, March 30, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
The Boy and the Magic Stone
Muhammad Ponari, a 9-year-old boy from Jombang, East Java, Indonesia had been playing in the rain in his front yard when he was hit by a thunderbolt. When he came to, he found a stone the size of an egg. He had reportedly placed the stone in a glass of water, which was later gulped down by his cousin. The cousin, who had been ill for quite sometime, was then cured of his raging high fever.
Then another neighbour approached him - a woman in her 30s who had suffered from a depressive condition for 15 years. She, too, was healed.
The miracles, large and small, kept coming, said Nila Retno, the local village chief.
"My arm was sprained. The water touched by stone was given to me and I applied the water to my sprained arm. Suddenly, I was OK again," she said.
The district police commissioner, Sutikno, a devout Muslim who will be making the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca this year, told of his experience.
"I was inside the house talking to the boy and his family. Together with me in the house was a boy of his age who had not spoken for five years," he said.
"Ponari shook him. The boy reacted and they started fighting, like wrestling and pulling each other's hair. Then, a few moments after the fighting, the boy started to talk."
What did he say? "He said 'I'm scared' in Javanese — but he talked."
The tales of miraculous healings spread. Within a week of the lightning strike, hundreds of villagers were lining up outside Ponari's modest home.
A week later, the ailing, the lame and the curious were coming from as far afield as Malaysia. Thousands queued each day in lines stretching for kilometres, carrying plastic bags of water ready to be transformed into an elixir by the magical stone.
Stampedes erupted on at least three occasions, resulting in the deaths of three people and injuries to dozens more.
The public disorder forced police to remove the boy to an undisclosed location. Ponari has stopped administering his miracle cures this week after tending to tens of thousands of patients.
Even so, as much as 1 billion rupiah ($A120,000) has been raised through a charity box outside his home. This, many adherents to mysticism believe, was poor form indeed. Dukuns (or shamans) are not supposed to profit from their activities.
According to village chief Retno, Ponari himself said he had been "scolded" by the stone for accepting cash. "He said he felt that his whole body was whipped," she said.
Is this a hoax, a miracle or just the power of the mind?
Then another neighbour approached him - a woman in her 30s who had suffered from a depressive condition for 15 years. She, too, was healed.
The miracles, large and small, kept coming, said Nila Retno, the local village chief.
"My arm was sprained. The water touched by stone was given to me and I applied the water to my sprained arm. Suddenly, I was OK again," she said.
The district police commissioner, Sutikno, a devout Muslim who will be making the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca this year, told of his experience.
"I was inside the house talking to the boy and his family. Together with me in the house was a boy of his age who had not spoken for five years," he said.
"Ponari shook him. The boy reacted and they started fighting, like wrestling and pulling each other's hair. Then, a few moments after the fighting, the boy started to talk."
What did he say? "He said 'I'm scared' in Javanese — but he talked."
The tales of miraculous healings spread. Within a week of the lightning strike, hundreds of villagers were lining up outside Ponari's modest home.
A week later, the ailing, the lame and the curious were coming from as far afield as Malaysia. Thousands queued each day in lines stretching for kilometres, carrying plastic bags of water ready to be transformed into an elixir by the magical stone.
Stampedes erupted on at least three occasions, resulting in the deaths of three people and injuries to dozens more.
The public disorder forced police to remove the boy to an undisclosed location. Ponari has stopped administering his miracle cures this week after tending to tens of thousands of patients.
Even so, as much as 1 billion rupiah ($A120,000) has been raised through a charity box outside his home. This, many adherents to mysticism believe, was poor form indeed. Dukuns (or shamans) are not supposed to profit from their activities.
According to village chief Retno, Ponari himself said he had been "scolded" by the stone for accepting cash. "He said he felt that his whole body was whipped," she said.
Is this a hoax, a miracle or just the power of the mind?
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
More people believe in Aliens and Ghosts than in God
This article is from Yahoo! News:
More people believe in aliens and ghosts than in God, a new survey finds, according to a British newspaper.
The survey, however, was done by a marketing firm in conjunction with the release of an X-Files DVD, and details of how the poll was conducted were not reported in the Daily Mail. Survey questions, depending on how they are written, can greatly skew results, along with how subjects are sampled.
That said, the poll of 3,000 people found that 58 percent believe in the supernatural, including paranormal encounters, while 54 percent believe God exists. Women were more likely than men to believe in the supernatural and were also more likely to visit a medium.
Indeed, humans are prone to believing in things they can neither see nor find logical evidence for.
A survey of U.S. college students done in 2006 found 23 percent of freshmen had a general belief in paranormal concepts - from astrology to communicating with the dead. Interestingly, the number jumped to 31 percent among seniors and 34 percent among graduate students.
Researchers who have compared various human belief systems say our tendency to believe is deeply rooted.
"While it is difficult to know for certain, the tendency to believe in the paranormal appears to be there from the beginning," said Christopher Bader, a Baylor University sociologist. "What changes is the content of the paranormal. For example, very few people believe in faeries and elves these days. But as belief in faeries faded, other beliefs, such as belief in UFOs, emerged to take their place."
Religion and belief in the paranormal are not linked as one might imagine. A handful of surveys show just the opposite, in fact.
"Paranormal beliefs are very strongly negatively related to religious belief," said Rod Stark, another Baylor researcher. Some scientists think this is so because religions tend to discourage paranormal beliefs, and indeed most devout practitioners of a religion have been shown to be the least likely to believe in Bigfoot, ghosts or aliens.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
'Ghost' Bride
What is a 'ghost' bride?
In the days dating back to before the Han dynasty, when a single man passes away, custom calls for him to be married posthumously to a deceased single woman so that he will not be alone in the afterlife. It was believed that if the deceased man is unmarried, he can come back to haunt their living relatives and cause misfortune.
The tradition is still in practice today. In 1998, a farmer was caught stealing female corpses from their graves, mostly freshly upon their death. He sold the bodies for less than 4,000 yuan each to traffickers, who passed them to intermediaries, known as matchmakers for ghosts, who marked them up more than three times for the final customers.
Female corpses have become comparatively rare due to the substantial gender imbalance brought on by China’s one-child policy.
In January this year, the tradition took a heinous turn when police in northern China detained 3 men for the killings of two women whose corpses were then sold as "ghost brides". Yang Donghai, a 35-year-old farmer in western China's Shaanxi province, confessed to killing a woman bought from a poor family for 12,000 yuan last year. She thought she was being sold into an arranged marriage, but Yang killed her and sold her corpse for 16,000 yuan. He and two accomplices then killed a prostitute and sold her for 8,000 yuan (£523) before police caught them.
The corpses were apparently being sold to Li Longsheng, an undertaker who police said specialized in buying and selling of dead women for "ghost weddings".
In the days dating back to before the Han dynasty, when a single man passes away, custom calls for him to be married posthumously to a deceased single woman so that he will not be alone in the afterlife. It was believed that if the deceased man is unmarried, he can come back to haunt their living relatives and cause misfortune.
The tradition is still in practice today. In 1998, a farmer was caught stealing female corpses from their graves, mostly freshly upon their death. He sold the bodies for less than 4,000 yuan each to traffickers, who passed them to intermediaries, known as matchmakers for ghosts, who marked them up more than three times for the final customers.
Female corpses have become comparatively rare due to the substantial gender imbalance brought on by China’s one-child policy.
In January this year, the tradition took a heinous turn when police in northern China detained 3 men for the killings of two women whose corpses were then sold as "ghost brides". Yang Donghai, a 35-year-old farmer in western China's Shaanxi province, confessed to killing a woman bought from a poor family for 12,000 yuan last year. She thought she was being sold into an arranged marriage, but Yang killed her and sold her corpse for 16,000 yuan. He and two accomplices then killed a prostitute and sold her for 8,000 yuan (£523) before police caught them.
The corpses were apparently being sold to Li Longsheng, an undertaker who police said specialized in buying and selling of dead women for "ghost weddings".
The Hungry Ghost Festival
The Hungry Ghost Festival is a traditional Chinese festival celebrated around Asia every year. The Festival is celebrated in the seventh lunar month of the Chinese calendar.
The Chinese believe that in this month ghosts and spirits, including those of the deceased ancestors, come out from the lower world to visit earth. Some of the activities include preparing ritualistic offering food, and burning hell money and bags containing cloth to please the visiting ghosts and spirits of the ancestors. Chinese Opera and Puppet Shows are put together for audiences - both living and non-living alike, at certain suburban areas prior to the big day
The Ghost Festival shares some similarities with the predominantly Mexican observance of El Día de los Muertos. Due to the theme of ghosts and spirits, the festival is sometimes also known as the Chinese Halloween.
The following is a legend on how the festival came to be:
The Chinese believe that in this month ghosts and spirits, including those of the deceased ancestors, come out from the lower world to visit earth. Some of the activities include preparing ritualistic offering food, and burning hell money and bags containing cloth to please the visiting ghosts and spirits of the ancestors. Chinese Opera and Puppet Shows are put together for audiences - both living and non-living alike, at certain suburban areas prior to the big day
The Ghost Festival shares some similarities with the predominantly Mexican observance of El Día de los Muertos. Due to the theme of ghosts and spirits, the festival is sometimes also known as the Chinese Halloween.
The following is a legend on how the festival came to be:
A long time ago there lived a young man, Mu Lian and his widowed mother. His mother was a very wicked woman and she liked to laugh at the poor and their dirty clothes. She often turned away those beggars who came to her door asking for donation or food. The only person she cared was herself......
Mu Lian on the other hand was a kind soul. He was a gentle person and always willing to help anybody in need. One day he decided to become a monk and this did not please his mother. She scowled at him for being such a useless son; she wanted him to go out and work to earn more money for her. Wealth and materialistic things meant more to her than anything else.
When she saw that she could not dissuade her son, a plan began to hatch in her mind. She decided to play a trick on the monks just to get back at them for taking away her son. Mu Lian's mother thought it was silly that these monks did not eat meat. One day she got her chance and offered food to some monks and slipped in some non-vegetarian food without them knowing it.
When the wicked woman died, her soul was sent to 18th level of hell, the very bottom of hell, to be punished. All souls who are punished to the 18th level of hell will become hungry ghosts which mean they will have no chance of reborn on earth.
Mu Lian wanted to save his mother's soul because he knew her soul was suffering. He set out and ventured deep into the bowels of hell. Soon he came upon his mother and he saw that she was sitting a bed of very sharp pointy stakes and was holding on to a basin of blood.
Mu Lian tried feeding her some food but the food would either turn into fire or blood. It was hopeless: he couldn't do anything for her so he left. He returned home and started to pray.
It is said that Buddha heard Mu Lian's prayers and was touched by Mu Lian's compassion. Thus Buddha decreed that once a year, the gates of hell be opened so that the lost souls will be able to roam the earth and be fed. This is why every year on the seventh day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar, the Chinese celebrate the festival of the hungry ghost.
Monday, August 20, 2007
The History of the Middle Finger
Here's something that you might not have known before.....
Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore they would be incapable of fighting in the future. This famous English longbow was made of the native English Yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking the yew" (or "pluck yew").
Much to the bewilderment of the French, the English won a major upset and began mocking the French by waving their middle fingers at the defeated French, saying, See, we can still pluck yew! Since 'pluck yew' is rather difficult to say, the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a labiodentals fricative F', and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger-salute! It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows used with the longbow that the symbolic gesture is known as "giving the bird."
IT IS STILL AN APPROPRIATE SALUTE TO THE FRENCH TODAY!
And yew thought yew knew every plucking thing.
Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore they would be incapable of fighting in the future. This famous English longbow was made of the native English Yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking the yew" (or "pluck yew").
Much to the bewilderment of the French, the English won a major upset and began mocking the French by waving their middle fingers at the defeated French, saying, See, we can still pluck yew! Since 'pluck yew' is rather difficult to say, the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a labiodentals fricative F', and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger-salute! It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows used with the longbow that the symbolic gesture is known as "giving the bird."
IT IS STILL AN APPROPRIATE SALUTE TO THE FRENCH TODAY!
And yew thought yew knew every plucking thing.
Friday, October 06, 2006
Friday the 13th
Next Friday is the 13th !!!
Why is Friday the 13th considered such an unlucky day?
The reasons why Friday came to be regarded as a day of bad luck have been obscured by the mists of time — some of the more common theories link it to some significant events in Christian tradition said to have taken place on Friday, such as the Crucifixion, Eve's offering the apple to Adam in the Garden of Eden, the beginning of the Great Flood, or the confusion at the Tower of Babel.
The number 13 also has some religious symbolism as there were 13 people at The Last Supper of Jesus, who was incidentally crucified on Good Friday, but no evidence has been found that Friday 13th was considered especially unlucky until the 19th century. The number 13, however, has a long history of association with ill-luck. It has been linked to the fact that a lunisolar calendar must have 13 months in some years, while the solar Gregorian calendar and lunar Islamic calendar always have 12 months in a year.
There is also another theory that Friday the 13th of October 1307 was the day that Philip IV of France arrested and subsequenty tortured and killed hundreds of the French Knights Templar to get their money for the French treasury. One other note which predates all of the aforementioned is that the first Passover seems to have occurred on Friday the 13th. The death of the firstborns of Egypt occurred on a Shabbat on the 14th of Nisan in the evening. But the Jewish calendar counts days from sunset to sunset so this would have been Friday the 13th in terms of the gentile reckoning of the days.
Feminists have argued that because of the lunar year and Friday being named after a goddess in most European pagan calendars, the fear of Friday the 13th is a patriarchal invention, associating femininity with bad luck.
By the way, the fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskevidekatriaphobia.
Why is Friday the 13th considered such an unlucky day?
The reasons why Friday came to be regarded as a day of bad luck have been obscured by the mists of time — some of the more common theories link it to some significant events in Christian tradition said to have taken place on Friday, such as the Crucifixion, Eve's offering the apple to Adam in the Garden of Eden, the beginning of the Great Flood, or the confusion at the Tower of Babel.
The number 13 also has some religious symbolism as there were 13 people at The Last Supper of Jesus, who was incidentally crucified on Good Friday, but no evidence has been found that Friday 13th was considered especially unlucky until the 19th century. The number 13, however, has a long history of association with ill-luck. It has been linked to the fact that a lunisolar calendar must have 13 months in some years, while the solar Gregorian calendar and lunar Islamic calendar always have 12 months in a year.
There is also another theory that Friday the 13th of October 1307 was the day that Philip IV of France arrested and subsequenty tortured and killed hundreds of the French Knights Templar to get their money for the French treasury. One other note which predates all of the aforementioned is that the first Passover seems to have occurred on Friday the 13th. The death of the firstborns of Egypt occurred on a Shabbat on the 14th of Nisan in the evening. But the Jewish calendar counts days from sunset to sunset so this would have been Friday the 13th in terms of the gentile reckoning of the days.
Feminists have argued that because of the lunar year and Friday being named after a goddess in most European pagan calendars, the fear of Friday the 13th is a patriarchal invention, associating femininity with bad luck.
By the way, the fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskevidekatriaphobia.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
9/11 Prophecy on $20 bill ?
This info has been circulating on the internet since 2002 but this is the first time I've seen. Kinda cool and creepy at the same time. I guess some people has too much time on their hands to come up with stuff like this.
1. Fold a $20 bill in half so that you see the top half of the reverse side.
2. Fold the left half away from you as shown.
3. Fold the right half so that the burning Pentagon is revealed.
4. Flip the bill over to see the World Trade Center.
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