7th Month is here...........

Here comes the airline sales....and then you know that it is 7th month. This year, air ticket sales seems to be quite extended, thanks to having double 7th month.

I think traveling by plane during the 7th month is still ok. Perhaps water activities should be avoided. Just as I warned my hubby not to go swimming, my BIL's friend drowned in Taiwan last weekend. I think it freaked hubby a lot!

What is seventh month, actually?

It is also known as Ulambana (Ancestor Day) 7th Month Festival / Chong Yen Zie / Hungry Ghost Festival.

Ulambana (Ancestor Day) 7th Month Festival / Chong Yen Zie / Hungry Ghost Festival is celebrated throughout the Mahayana tradition from the first to the fifteenth days of the eighth lunar month. It is believed that the gates of Hell are opened on the first day and the ghosts may visit the world for fifteen days. Food offerings are made during this time to relieve the sufferings of these ghosts. On the fifteenth day, Ulambana or Ancestor Day, people visit cemeteries to make offerings to the departed ancestors. Many Theravadins from Cambodia, Laos and Thailand* also observe this festival.

Ulambana is also a Japanese Buddhist festival known as Obon, beginning on the thirteenth of July and lasting for three days, which celebrates the reunion of family ancestors with the living.

* Does that mean we should observe 7th month when we go to visit these countries?

According to my mum, we had to stay at home at night even 1 week before the 1st day of 7th month. Some "naughty ones" might have escaped a few days earlier and cause trouble. I have had high fever after going out on the 14th day when I was a toddler.

Despite all her tales, I did not believe in these tales about 7th month. Statistics of death or accidents don't really seem to be higher than usual, rite? There are most probably another story to keep us kids at home.

But when I started working, I had many colleagueas who had to travel a lot. Scientific, technical people who had to travel anytime, anywhere; and yet they observe the 7th month too. As a colleague pointed out, the numbers do not really increase or decrease during the 7th month, but the number of weird things happening increases!

I used to think that my "6th sense" is my own imagination, now I just want to "respect" it. This "6th sense" was responsible for making "irrational decisions" which resulted in not taking a route that would probably put me in a plane that crashed, or transiting in Middle East when the war is starting there.

Probably nothing would have happened to me at all. I might have taken another plane and not involved in the crash. So far, nothing has happened to civilian planes in the middle east as well. But the worry would probably be too much for my parents.

This 6th sense also told me that the hotel I was allocated on a bussiness trip was "not right", and I had to ask a colleague what to do as a precaution. Yup, turned up the hotel is known to have some histories.

But a traveler like me will still travel if a chance comes, 7th month or not. The excitement of going to explore a new place is just too much! Perhaps learning some "precautions" is great to calm you and avoid imagining stuff?

I know a friend who bring along a "Tibetan singing bowl", to cleanse the room. I always wondered how she could chuck such a metal thing like that into her luggage! And come on, she is so "modern" and "sophiscated"!!! Perhaps she encountered things that she would not want to talk about? She had been living out of a suitcase for years.

A colleague of mine like to blast the tv all the time, while I do the opposite. I don't leave the tv on in hotel room late at night anymore, after a colleague who could see those things told me that her tv channel was switched to a gory murder scene, because that thing tried to "communicate" with her, but she ignored. It freaked her out! She is not staying in that premier Petaling Jaya hotel anymore, no matter what.

No one should touch my shoes!
I will put it in the "position", and it should not be touched. When we stayed in that famous hotel in HK where a "superstar" died, hubby "tidied up" the shoes one night without my knowledge.

When I was about to sleep, I suddenly felt a certain gush of wind?/movement moving from my window(closed!!) to the door. Seemed like something whizzed passed, something chilly. And at that instant my hubby suddenly sat up VERY straight and murmured something. He looked weird!!! And when I looked at our shoes, I realised they were all nicely tidied up. I quickly put them in the correct places again, and then he just dropped back to sleep, just like that. FREAKED me out!! That hotel's corridors are quite creepy, but the rooms were ok-except that night. And that was not a 7th month.....

Anymore tales? Yes. I got to put in another page, a Traveler's Tales of the 7th month.

It is 7th month again. While I don't practise any of those stuff like praying or whatever, I think a traveler like me should still be "aware".....and respect my trusty 6th sense :)