luck be the lady

I dip and dabble a bit in feng shui, primarily out of intellectual curiosity. I don't come close to living my life based on it, but I have used it as a tie breaker. For example, when determining whether I should purchase my Houston abode, I tried to use feng shui to talk myself out of purchasing a place that just felt right but was well above the budget I had established. They say that unless you custom build a house, that no house is exactly perfect to an individual based on feng shui. Fortunately (or unfortunately), in my amateur feng shui research, the house turned out to be perfect for me. Did that explain the positive vibes in my quick perusal of the house?

In my quest to get a sim card, I encountered many unsolicited advise. The mere mention that it was on my list of 'to do' was enough to get a list of items to consider. In the states, my selection process was based on reputation of carrier, costs of the various packages/promotions/data plans and in some cases, the type of phones offered. Here, phones are purchased directly from the vendor; carriers are all the same in reputation and signal; promotions are comparable; minutes are minutes regardless of whether you use it for data or voice; and your options are prepaid or end of month. Most opt for prepaid to avoid having to make a trip to pay a monthly bill (yes, it is primarily a cash-basis country). However, in trying to heed the various advices, I noticed that all the 'good' combination of numbers were the end of month options, which require deposits, minimums and a contract period ranging from 3-9 months. Clearly the better combinations required higher minimums with longer term.

It ended up being a numbers game. Mobile phones range from 10 to 13 digits, the smaller the better. Factors to consider after that included increasing numbers, lucky vs. unlucky numbers, combinations that were easy to remember, and numbers that are compatible with an individual's basic element (e.g., metal, fire, water, etc.). After visiting 2 stores to find 10-digit numbers and spending over 30 minutes staring at a terminal looking at combinations, I was still SOL on getting a sim card.

In a country where the average salary is circa USD $12,000, it is jaw dropping to hear that people spend USD $200,000 for a perfectly increasing number, USD $132,000 for 9 successive 6's, and USD $50,000 for 6 successive 8's. And that is purely for the phone number. Whether you believe in numerology or not, you are forced to get sucked into the local beliefs because if you want respect from friends and access to business contacts, you have to get a VIP number.

Perhaps it is the luck from my Houston house, or it's the year of the cat (which calls for 12 fortunate months for the pig), God looking out for me, or simple coincidence, my real estate broker had a connection who worked for one of the local carriers but in her home town. After convincing him that it was for a close relative, she was able to secure me a 10-digit combination that has increasing numbers, a number of 9's, and easy to remember. However, to secure this number, I will have to wait 6 days as he's still on vacation for Tet.  Hope it is worth the wait.

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Update March 19, 2011:

I met someone yesterday who had a series of 8s and 9s for his mobile number. When I commented on it, I was told that he spent USD 10,000 for the number. In addition, supposedly he has 3-4 other numbers that he paid for which he doesn't resell as he uses it to let relatives, etc. borrow them when they are in town.