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Published: March 3rd 2006
BBA's 3kg turtle
Here's number 66. Hey Sally!
Ok, so the deal with the turtle in those photos...
3 days ago was the birthday of a (my very bad, literal translation here)
local earth god? Earth as in land, dirt; god not as in all supreme being but more like a secondary god who has influence locally. So for good luck and prosperity, you're supposed to go to his temple (in Chinese it sounds like "Meow") and light incense and donate money and buy a sweet rice turtle?
Hey. I'm not making this stuff up.
That morning BBA had called in to purchase a turtle. I'm thinkin the original idea is that you have to show up in person to arrange for this but old people these days...
And along with the turtle you're supposed to write a little message on a piece of paper and pick a lucky number. BBA's message was something like "keep everyone safe for the upcoming year, make us prosperous, etc".
And there's something about after you pick a number you have to ask the earth god if that's ok by tossing these half moon things? (This part I'm kinda murky on). Anyhow, if he says
no, you have to pick another number.
The number BBA picked was 66. Apparently 4 is not even in the pool and neither is 44. I'm guessing 88, and 99 went out pretty quick.
BBA's turtle was 3kg (6.6 lb). The biggest turtle there was co-sponsored by 2 stores in the neighborhood. They picked number 1 and got it, and their turtle was 50 kg (110 lbs)!
Imagine how many non-diabetic people you can feed with 110 pounds of sticky rice!
So that's the story with the turtles. And outside of the Meow was a sponsored puppet show being put on from the inside of a truckbed. I remember watching those on tv when I was a kid and found them entertaining, but I guess that's totally old school now. No one was watching it that night. I took some photos but none came out well.
Oh the lighting!
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Wendy
non-member comment
The heck is a BBA?
the half moon thingy you're talking about works like this. You ask a yes or no question, you throw the half moon thiny. If the half moon lands one facing up and one facing down then the answer is yes. If both faces the same direction then the answer is no. So you ask a different question until you get an yes.