When I was a kid, I was told a lot of superstitions aka pantang larang. 'Pantang' means absolutely cannot and 'larang' means not allowed. Did I get that right? Gosh, my Malay is so bad.
But some of my superstitions might be wrongly understood la hehe. These are the ones I grew up with.
1.There is something called ketulahan here, and it basically means jinxing. Ok, I believe this superstition very much ok! Last year, a friend of mine was bragging that he had never failed a biology exam, and the next exam, he failed. Something similar to this is called 'keapunan' (did I spell that right?). If you want to eat something but can't, you have to at least have a teensy bit (like swiping your finger on the rim of the rice cooker if you can't eat rice). If you don't, something bad will happen to you like getting bitten by ants or falling down.
2. Young unmarried girls must not sing while cooking because if they do, they will get married to an old man. I think this superstition exists because people are scared that spit will get into the food, right? Or maybe old men are attracted to the voices because their eyesight aren't good anymore haha.
3. People should not sit on pillows, or they will get warts (?) on their butts. Its not warts exactly but I don't know what it is called in English. Truth be told, I'm not sure what its called in Malay either. I think this superstition exists because parents want their children not to sit on their pretty cushions. Since children in the olden days always play around in dirt and rivers, their butts would be very dirty and if they sit on it, and then at night, they sleep on it, its quite dirty right? So, parents made it up lol.
3A. Number 4 is bad luck because in chinese, the pronunciation is similar to death. Which is unfortunate for me cause I was born on the fourth day of October so I always get 04 as a number when I have m class T-shirt made. Apparently in Korea, its the same thing. 'Sa' is four in korean which also means death.
5. If you accidentally bit your tongue or the insides of your cheeks, someone, somewhere, is talking crap about you. This isn't something that I really believe, but whenever I do bite my tongue, I always think, WHO IS IT?! *shifty eyed
6.If you make an animal suffer, the weather will turn bad. I found out about this when I was keeping a pet grasshopper when I was very young and I had to break his legs so he couldn't get away. Cruel, I know. As I was about to do the dirty deed, my brother stopped me, saying he wanted to go jogging lol.
Since that day, I've always been careful on how I treat animals. Yeah, not cause of animal abuse awareness or anything, but a superstition!
7. This one is scary!!! On saturday's, my cousins and I were never allowed to play hide and seek or go around at night because spirit's might kidnap us. Usually our conversations would go like this.
"What are we going to do today? Let's play hide and seek?? Awww, its saturday right actually.... Nevermind, let's just play in the room."
How scary would it be to be waiting in your hiding place and you look behind and.... ahhhh, its so stressful just thinking about it!
8. Just like how 4 is a bad luck number, 8 is a good luck number! 8 in chinese is ba and it has the same meaning as wealth or prosper. So, when you buy lottery tickets, make sure to have 8 somewhere in there lol.
I have no eights in my birthday, nor any eights in my name haiya... now I can't rely on destiny and fate to make me rich! *pout
Well, that's all the superstition I can think of now. Western superstitions like don't walk under a ladder and don't open an umbrella inside or don't step on cracks aren't really thought of around here. But there's one that piqued my interest, which is when a couple gets married, the groom isn't allowed to see the bride in her dress before the wedding day. Its a special, peculiar superstition to me and I really like the idea of it!
