Numerology and A Working Vacation

Today I want to write about numerology. As you may remember we moved into a complex that has a hotel tower and an apartment tower. There was to be a "nicer" apartment available in a few days that we could move into. But we were also told then - three weeks ago- that we would have to move to a hotel unit on Nov. 11 and 12. We tended to dismiss this latter. Surely someone would cancel, etc. Meanwhile we continued to live in 1881 and occasionally they showed us a different unit to see if we would like to move. Note that they all have the same layout, but are decorated slightly differently. Finally we saw a unit worth the hassle of moving - unit 2082. We noted a few things we wanted fixed before we moved and we planned to move several days hence. But alas, they found a water leak so another week went by. Then we were told that indeed we would have to move to a hotel unit for the weekend, but when we moved back to the apartment tower we would go into 2082.
As you might imagine none of this made us very happy. So yesterday we packed up and moved to the hotel. It took the bellboy two trips with a full cart and this all fell on me as Tom was working. I will say that they gave us a vey nice room in the hotel and, after asking, vouchers for the breakfast buffet. They also moved in a full size refrigerator as I had frozen and perishable foods in my apartment. But until yesterday I didn't understand that the reason we had to move is that the date was 11-11-11 and that is considered a lucky day to get married by both the Chinese and Muslim communities (for different reasons). The hotel is hosting wedding parties for four different weddings so of course it makes sense that they would have booked well in advance.
We are learning a bit about Chinese numerology. Nine for example is a lucky number. One of our favorite restaurants is the "3.6.9 cafe". You will note that 3+ 6=9 and 9+9=18 which also means that 1+8=9. Interesting. Also the towers here don't have a floor 4. 4 is an unlucky number because it sounds like death. A friend says that the floors in her building have 3, 3A, 5, 6, etc.
This move would have been far worse if we had moved to 2082, then had to move here for the weekend, and then back. At least I only had to pack up once and the staff has been very helpful, although we have had to pry the details out of them. We decided to treat ourselves and eat at the very nice rooftop restaurant, City lights. It's outside on the 21st floor. The night was spectacular with clear skies, a full moon, a perfect temperature, and a slight breeze. The rains of the past few days had washed everything clean and the city sparkled all around us. A magical night.

On another topic, we are going on a working vacation. The day after Thanksgiving, for which we have been invited to the consul general's residence, we will travel to yogyakarta for two weeks of language training. Known to everyone as Jogja, it is supposed to be a wonderful city. It's been referred to as the soul of Indonesia. It has decent weather and interesting history and politics and is near Borobudur which is a " must see"sight. Although Indonesia is a democracy, Jogja is ruled by a hereditary sultan. And that is the people's choice. He is much loved. His daughter got married last month and the festivities rivalled will and Kate. Of course the down side is that we will have intensive language training. As best we can figure out, it will be tutorial rather than classroom based. I'm sure, especially at our ages, that it will be exhausting.
One last note. I spent most of last weekend updating my iPad with the new operating system, iOS5. Other than the time it took, it mostly went well. The one problem relates to this blog. I got a message that I would have to re-link my photos and YouTube to the blog site. I do this through google, but google insists on communicating with me in indonesian rather than English (on this issue only) so i can't understand the instructions. All my other interactions with google are in English and my preferences are clear in my settings so I don't know why this is happening. The result is that once again, I don't have access to my photos. It's something I will be working on. You might surmise correctly that we got the broadband issues mainly solved. We bought an external modem and the highest data transmission package available. It works fine but we have to manually reboot it every morning.
Anne