From the Narrow Desert

I live in Taiwan, where the Year of the Rabbit has just begun, and so lots and lots of things I see every day are decorated with rabbits, many of them white. Right now, seeing a white rabbit doesn't even register as a "coincidence"; it's like seeing a reindeer in December. So the sync fairies have to communicate indirectly, through gematria.

Today, I stopped at a traffic light, and the motorcyclist in front of me was wearing a black helmet with a white heart and the word hello, also in white, printed on the back. One of these would have been beneath my notice; two together definitely constitutes a white rabbit sync.

Hearts are typically red, not white. The white heart, combined with the recent syncs related to St. Valentine's Day, reminded me that in Taiwan, under Japanese influence I believe, March 14 is observed as "White Valentine's Day." Women give gifts to men on Valentine's Day, and men give gifts to women on White Valentine's Day, a month later -- or maybe it's the other way around; I can never remember.

In my "Knock, knock, Neo" post, I embedded a YouTube video of the relevant scene from The Matrix. If you click through to the YouTube page, you'll see that the video was posted by a user called TheMatrixFan314 -- 3/14, White Valentine's Day.

White Valentine's Day -- the day before March 15 -- must be the date when Brutus, in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, says, "Is not tomorrow, boy, the Ides of March?" Brutus = Ides of March = 101. Is not tomorrow = 214.

The whole exchange is this:

Look in the calendar, and bring me word = 314.

How did I know that? I don't know, I just have these gematria hunches. At first I misremembered the line as "Look you in the calendar, and bring me word" (a strange mistake to make, since it doesn't scan) and was disappointed to find that the S:E:G: value was too high. Then I thought to delete you, and it came out perfectly. Then I looked up the line and found that you was never there in the first place!

In "Hurry up the cakes" (January 22), I recount running into a picture of a moon landing cake together with a black Special Forces jersey with the number 242 on it. The number 242 was a sync because of the connection to the number mentioned in "The Doors." The moon landing cake was a sync because of a recent comment (also January 22) in which, responding to a picture of the three wise men in a blue desert, WanderingGondola noted the unusual color and (evidently alluding to the expression "blue moon") wrote, "hm, would the moon's surface be classified as desert?" Well, either a desert or a dessert.

In "'The Open Doors' syncs" (January 26), I encounter a reference to the song "Blue Moon" on page 242 of a book called Revelations. I note that, since the S:E:G value of revelation is 121, the number 242 represents two revelations.

Today I had lunch at a cheap dumpling chain called 八方雲集. The name is a four-character idiom meaning "gathering from all over" -- literally "clouds gathering from the eight directions," referring to the the cardinal and intercardinal points of the compass. It occurred to me that eight directions in two dimensions was an instance of a more general rule: in an n-dimensional space, there will be a total of 3ⁿ - 1 cardinal and intercardinal directions. For three dimensions, the number is 26; for four dimensions, it is 80; for five dimensions, it is 242.

There's an election coming soon in Taiwan, and while I was out randonauting yesterday I passed many campaign posters. In order to make voting more convenient for illiterate people (really!), each candidate is assigned a number. For almost the entirety of my ramble, the only ads I saw were for candidates number 6 and 8. I took note of this because those two numbers have been synchronistically relevant of late, and because for some reason both candidates included the same English word, super, on their billboards.

I just kept seeing 6 and 8, 6 and 8, again and again. Finally, right at the end, I caught a glimpse of some different candidate numbers in the distance.

It's not an ad for an individual candidate, but for the ruling (anti-China, pro-globohomo) Democratic Progressive Party. It features three of their candidates who are running for different positions, which is what makes it possible for two of them to have the same number. At the bottom of the billboard is a reminder to vote yes in the referendum to give 18-year-olds the vote

This last one isn't about 242, but I'm just going to tack it on here. It's a striking enough coincidence to post about, but not striking enough to get a post of its own.

I passed a seafood wholesaler that has two huge crab sculptures on the exterior wall. Seconds later, I stopped at a red light and saw a couple of bumper stickers that made me snap a photo and then turn around and photograph the seafood shop, too.

These are the stickers:

The Chinese reads 陸蟹出沒減速慢行, "land crab area, slow down." KTNP is Kenting National Park, in a part of Taiwan quite far from where I live. When I searched for the Chinese to try to get clear images of the stickers, the first result was this.

That says "101T Kenting," then the text of the sign, and then the photographer's name. I haven't been able to find out what "101T" means in this context, but in my February 11 post "Green Door 101," I noted that the S:E:G value of Cancer the Crab is 101.

Here's the seafood place, maybe 200 meters from where I saw the crab-sticker car. Like the car, it features two different crab species, one on the left and one of the right.

I guess there is a 242 connection after all, since the S:E:G: for crab is 24. Two crabs would be 24 × 2.

Note added: This post sent me to YouTube to rewatch the Onion classic "Experts Agree, Giant, Bioengineered Crabs Pose No Threat." This showed up in the sidebar: