Elevators

 

This is one of the elevators in our building.  It is about the same as other elevators I've ridden in (except for the attractive young lady riding in it):  the doors open and close, it goes up and down.  There are a couple of idiosyncrasies that I haven't encountered  before.
You will notice that there are no 4s anywhere on the control panel - no 4th floor, 14th floor, ..., or any floors in the 40s.  In Chinese the word for 4 and the word for death are very similar.  4 is bad luck.  In western culture 13 is also bad luck.  I don't know why they skipped the 3rd floor.  Maybe they were just in a groove.  Our apartment is on floor #19, but it's really only 15 stories in the air.
The elevator also has a pretty cool security feature.  You can get on at any floor and go down to the lobby or the basements without a problem.  But it won't go up without your apartment key, which is attached to a card with a chip in it.
When you press it against the black box at the top of the panel it gets scanned and takes you to your floor, and only to your floor.  So when we want to visit the other Sr missionaries living here, we both ride down to the lobby to meet up and then go back up to our destination.







Comments

  1. Chris November 4, 2023 at 11:41 AM

    Here in Paraguay our elevator is a little different as well. What we in the US call the 1st floor or Lobby is Parabajo and then the second floor is 1 and so one. The top floor is A and not sure what that stands for but probably Alto or Arriba is my guess.
    The MTC cards prepared you for Indonesia right? Miss you guys.

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