What’s up everybody? I hope you know that this is just a informal greeting.
It’s Monday. We are all back to our normal work, school or what have you. And today is a special day in China because the number of the month and date is homophonic to “I love you” in Chinese. There are many other numbers or the combinations of numbers that our people related to some meanings in a similar way.
But today, I’d like to share a small story of a different way of playing with numbers. As I exercised often, I thought as I could improve and maintain my physical strength. Then why can’t I train my brain in a way so that I can improve my brain power? So I decided one way to do this is to recite something difficult to remember, such as numbers. More specifically, I started reciting Pi. You know, the 3.14159265358979 …. Anyway, you get my point.
I found that I could organize the numbers by the U.S. telephone number format. i.e., every section of 10 digits is equivalent to a phone number. And if I remember 10 of those strings of numbers, that would be 100 digits of Pi. So I went on every morning when I got to the office, recite a few new strings and reviewed all previous ones. Before long I could remember 200 digits of Pi.
One day I need to get a special type of batteries that was the same size as the AAA but with 12V voltage for a type of monitoring sensor. This kind of battery had a 16 digits serial code, and can only be bought from some specialty stores. I wrote down the code on a piece of paper and went to a specialty store to buy it. As I wrote down the numbers, I thought this was easier than those Pi numbers, it only had 16 numbers and an interesting pattern.
I walked into the electronic store and talked to a tall and young store clerk. It was an afternoon, he was just sitting there and probably getting bored. After I described the battery, he went to a computer and asked me, “do you have the code?”
He needed the code to search it for me. And then I realized that when I got off my car and walked into the store, I had forgotten the paper in my car. It would be a long walk back to my car to retrieve it. So I told the clerk, “Would you try this number?” and I recited the 16 digits code to him.
And whala! The batter showed up on his screen. The young guy looked at me with a drooping face, and said, “So, what are you, a freak’n computer?”
Enjoy you week! Cheers!
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