Reading ‘plaka’

More than for counting, numbers have come in handy for humans to deal with life’s many uncertainties. By giving magical meanings to numbers, humans are able to gain some semblance of control over life, and our peril-laden environment.

Take that iconic medicinal plant preparation “pito-pito” as an example. Sold in Quiapo, it’s a combination of seven leaves of seven plants, and is a cure-all of sorts. It could have been six leaves of six plants but anim-anim does not resonate for Filipinos; in fact, for some, it might trigger some negative emotions because some Christians associate “666” with Satan.

Seven is a magical auspicious number in many cultures. So is three, reinforced among some Christians because of the association with the Trinity.

The Chinese are obsessed with numbers, with magical attributes based on its sound. Thus the number four is feared because in many Chinese dialects, the sound for that number is the same as the word for death.

Numbers have always been magical for the Chinese but I suspect it was the Cantonese, especially business people in Hong Kong, who went manic with the numbers. In Cantonese, eight is pronounced “fat”, which is also the sound for the word “to produce”. So a number like 888 becomes a mantra, “fat, fat, fat, produce, produce, produce.” Produce what? Good luck, and wealth. Not content with “8,” the Cantonese came up with 168, whose pronunciation means “the road to productivity/prosperity.”

The Chinese preference for certain numbers has spilled over into a market for so-called lucky cellphone numbers, and Filipinos have picked up on this too. Walk around Greenhills, where you have the largest number of cellphone vendors, and you’ll see many of them offering “special numbers,” with price ranging from P100-P5,000, some chosen for magical qualities, others just so it’s easy to remember, for example, your birthday or birth year.

Social status

Besides being bestowed with magical symbolism, numbers have found a new function in modern society: they carry status, and this is why they’re called vanity numbers.

This vanity aspect has ancient roots, as in the idea of being “number one.” One may be a tiny number yet an extra special number. It’s not just being number one as the Big Man, but being number one, the only one as in love and marriage.

Ancient as the origins might be for vanity numbers, they’ve been brought to new heights in our modern times, people willing to pay large sums for vanity cellphone numbers…and, at last, we get to the main topic of my column today, for license plate (plaka) numbers.

If special and magical numbers are available for cellphones, you can get them as well for license plates. Hong Kong probably tops them all catering to this cultural quirk, with a system where you can request a special license plate with a minimum reserve bid of HK$5,000 (P32,000), to have the requested license plate going into a public auction.

The Hong Kong license plates can be letters or numbers and the “vanity letters” can be your personal initials, or other combinations thereof. One plate that went through the auction, for an undisclosed amount, was “GOD.” The highest paid amount for a Hong Kong license plate went of course to numbers, a simple “18” that went for an un-simple amount of HK$16.5 million, that converts to, hold your breath, P106.3 million.

It’s nice to know that at least the proceeds of these Hong Kong auctions go to programs to alleviate poverty.

In the Philippines, you can request a license plate with a particular last digit, meant for the rich who can afford many cars to use throughout the week, evading the number coding scheme. Beyond that last digit, I remember being told you could request for a special combination of letters and numbers but I could not find the information on the Land and Transportation Office (LTO) site.

Definitely though, I do know that many years ago and maybe even today, if you had connections within the LTO you could get special letters (again initials) and numbers. You can guess they’re vanity numbers if they’re repeated like 111 or, again, 888 although I tell my Tsinoy (Chinese-Filipino) friends that number can be malas (bad luck) because it attracts kidnappers targeting the Tsinoy.

How can we forget, too, our government officials’ license plates, from the presidential 1, to the senatorial 8 (wow, 8 again) to the congressional 16 and so on.

Gods and mortals

My point is that these special numbers may not necessarily be sought after just for magic. Instead, it’s vanity and status, a way of saying you have power, or at least connections to the powerful and a warning: “God is here so step aside, you mere mortals.”

Only in the Philippines have we come up with still another twist to status symbols. Since numbers seem hard to come by, we now see a proliferation of license plates that pretend they’re from overseas. You can buy a plate that has the European Union symbol, stars in a circle with a letter in the middle. The most popular seems to be “D,” which suggests your car was imported from Germany (Deutschland). For this faux EU plate, you put your real Philippine license plate over it with just the European Union symbol visible.

Others are bolder, having custom-made plates with your real Philippine registered number embossed into a plate that looks like it’s from Japan, down to the city or provincial identifying code. The first time I saw one I said, wow, this guy once lived in Tokyo and brought his car home.

But teka, teka, wait, wait, I realized, the car he was driving was a mere xxx (I’m censoring the brand so I won’t cause anyone an inferiority complex)—those cars aren’t even distributed in Japan and if it is, why would you want to bring it home?

Asking around, I learned you can have all kinds of plates made to make it look like your car came from overseas, Europe, Japan, whatever.

The numbers still count. It’s double prestige to have a plate suggesting your car came in from Germany, and to have the 888.

Still another cultural angle: This proliferation of custom-made plates came after LTO began to have problems providing license plates so all this reflects the way how Filipinos, confronted with a tough problem, will find a way (hahanap ng paraan) and laugh about it all.

Why don’t we auction special numbers so LTO can have enough funds to produce good license plates (and drivers’ licenses)?

If we could award a prize to the best of these custom-made license plates, it is one which I spotted some weeks ago: the number was unimpressive but beneath it, instead of “Matatag na Republic” (Strong Republic, dating back to the Ramos presidency), it read: “Republikang Walang Plaka” (Republic Without License Plates).

E-mail: mtan@inquirer.com.ph