Hayward embraces feng shui

Hayward was the city I first stayed in, when I first relocated to California for work, it was a quiet suburban-like place and it had it's charms. There's so much that I miss.

A recent piece of news off the tabloids ~
Developers in the California city of Hayward are citing feng shui as one reason for wanting a new system of home address numbering.

Since the 1950s, the county of Alameda, which includes Hayward and cities like Berkeley and Oakland in San Francisco's Bay Area, has assigned numbers based on how far the homes are from downtown Oakland.

This puts five digits to many adresses and increases the odds that a home will carry a number considered unlucky by feng shui practitioners, reported AP.

Last week, city council members agreed to let the builders of an upscale housing development use fewer digits.

The builders cited convenience concerns as well as the potential for violating feng shui precepts, said city officials.

But there are more down-to-earth reasons, too.

The new development's spokesman said that the request had more to do with getting numbers that everyone could remember, rather than any particular philosophy.

And, added city official Sylvia Ehrenthal: ''Addresses with one or two numbers or three numbers seem a little classier.''

Anyhoo, here's wishing you good feng shui for the year ahead and best of luck.