Dead Rabbit

I take horoscopes and other attempts at prediction with a grain of salt, but out of general curiosity and growing interest in Chinese culture, I decided to check out what Chinese astrology had to say about my prospects for the year of the Water Dragon. Somehow, I stumbled upon this website and received a troubling forecast.

The site first gave me my birth chart (click on the image below), which made as much sense to me as hieroglyphics until it was supplemented with this other website. I have strong fire and weak water (whatever that means), which both make for good times with the Dragon.

Top geomancer Joseph Chau, who works with the Mandarin Oriental Hotel as well as with certain local real estate companies and other businesses, also supplied our women's website with these more detailed predictions. According to him, for a good year, I must:

• Work hard
• Maintain stability
• Try not to aim too high
• Be more humble
• Try not to be greedy
• Strengthen my immune system
• Relax more

Now, this sounds like good advice for anyone regardless of their animal sign; that's the main reason I take this stuff with a grain of salt.

The first website, however, gave me a less benign outlook for the long term. Behold, "the rise and fall of your (my) entire life:"

According to this, I have some pretty good years ahead of me, and if I want to have a happy marriage, I ought to get hitched before I turn 30. (My mother would probably agree.) After that, I'd have about 20 years of happy relationships and financial bliss.

Once I turn 50, however, my luck flat-lines. I wonder which of these horrible disasters should befall me then:

• I get cancer.
• I go to prison with a life sentence.
• I get a death sentence.
• I get hit by a car and become a wheelchair-bound vegetable for the rest of my days.
• I lose my mind.
• All my kids die, my husband deserts me, and my assets disappear.
• All my life becomes a sisyphean striving in what should be my golden years.

(In contrast, my friends here at the office are all going to be rich cougars. Maybe one of them will take pity on me and hand me some leftover smoked salmon from the window of her diamond-encrusted BMW.)

My immediate response to this graph was to tell myself, "Just spend life making it good and happy, and maybe you'll avoid most of that bad juju."

Then again, my efforts to make life good might only land me in some Greek tragedy by way of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Either way, it seems useless for me to worry about it now. I'll just enjoy the next 25 years and then see how long I can keep going after that—my approach to life before this stupid graph, anyway.

Gong xi fa cai!