Stargazing in the year just gone: How the pundits fared

By S TSOW
Published on January 6, 2010

(CAAI News Media)

AS A CYNIC and a curmudgeon, I've always been sceptical about astrology. At the turn of every year, astrologers make predictions for the coming year. Sometimes I clip these predictions from the newspapers, and at the end of the following year I review them to see which ones came true.

The astrologers didn't do too badly in their predictions for 2009. But some of them did better than others. One of the ones who didn't do so well was astrologer-cum feng shui master Raymond Lo, of Hong Kong. In a Deutsche Press Agentur news item dated January 24, 2009, Lo predicted that because 2009 was an Earth Ox year, it would bring "more stability … a time of meditation and rebuilding". Stock markets would become "more stable and calm", and "there should be no conflict".

Well, unless my memory fails me, the markets were fairly unstable in 2009, although not so volatile as in 2008. But … no conflict? What about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the diplomatic standoff over the Iranian and North Korean nuclear projects, and the struggle to hammer out a climate-change agreement in Copenhagen? We had plenty of conflicts right here in Thailand between the government and the red shirts, not to mention the Thai-Cambodian spats over Preah Vihear and the chumminess between Thaksin Shinawatra and Hun Sen. Maybe Lo meant that there would be no conflicts in Hong Kong. He was disarmingly vague about what kind of conflict he was talking about.

So far as 2009 being a good time for meditation goes, any time is a good time for meditation if you just unplug yourself from twittering and Facebooking and listen for your Inner Tweet.

Other Chinese astrologers predicted trouble for US President Obama, partly on the grounds that he's the nation's 44th president, and in Mandarin Chinese the number four is pronounced the same as the word for death. This superstition has always irritated me, because although both words are pronounced the same, the tones are different and the written characters are different. That makes them different words. And even if they were the same, so what? But it's still early days for Obama, so the jury is still out on this one.

Thai astrologers seem to have done better than their Chinese counterparts. "If you think the airport closures and mobs were bad, then next year [2009] will be worse," predicted Paweena Vasanareungsuk, a graduate of the Hamburg School of Astrology, in the DailyXpress on December 29, 2008. "Prime Minister Abhisit will face the most exhausting mission in his life. There will be things happening to him that he can't possibly control."

Considering the riots during Songkran in Bangkok, the disruption and cancellation of the Asean summit in Pattaya, and the attack on PM Abhisit's car, in which he could have lost his life, that prediction was a home run for Paweena.

Unfortunately, she blotted her copybook in a sidebar that prescribed remedies for ailments likely to afflict people born under different signs of the zodiac. I'm an Aries, and Paweena diagnosed Arians as being susceptible to headache, migraines, colds, and sinus problems. To counter these, she recommended carrot juice and camomile herbal tea.

Well, hey. I don't have problems with migraines, colds, or my sinuses, and the only time I get headaches is when somebody tells me to drink carrot juice and camomile tea. I'm a guy. Guys don't drink carrot juice and camomile tea. Guys drink beer. My beer-drinking buddies all assure me that drinking beer is what keeps those migraines, colds, and sinus problems away.

In sum, I have to give Paweena an A for her political predictions and an F for her health prescriptions. Camomile tea! Sheesh.

Another Thai fortune-teller, Phanuwat Phanwichartkul, warned in the same issue of the Daily Xpress that the government would face major problems in April, possibly even bloodshed, if new elections weren't held. His focus on April was right on target, because that's when we had the Songkran riots, the Asean debacle, and the assault on Abhisit. One astrologer, Kornharis Buasuang, predicted that Abhisit's government would last its full four-year term if it managed to get through September. For that we have to stay tuned.

Both Phanuwat and Kornharis warned of "terrorism and natural disasters, especially earthquakes", in 2009. Those are always safe bets. In southern Thailand alone we had plenty of terrorism, and there were earthquakes in Italy, Indonesia and Samoa. One problem with astrologers' predictions, though, is that they tend to be maddeningly unspecific. We'd like to know exactly where those acts of terrorism and those earthquakes are going to occur. We'd also like to know exactly what natural disasters to expect. The devastating fires in southern Australia and the typhoons that ripped through Taiwan and the Philippines might have rated a mention.

In general, the Thai astrologers did better than the Chinese ones. Maybe they study different stars. Or maybe it's because they're looking at them from different angles. I was impressed despite myself by the accuracy of the astrologers who predicted problems for Abhisit, and especially when they targeted April as a critical month. But when predicting acts of terrorism and natural disasters, let's have more specifics next time, please - and don't anybody ever tell me to drink carrot juice and camomile tea.