Happy New Year to All and Happy Birthday to You

Yesterday, Feb, 7, 2008, is Chinese New Year's day.

And today, Feb 8, is a speicial birthday as well, not mine.

8 is a good number in Chinese culture. Olympic will start on 080808, so the best of the best, full of prosperity.

02082008, that is a very elegant number, and a good one. It will be a good year for people who are born in this day.

This year is the year of earthy Rat, energetic, on the move, a promising new start.

For us Chinese, time passes in cycles, with 12 astrological signs, each paired with five different elements (metal, wood, water, fire, earth), so every sixty years, a new full cycle begins.

So 2008 is the first year of a new sixty-year-cycle, the Earth Rat Year is an excellent opportunity for a new start. So they say.

The way this works, you always believe in reincarnation of sort, you believe that things come and goes, luck up and downs, fortune reverses, in this way of thinking and living, it is easier to trust in hope.

So Chinese people in essence, is an optimistic bunch.

The nation is thrilled of having the Olympics in this year and planned a first Space Walk. Eastern promise is full of innocence and appropriate superstition.

This day I have my first ever plant bloom to flowers, with more on the way. The timing can not be more perfect and I can not be more spell-bounded with new year forecast and outlook, even if some of the plans I have already knew and made, changes, travels, to simple and earthy life, to reach my own inner voice, taking actions, trying new things, connecting.

So I have been reading astrological forecast. There are decent ones out there; I guess those are not free. Free ones, suck, try this:

"You look all set to lose some of your belongings this year including your mobile phone, wallet or keys. Forewarned is forearmed. While you may not be able to avoid all the bad luck that looks set to come your way, you should take steps to minimize the loss by carrying minimal amount of money in your wallet, keeping a spare set of keys in a safe place and making a duplicate set of phone numbers. "

Thank you very much!

It is cheating to forecast one will lose these small items that one carry around daily, and have the highest likelihood to get lost. Try forecast that I will lose my plasma TV or Roland keyboard. That is more respectable.

Who are these people writing these content, maybe they are the same who wrote fortune cookies, I bet they are not even Chinese.

I am worried about my belongings, just as well. I don't want to lose anything that is the point, especially not my heart, as if, I have got it back.

But, all the quality ones and non-quality ones--those forecast, seem to say, consistently, this year, people with metals signs will do better than other signs. Some how, metal works well on the earthy years.

We are the people of metal dog and metal pig, so we should be optimistic.

Yes, the date of Feb 8, from when it become meaningful to me.

Every year, Jan and Feb are busy months for me, mentally and emotionally, my own birthday end of Jan, birthday of someone I have loved, and Chinese New Year in between or around, my birthday again following that, being the fifth day of the new year on the lunar calendar, Valentines’day soon after, when the whole city is lighted in red, in my favorite color of passion.

It is time of awe and longing and anxiety of gaining another circle.

And it just came to my realization yesterday, while I was walking around in the empty park of central, taking my day off celebrating the first day of the lunar new year of Rat, that, in a week out of a year, he and I are of the same age, when I catch up with him for about 8 days.

You remember these things. You just do. Happy birthday, my love from the year of Metal dog.

Happy New Year of the earthy Rat to everyone! And make duplicate set of keys, always.