Gong Xi Fa Chai!

Yes I know Chinese (and Vietnamese, etc.) New Year was yesterday, but I was hoping to catch the lion dancers who were performing today in Brussels' tiny Chinatown. However, they did it at lunchtime and I was busy lunching with Cat Lady - even if it is the year of the Dog! I might catch them later in the week in Antwerp, if I get around to going there.

The year of the dog is supposed to be a good year for me, a horse. I hope it is a healthy and happy year for everyone.

Cat Lady recently attended a seminar organised by an organisation called Les Portes sur les Mondes (gateways to worlds) on how physical and mental conditions that a person develops have their origin in the parents' situation at the time of conception and even before, e.g. - don't ask me why - 18 months before your birth. In one sense this doesn't seem impossible, certainly the way my parents treated me derives in large part from the way they were treated by their own parents, which in turn derives from the way they were treated by my grand-parents; and I can well believe that how you are treated has an impact on your later physical health. However I am not sure how when you get ill and what illnesses you develop could result from challenges faced by our own parents, and indeed theirs. It will be interesting when my friend progresses from the stage of "decoding" an existing situation onto "deprogramming" or stopping the cycle from repeating itself.

Talking of cycles, she also mentioned a theory that one's life is divided into cycles that depend on when you first became financially independent from your parents - so if it was 20, you have 20-year cycles. In my case that would be 18, and it is true that my 36th year was a significant one. However, I will reserve judgment on the theory until I know what happens in my 54th!