1. Hilary Clinton will be the next US President. When she sees a rat, she will scream with tears in her eyes. Women will give her their votes because they also scream when they see a rat. Men will also give her their votes because they want to protect the fair sex.
2. Oil prices will reach $120 a barrel - because the rats steal too much oil making the supply tight.
3. The world economy will be gloomy - more people will be as poor as a church mouse.
4. There will be serious earth quakes as the rats are more active underground disturbing the earth.
5. There will be more break-in because of the more activities of rats (Chinese call thieves "rats") .
JY
3 comments:
Dear Joseph,
You are joking, right?
We can use the theme of Rat in many ways.
Just for the sake of exercise, here are some different interpretations:
1) Hillary will not be elected. After seeing Hillary scream as soon as a Rat is spotted, people will decide it is better to vote for a man who can kill the Rat, or at least keep it out of their kitchen. Killing or catching Rats is not considered a woman's job.
2) Yes, Rats steal the oil, but they sell it on the market to pocket big profits. That drives the oil prices down to $60 per barrel.
3) The world economy is gloomy already, and many people are deep in debts. That's not news. The news is that in Rat year the people will become more pragmatic and practical in order to get out of the dire straits. By the time Rat year ends the economic outlook will be much better than it is now.
4) Earth Rat is the picture of a Rat and water under the ground. But I don't think that will give exceptional earthquakes. I am looking for unusual news around: tunnels, metro tubes, caves, sewage pipes, dikes giving in, accidents in mines,...
Also news of ground sinking away in cities because of leaking water pipes underneath..
Issues and broad discussion about our use and depletion of underground drinking water reserves.
5) The Rat under the ground is the picture of a Rat that is not out stealing. So there will be less robbery and thieves. This Rat is controlled by the Earth above it, so it won't misbehave.
Dear Danny
Of course it is a joke. But the bigger joke is that most people take annual forecasts seriously.
In Hong Kong, a financial corporation assembles ideas from several leading astrologers and creates a chart to predict the stock market for the coming year. The first couple of years were quite successful with the chart resembling the Hang Seng Index chart very closely. In 1996, the prediction was totally off. The editor explained, "It is because the mouse was naughty."
JY
Yes, I wanted to make sure people can see it is a joke.
Whatever happens this year, we will always find a story to blame it on the poor Rat.
There is no harm in trying to make predictions, but it is important that people don't take it too serious and certainly not bet the bank on it.
Some predictions are almost guaranteed to come true.
For example our prediction about oil prices. It may turn out we will both be right. Maybe it will first go up to $120, then fall back to $60 (or vice versa). Who knows?
Then at the end of the year we can both come out and tell the audience what a good prediction we did about oil prices. While in fact our predictions were exactly opposite.
I see a lot of that type predictions being done by all kind of "masters".
When the prediction works out they pat themselves on the back about it,what a great master they are.
If the prediction doesn't work, then they are clever to find good looking excuses.
The people should not let themselves be fooled by "predictions" so easily.
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