My wife’s father is a fortune teller,

actually a star-reader, though he has recently branched out into what the Thais call ‘Gypsy’ cards, i.e. ‘Tarot’ cards. Hey, you gotta’ stay current in your field. I can remember the first time a Thai traditional massage parlor started offering the foot Reflexology that a Farang taught them. Now, not only do they all have it, but it’s getting hard to find the original back-cracking style. That’s demographics, I guess for aging populations. Of course, the footsie style now claims Thai ancestry, as logic seeks holes to fill. Closer to home, the wooden croaking frog that I brought from Vietnam to mass-produce in Thailand, now not only takes bows for Thai ingenuity, but is also found in Indonesia, Peru, and Bolivia, at least. All of them are traceable to ‘friends’ of mine in the world handicrafts industry looking for a piece of the action. Such is evolution. But I digress. The first time Tang’s father read my stars, he warned me against getting involved with a Thai woman, assuring me that there was a 50-year-old Farang woman who was a potential ‘sponsor’. He was probably right. I should get him the Crowley deck of Tarot cards; that’ll wow ‘em in the Honglee district of ChiangRai. Every time anything important is in the works, Tang’s parents want to check the stars first. That’s cool, I guess, but that sort of determinism can hold you back, also.

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