I apologise for being a little lax with the blogs this month, but I have been on holiday and have found it difficult to keep on top of things. Hopefully I will get things back on track shortly, but for today I will simply post a small observation. Granted, this observation has nothing to do with languages as such, but is based on a different culture, which I guess falls very slightly within the hazy lines of this blog. Well it does now anyway.
In Thailand many people visit fortune tellers to discover what awaits them in their lives. You would be hard pushed not to find someone who has at least visited a monk and asked for a brief outline of his own destiny. Many people visit fortune tellers often; some as often as every month.
Now while I do not personally believe in fortune telling of any description, I know many people that do, and I have no problem with the belief that someone can predict the future through cards, the palm of your hand, tea leaves, or pig entrails. Really I don’t. What I do have a problem with, well more of an exasperated confusion, is the frequency with which one visits a fortune teller.
I have asked this question of many people and never received an acceptable answer: Does the fortune teller (or different fortune tellers) tell you the same future each time you go, or does he tell you different each time?
To me this question is hugely important. If he gives the same future each time then there can surely be no point going to see a fortune teller each month. If he / they give different versions of the future then why is this? Does the future change as you take different paths or make different decisions? Again if this is the case then surely a fortune teller is redundant as the future is not fixed.
I guess the only purpose of seeing a different fortune teller is to get a second opinion if you did not like what the first one told you. I am sure you can keep going until you find one that you do like.
Okay I must admit some people do visit fortune tellers with specific questions about business or relationships that they want answering, but the majority of Thai people that I have met just want to find out if they will be rich and how many kids they will have. Now surely one time is enough for that.
Of course the problem with the specific questions is that you run the risk of creating self-fulfilling prophecies, and hence the fortune teller will undoubtedly be right. But that is for a different blog 
Excuse the slight tangent from the usual today, but as they say “variety is the spice of life”. But variety that has been predicted already must not be very spicy at all.
