Valentino, gym and sharp objects: What's in store for Year of the Snake

Horoscopes can amuse, assure and inform. But maybe it's best not to take them literally.

- Lim Ai Leen

My usual visit to Kuala Lumpur for Chinese New Year got off to a cackling start when my mother asked me to read aloud her horoscope in the local paper.

She wanted to know what the Year of the Snake held in store for her as someone born in 1938, the Year of the Tiger. A literal tiger mum, though not a metaphorical one.

The first few lines about wealth and career contained bland advice straight out of self-help books: Leverage collaborations to align with your goals. Build strong connections for future success.

But we struck comedy gold in the section on relationships.

"As Valentino of the year... you may attract many admirers. While love this year seems like a glittering mirage, it will certainly be a fun ride..."

Equally amusing was the warning in the health section that my mum, soon to be 87 years old, may overeat during the festivities and will need to "dust off that unused gym membership" to shed the extra pounds. She eats like a bird and wears XS-sized clothes that hang loosely off her bony frame, but how would the feng shui master know that?

For the uninitiated, there are 12 Chinese zodiac signs, each represented by an animal that reigns for the Chinese calendar year. So there's this neat party trick you can perform if you're good at mental arithmetic - tell a person's age by which zodiac animal they are. So, someone who's a Snake will turn 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 72, 84 or 96 this year. It's fun when people are just 12 years younger or older than you. Not so fun if you meet another Dog and calculate he's 36 years younger than your husband.

These zodiac animals also supposedly influence what kind of person you are. Dragons, for example, are said to be charismatic, intelligent, confident, powerful and naturally lucky and gifted, hence the baby boom last year, a Dragon year.