Dogma and Thai Astrology

I GRADUATED in 1985 and enrolled at an architectural college, and later on for an engineering degree, but after having failed miserably on all subjects related to numbers, formulas and equations, I dropped out without batting an eyelash. I decided to take up political science instead. I attended night classes and usually impressed the faculty and won debates on dogmatic political doctrines. But I was usually a loser when it comes to pocket money so I thought of getting a daytime job and asked help from, who else, Dad.

Dad’s one-armed Yankee friend, Sprout, who loved horses, also loved Thai women and I learned that his Thai wife owned a small restaurant and an astrology reading shop near the century-old parish church downtown. The Yankee hired me for a daytime job to help his wife manage a Thai eatery that I—and any guzzler would do—eventually turned into a trendy Thai-inspired waterhole. The astrology-reading wife, perhaps guided by the stars, regarded me as heaven-sent because I bring some of my cute girlfriends to the Thai bar after school and, in turn, these girls also bring along their boozer friends and make the cash register incessantly ring and the astrologer’s stars blink with delight.