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SCMP Reporter

IN 1993, Michael Jackson will die mysteriously, possibly in prison. AIDS will be eradicated by a vaccine discovered at the end of the year.

  Deng Xiaoping will die, Li Peng will disappear and Zhao Ziyang will be back in politics. The world will be free of major natural disasters (unless you count the death of Michael Jackson, presumably).

  These are the predictions of Nallur Dasan, an astrologer of Portland Street, Kowloon.

  There are always a lot of forecasters around at the beginning of a new year.

  On February 1 last year in this newspaper, fung shui expert Henry C.Y. Lee made a prediction for 1992: ''The Year of the Monkey will be a year of stability for the territory . . . Faith in the future will gradually become stronger.''   Hmm. Not exactly right, Henry.

  To get the forecasting business into perspective, and to make Mr Lee feel better, here are some great predictions of the past:   ''Stock prices have reached a permanently high plateau.'' - Yale Professor Irving Fisher two months before the Great Crash of 1929.

  ''The future appears brilliant. We have the greatest and soundest prospects of any country in the world.'' - Thomas Lamont of J.P. Morgan one month before the 1929 crash.

  ''Forget it, Louis. No Civil War picture ever made a nickel.'' - Hollywood producer Irving Thalberg, advising MGM chief Louis B. Mayer not to bid for film rights to Gone With the Wind.

  ''You ain't goin' nowhere, son. You ought to go back to driving a truck.'' - the manager of Nashville's Grand Ole Opry as he booted Elvis Presley out after one performance.

      Homing instinct    A QUESTION for expats: how do you know when it is time to go home?   Phyllis Gerstell, writing in Aware, the magazine of the American Women's Association, gives the signs of the overstaying expat.

  1. You've forgotten why your family urgently needed whatever it was you used to rush to USA & Co to buy.

  2. You wish you could read the Cantonese subtitles at the movies so that you too could get the jokes in Wayne's World.

  3. You have been known to eat spaghetti with chopsticks.

  4. You're horrified to discover, when home, that not only do you not get a discount, they're actually going to charge tax on top of the tagged price.

  5. You'd rather read Lai See than Ann Landers.

  6. You actually like the taste of Darlie toothpaste.

  7. You have trouble remembering which one was Hillary and which one was Marilyn and don't see any difference anyway.

  8. You and your husband have started to think of each other as ''Sir'' and ''Mum''.

  9. Your youngest speaks English with a Tagalog accent.

       Blunt prose    PSEUD of the week is the copywriter at Felissimo Universal Corporation of Exchange Square.

  Try and guess what product he/she is talking about. This is the press release:   ''The product bears unique features manifesting the sense of aesthetics, appreciation of nature, sense of quality, rarity and ecology-consciousness. It is a product of refined tastes and values, crystalising the pursuits of whom leading a contemporary lifestyle. For an in-depth understanding of the product, please kindly review the Essential Points of the Transcendental Product (product that transcends its ordinary functions and meaning).''   What is it?   A set of coloured pencils.

       Furry tail    FIRST runners-up in the Anguish Languish competition were Sherida and Colin Couch of Clearwater Bay, who wrote: ''Wee hop Ewan misses Licey halva furry happening ear, bust washers.''   (We hope you and Mrs Lai See have a very happy New Year, best wishes.)   But a hand-delivered bottle of Moet and Chandon has to go to Barry Kalb of Marco Polo Italian Restaurant Group, whose choice of words was innovative and yet comparatively easy to decipher:   He wrote: ''Dishes dancer tooter Ladle Rat Rotten Hut ministry. Israeli furry sample. Tanks farter upper-nudity toe precipitate. Sin silly.''   (This is the answer to the Little Red Riding Hood mystery, It's really very simple. Thanks for the opportunity to participate. Sincerely.)        Neaputs    OUR tales of counterfeiters reminded one reader of the time he was in Kaohsiung, south Taiwan, and came upon a shop selling goods plastered with Snoopy, the cooler-than-cool dog from the Peanuts cartoon strip.

  ''It wasn't for a while that I realised they had spelt the name Spoony,'' he said.

  Presumably Spoony's owner was Barlie Crown and he went out with a bird called Stoodwock.

       Spam surprise    MORE spam news: for Hongkong fans of the pink food-substitute who cannot fly to Alaska, arrange a stopover in Hawaii on your next overseas trip.

  There you can pick up the Spam Cookbook by Ann Kondo Corum, which features 53 recipes including Spam Fishcake, Eggplant and Spam Tempura, and a Hongkong-style dish, Spam Fu Yung.



Cock and bull story about Year of the Rooster