Ten days left in September, with 31 to go in October and 30 in November for a total of 71 days before December comes merrymaking in.

No apologies for the longest Christmas celebration in the world! lasting until January 6, feast of the Three Kings.

Since last weekend, signs of the “ber” fever were being seen and felt all over the malls big and small. For foreigners reading this who aren’t familiar with our slanguage, “ber” refers to the last syllable of the names of the ninth month (in its own way an anomaly, because “sept” in French means seven, not nine) and every month thereafter, until December.

After September comes October, another anomaly, as “octa” means eight, not 10. According to a recent business report, 472,000 four-wheel vehicles were sold from January to August 2025. I suppose many of those new cars ended up in the National Capital Region. Where do you put half a million new vehicles on the same number of roads without creating a logjam?

As the great Paul Lau used to say, “Stop complaining about the traffic! No traffic, no business!” He liked to compare the flow of traffic with water flowing – you know, the current as currency. You have good feng shui if you have a mountain behind you and a river flowing in front of you – the mountain represented by tall, solid buildings and the river by flowing traffic. (What if traffic stalls instead? Be patient; fortune could be on its way to you!)

This Year of the Serpent (a sign of luxury) will be followed next year by Horse, symbol of work (as in workhorse). Watching the television coverage centering on the immense wealth of a couple whose profession is contracting with government agencies with the means and ability to swim against a flood of temptation, we should all be inspired to connect-before-contract, but only if we know whom to connect with, for as the saying goes, you cannot make money without money.

Whoever invented the advice to “follow the money” didn’t know that floods – and how to control them – were the answer! Still, even with all that money, one can suffer from chest pains, hypertension, etc.