" You will have eyebrow luck when you hit your thirties," the Chinese fortune teller said.

I was only 12 at the time but the fortune teller my parent's friend brought over told me that. He also told me that I had a terrible temper and I let it get out of control too easily. In addition to that, I am hard to handle because of this bad faulty trait. My parents looked at each other and nodded in agreement. "Aiyah, my daughter is exactly as you described," they exclaimed in unison. What the fortune teller said made my bad temper only worse and I got more angry for having him said that. It still does to this day.

He continued to look at my palms and my face more closely. My eyes, my ears, my mouth, my nose, my forehead.

He touched my brow, turning my head from side to side.

"When your daughter reaches her thirties, somewhere around 32-35 she will have a good life from thereon. She will have an easy life from then forward and will not have to toil much," he said again not looking at me but directing the comments to my parents as if I didn't exist. "But before that, it may not be easy for her."

My parents were relieved to hear this.

And it's been haunting me my whole life.

This whole thing about palmistry, geomancy, fengshui, looking at a person's feature to determine their fate and destiny has always contradicted everything we have learned in Western religions yet for Chinese folks, it has always been an integrated part of the culture. Afterall, everything we do, we do to ensure our well being for the days ahead. Our features on our face according to them do indeed tell how our lives will be by the shape and size our features have grown to. Much like palmistry, certain features will also pinpoint certain periods in our life.

Today I got my eyebrows waxed. For the first time in my life.

I've always grown up with decent eyebrows, never having to draw it in, never having to trim it or shape it. I've been lucky in that aspect and perhaps that's what 'eyebrow luck' means because us women know how much time eyebrows do indeed take if we do have to draw it and all. But I've never tampered with my eyebrows because I always thought that it would alter my fate. My destiny. My life.

The Vietnamese lady at the manicure shop never wants to touch my eyebrows for fear that she has played a hand in changing my life forever. But I begged her today to "clean up" the areas around my eyebrows since some stray hairs have grown there in recent years. The lady frowned and shook her head.

"Please. I don't want to change it, I just want to clean it up and make it neater," I said.

"Winnie, I'm superstitious. I don't think we should touch it until you're 40."

"Look, I don't want to change the middle or the shape or anything, just these little hairs," pointing to the few stray strands grown astray.

She sighed. "Ok. Only just a little. But nothing much, only these small hairs on the outer edges."

I used to never think much about what that fortune teller said but in recent years, the memory has crept back up to the forefront of my mind. Especially with the onset of things happening these past couple of years. I wonder if there's any truth in what the old fortune teller said. I wonder how much of our fate has been preordained by what our genes have given us?

I wonder if what the old fortune teller will come through for me when things seem to be at its low.

Or is it a bunch of crock just like the rest of my life?

I'm out.