Everyone needs a little luck when talent and hard work are just not enough. However when that elusive lady refuses to grace us with her presence when we really need her, what is our backup option?

Iranians are turning in droves to fortune tellers in the hope of finding an answer to all their insecurities (see page 23) and in the hope that fortune will smile on them soon.

Well, the telling of the future is an art/science that is as old as the Earth itself and while every ancient civilisation had it as part of its culture it has become etched in the collective unconscious of us all.

In the spring of 1992 when my better half announced at the dinner table "We’re moving to Africa," my first horrified reaction was "Are you taking us there to die?"

A very ignorant, hasty question, I found in retrospect.

Almost five years of actually living and working there changed my negative media-fed perspective of the largest, most populous continent on earth.

In a lifetime of asking questions have you ever had all of them answered?

Seriously! In our childhood time of discovery we unabashedly used the one word we knew "WHY?" However, do you remember getting all the answers?

In all those years we spent in one educational establishment or the other we were forever looking for answers for text book questions; did we get them all? If we were confident, an examiner would prove us wrong with a B or a C instead of that A we were hoping for.

Are you one of those who never turns to the horoscope in a newspaper or magazine or like millions around the globe are you someone who must get a daily dose of "Personal validation" from a very generalised, very vague prediction written up for public consumption?

You may wonder where this question is going. I’ll simply tell you.

Going through the list of the 10 most wanted men and women in Dubai (our cover story), it was pointed out to me that six of them were Geminis.