Happy Lunar New Year and welcome to the year of the wooden sheep. Apparently years are not only associated with animals (this year’s is the sheep, ram or goat), they are also associated with an element. And this year’s element is wood, making it a wooden sheep year.
From a business perspective that means it’s going to be a good year for gold (only an astrologer could turn wood into gold).
From a personal perspective, well not many millionaires are sheep. In fact the biggest Chinese millionaires are dragons (which means they were born in 1928, 1940, 1952, 1964, 1976, 1988, 2000 or 2010). Find out what’s in store for your animal here.
And speaking of animals, Saturday (February 21) is World Pangolin Day, according to Quartz. Never heard of a pangolin (which is described as a cross between an armadillo and an artichoke)? Well you probably would have if you were Chinese, as it is a delicacy there, and endangered.
A Canadian delicacy -- beer – got an unexpected boost from a quirky ad campaign. For Canada Day 2013, Molson’s sent beer fridges to different places in Europe that could only be opened by scanning a Canadian passport. For Canada Day 2014, people had to sing the national anthem to open the fridge. The stunt brought the company, which was trying to maintain market share, an additional $6 million.
I’m not sure how lack of snow, which is closing ski resorts in Western Canada, will affect beer drinking. Will more people be in the bars, as they can’t ski, or will they just stay home altogether?
And while it’s not snowing in Western Canada, it is snowing in Beijing (though the flakes apparently had trouble breaking through the smog).
