15 July 开门大吉

Ong Lai, Huat Ah!....

We engaged the services of Chen, a Feng Shui master, for an analysis of our new home. So despite getting the keys on Monday last week, we held off visiting our new apartment until Friday, which according to Master Chen, was an auspicious date to enter our new home for the very first time.

We deliberated about getting a Feng Shui analysis for a while. One of the major concerns was that some geomancers can suggest big time layout changes and ridiculous structural changes to a house. For example, we heard rumours about a geomancer recommending his client to shift his toilet from his masterbedroom to the living room to improve his feng shui! It's probably impossible structurally and even if it were possible, the cost and effort to do it is too great. The prospect of having to undertake major and illegal structural renovation was enough to discourage us from Feng Shui. Not to mention also the high asking fees of some geomancers. Nevertheless, we remained interested but wary about Feng Shui.

Somewhere along, Master Chen, who hailed from Taiwan, came highly recommended by several sources. Our sources told us that 1) he doesn't recommend ridiculous renovation or rework; 2) he doesn't sell expensive Feng Shui boosting products; 3) his service fee is reasonable. We thought about it and gave him a call about his advice on our apartment's Feng Shui.

We met Master Chen for the first time at our new apartment last Friday. On his advice, we rolled a pineapple through the main door into the apartment. The pineapple in the Chinese Hokkien dialect is "Ong Lai". "Ong" by itself means "prosperity" and "Lai" means "to come". So getting a pineapple in symbollizes the prosperity that is to come for the new apartment and its occupants.

As Master Chen proceed with his analysis of our new place, we felt that the decision and timing to engage his services was right. He reported that the apartment has good feng shui. Small wonder we felt so good about the house and bought it very quickily upon first viewing. He then made various proposals in terms of layout and color changes to enhance our career, wealth and relationship. None were radical nor impedes the logical flow in the apartment layout and design. The only major change was in the kitchen and since we haven't begin our renovation, it was something that we can work on when we get our contractor onboard.

At the end of the session, we were instructed to "cleanse" the house with a mixture of rice, tea leaves and salt. We don't know the origin of this tradition but we read about other new home owners doing the same on RenoTalk forum. And we "believe" that salt is a powerful ward against evil from watching the American TV series, Supernatural. Anyway, it was fun throwing the rice-tea leaves-salt mixture all over the apartment.