Hi everyone! Just some personal updates on my side!
This post is not technical, just for sharing and, honestly, ‘marketing’ purposes. I’ve mentioned this is a previous entry that practitioners like us like to post about the cases we’ve worked on to show that our services are in demand. I do it, too, and I feel more comfortable stating my intention upfront rather than trying to pretend it’s not what I’m trying to do. That’s just me. I won’t be in any of the pictures because it’s weird. I don’t have an assistant following me around, and it’s preposterous that I get my client or the real estate agent to take a picture of me holding the ‘luo pan‘. The most you will see will be the brown messenger bag I carry (you can see it in the featured image above on the sofa), the green-coloured notebook from my workplace and my laptop, which you will see in the pictures below later. The previous time my trusty messenger bag appeared in my photos was during my corporate feng shui audit earlier this year. Do pardon the amateurish shots!
I’ve been on leave for the past week to rejuvenate a little after ten months of non-stop work, and I can’t tell you how much I needed it! Juggling two jobs can be quite taxing. If you’re a newcomer to this blog, I’ve explained before why I do not wish to do this sideline of my full-time. I’ll dedicate a proper blog post to this topic someday. Despite being on leave, I had some BaZi and Feng Shui cases to work on, and the timing was rather serendipitous. I had an urgent feng shui audit for a client who reached out to me for a feng shui audit.
The client is a very successful Indian businessman who runs his family business. It was a really pleasant experience for me – the client was really nice, and I was quite excited to be able to view a condominium in Orchard Road, as I’ve always wondered what they looked like from the inside. We viewed three different units within the same building, and I was tasked to choose the best unit for him. As always, I’d also do a BaZi reading for my client and point out what to look out for, and it’s heartening to see such an accomplished person much older than me taking my input so seriously.
The topic of growing the business came up during our conversation, and I gave my views on it. Don’t be mistaken that my client was seeking some shortcut to riches – he’s an extremely hardworking person who has been through quite a lot and was not seeking some shortcut. I’ve written a post on wealth in the eyes of BaZi and even whether BaZi can be used to win the lottery, and I’d like to take the opportunity to reiterate that BaZi is not meant to be used as a get-rich-quick scheme. I would be retired by now if that were the case. BaZi is to be used to identify ‘blind spots’ so that you can make better decisions. These ‘blind spots’ could be anything – a side of yourself you don’t see, an area of life-impacting you which don’t realize, or just certain angles of viewing a problem that you can’t see yet.
I know some incumbent practitioners and people in this field would say that an astrological reading or buying a certain item can bring you windfall – I am personally really against that because I don’t think it’s possible. Trust me, I tried it myself. If it doesn’t work for me, I doubt it’s going to work for you.
Perhaps they possess some special ability or know something that I don’t, but honestly, if this art can be used to enhance windfall, no feng shui master or practitioner will ever have to work.
The apartment units and the view from them are nice, isn’t it?! You’ll see my bag and ‘luo pan‘ somewhere inside there. I won’t go into the technicalities of feng shui in this post for confidentiality reasons. Analysis-wise, it has always been about getting the basics right using 8-Mansions and Flying Stars. I will always combine different methods when I conduct my feng shui audits and use it in conjunction with BaZi to give a holistic and well-rounded view of things. At the end of the day, your BaZi chart will still come first.
Feng Shui Period 9 is coming, and I would advise everyone to consider the effects when looking for a new place. One interesting thing I had to note for this particular case was the surroundings – there is a plot of land in front of Four Seasons Park waiting to be developed by none other than City Developments Limited. When the time comes for a building to be erected there, the 納氣口, or the position where the residence gets its ‘qi’ from, will be blocked.
My client has previously engaged another supposedly well-known feng shui master who recommended tilting the main door, but my opinion is that such ‘remedies’ are pointless and one of those made-up modern-day remedies. If you think about the way houses were built in China back then, the facing direction of the house is easily determined by where the main gate is facing. Modern-day practitioners try to ‘game’ the theory by tilting the main door, which I disagree with. Let’s break down the theory and explain this logically:
Why is the main door or gate such an important area to look at? It’s because it is where a residence gets its ‘qi’ from, and we call this ‘na qi kou’ (納氣口) in Chinese. Now, the question is whether modern-day apartments’ main entrances or doors qualify under this explanation. My opinion and experience are that it doesn’t. If you get the sitting and facing the direction of the house wrong, you will also plot the Flying Stars incorrectly. The main door of apartments these days faces a lifeless and narrow corridor which you can’t wait to get out of, and the way the 納氣口 is determined for modern-day apartments is different. This tilting of the main door or gate may work with landed properties because you can shift the main gate and the direction of where the house is facing, but not for apartments.
My emotions always get riled up when I see clients getting such baseless, hogwash remedies from other practitioners. Don’t even get me started on whether feng shui items work. I feel that getting the basics right is important; getting the basics of this field right is not easy. You have to be able to read Chinese to understand the source material from the dynastic periods, and you’ll realize some practitioners can’t even speak the language. You need to understand astronomy, history, and how Chinese ancestors thought and viewed the world using Yin Yang and the 5 Elements.
On the topic of what ‘qi’ (氣) is: Honestly, it does not have a scientific explanation. To the ancient Chinese, as fuzzy as it sounds, it is like the ether that gives life and what binds all life together. You can refer to this article here for a pretty good explanation of how the ancient Chinese viewed the universe (the article is in Chinese, by the way). I usually don’t get to apply landform feng shui as most of my feng shui audits are done in HDBs and landed property clusters, so this is the first time I had to consider the surroundings due to where Four Seasons Park is located.
I hope you all enjoyed this short post and some of the sharing. As always, don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions!
– Sean
