"Impelled by her natural curiosity, Pandora opened the jar, and all evil contained escaped and spread over the earth. She hastened to close the lid, but the whole contents of the jar had escaped, except for one thing which lay at the bottom, and that was Hope."

The Chinese is a superstitious bunch I can tell you... *sigh*. Thankfully, as a family, we don't practice many of the customs that were laid "in stone" by our ancestors (one of the reasons why I am culturally handicapped). However, in recent times, my dad has developed an interest in "feng shui". I think that this interest stemmed from the fact that he had problems selling one of our previous houses as it wasn't favourably "fend shuied". Armed with that experience, he started reading up on the subject and is now quite the expert. Whilst he laughs at most superstitions, he seems to believe in the practice of feng shui. I am not going to go into what feng shui is (as I really don't understand it myself) but if you are interested, you can read more about it here.

I, personally don't believe in feng shui but my parents do, hence the reason why I recently opened Pandora's Box. You see dear reader, I am a little stubborn and when I started decorating my room ages ago, apparently, the position of my bed wasn't good, feng shui wise that is. According to the principals of feng shui, one's bed head shouldn't be behind a stove, my bed was. I had my bed head against this wall, and directly behind the wall was the kitchen and the stove. When I first arranged my room this way, my dad warned me against doing it but I decided not to listen as I liked the layout of the room. Then, a few weeks ago, my mum went to see this "fortune teller" who told her that if I wanted my luck to change (I've had a terrible year ... everything that could go wrong, did go wrong), I should change the direction of my bed as well.. *sigh* my mum is someone who you can NOT ignore... so armed with this information, she came back and started nagging me to rearrange my room. I thought that if I ignored her, she would eventually stop. Did she? NO! Mum can be very persistent when she wants to be. So, after about two weeks of her nagging me (multiple times EVERY DAY), I gave in and on Monday, I started the process of rearranging my room... thus, opening Pandora's Box.

Now, I am a collector of sorts. I am very sentimental and I can't seem to throw anything out... hence why I have so much "junk". Now, to move the position of my bed is no easy feat... I have heaps of stuff and there was the other furniture to take into consideration e.g. my modular shelves, my wardrobe, entertainment center, computer stuff etc. I literally had to dismantle my entire room in order to move my bed. So, the long process started of emptying my room... this took no less than an entire day... and horror of horrors, once I started dismantling my shelves, I noticed that the paint on my walls were peeling and rather badly I might add AND in certain areas, there was actually fungus growing!!. Then, after taking my wardrobe out, I saw that the paint behind it was actually bubbling and there was a HUGE crack in the walls. So low and behold, I made the decision that this would not do and I decided that my room had to be repainted.

As the damaged to the walls were quite extensive, my mum, being the smart lady that she is, decided to hire someone to help me out. I am pretty handy around the house but I have never painted walls before (and now, after this experience, I don't think that I will ever paint walls again as I am NOT good at it), furniture yes, walls no. Now, painting walls isn't simple i.e. you just can't paint over the old paint... in certain cases yes, but in my room NO. We had to scrap the old paint (NOT fun I can tell you), patch up the holes and cracks, repair the hole in the ceiling (my sister's bathroom was leaking at one stage) etc. All in all, it took us a good 2.5 days to "prepare" my room for the painting.

As I had given into my mum, I decided to give in to dad as well so I asked him to "feng shui" my room... I thought that since my bedroom was now in the living room, I might as well go all the way. So dad got out his notes on me, a "water rat" and started "feng shuiing" my room. If I wanted stability, my bed had to be this way, if I wanted general health, it should be that way etc. Needless to say, it took some time before both my parents agreed on where my bed should be... stability was the favoured position for my mum as she thinks that I am somewhat neurotic.

Then of course, there is the matter of the colour of my room. Yawp, my room is now painted in my preferred feng shui colours. As I have too much "water" in my life, I have to offset this by having earthy type colours in my life i.e. brownish type hues. So, now my room is painted in a barley white, the skirtings on the wall in a dark brown and I have a freshly painted white ceiling. Looks pretty good actually . As my old wardrobe was falling apart, I couldn't resist buying a new one and despite it being smaller than my previous one, it can hold much more!

before	after

Unfortunately, I started moving my stuff in without consulting the elders and this resulted in me having to rearrange many of the stuff I had already put in i.e. you should never ever put something on the center of your room as that represents your heart... so, if you put something on the very center of the room, you are in fact"killing yourself". This I did not know and had to be rectified as my bookshelves were on the center of my room. My aquarium had to be moved as well as the position meant that I would drown or something like that. I couldn't put my bed directly under my air conditioner as it meant that my "chi" would be pushed away etc.

It is amazing how much dust and dirt can accumulate in one's room. I am thankful that I am not allergic to dust and have no sinus-type problems. Whilst Ikea's modular shelves seemed like a great idea when I got them, I hate them now. Open shelves are NOT the way to go!! Admittedly, I am a little bit of a slob and room cleanliness isn't very high on my list of priorities. I can't remember the last time I spring cleaned and to my horror, there was literally 1cm of dust on everything!! Having a million and one things doesn't help as well. So, I had to clean EVERYTHING before it went back into my room. Mental note: when I get my own place, covered shelves, COVERED SHELVES, COVERED SHELVES!!

Actually, spring cleaning was kinda fun... I mean, I found things which I had forgotten I had... a trip down memory lane. I have these shoe boxes full of mementoes from guys which I have dated... for the more serious ones, they are allocated an entire shoe box . It was fun opening them and remembering the good times (whilst of course, blocking out the bad). Then, I have my diaries... years upon years of writings (I had horrible handwriting), computer junk (I actually found a few 1 MB RAM chips), books which I had forgotten I had, old photos, toiletries rotting in their containers etc. Needless to say, it took a LOT longer for my things to get back into my room than it was for it to be taken out.

At the time of writing, I still haven't sorted out half the stuff that needs to go back in... there are still a few boxes in my living room and I have no idea what I am going to do with them as my shelves are already full. The wiring in my room is still in a mess *sigh*. Despite my technical background, wiring is something I am NOT good at... for some stupid reason, I can never seem to get those darn wires neat! I think it could be a gender thingie... most guys I know are good at wiring... me, I am totally hopeless at it!! Grrrr...

I have no idea what the point of this story is... I am just happy to have my computer online again and to hear the comforting pecking sounds of my keyboard... so I'll end here and get back to tidying up. Hopefully, with this new arrangement, the position of the stars and the cosmos, the powers that be will grant me a FANTASTIC year in 2003. Who knows, there just might be something to this feng shui stuff.

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