MCing The Asia Bankers Club 2014 Feng Shui Talk

And yet the most interesting thing was………….

Epiphanies and cheat notes alert.

Our new friends were leaving Hong Kong – thought they’d already gone, and was so happy when they came up to me at the end of the night. I never thought I would be that happy at their simple gesture of a second, unexpected goodbye (we’d had a good dinner sometime back and there is always Facebook) but it was one of my happiest moments of the night. For real. I mean, not dying in front of close to 500 people wasn’t a bad moment either, but obviously you expect to be pretty happy about that.

It was an interesting epiphany: There is nothing like a genuine connection, with other person(s). Because making friends is such a minefield right, and there we expect kids to do it like, easily? (What d’you expect from me, this is a mummy blog.)

Now on to the event.

Among our guests of honor were Mr. Gan Khai Choon, Managing Director of Hong Leong International HK (who btw was once from Penang Free School, some of my Malaysian readers may be interested to know 🙂 ) and Mr Apichart Chutrakul, CEO of Sansiri Public Company Limited (arguably largest property developer in Thailand who greatly honored our event by flying in to attend)… Just to give you a rough idea, please don’t scream at me for not putting up a guest list or something…

Some pics of the stage, appetizers etc because obviously I didn’t see any of these on the night…

And I think some of these girls in attendance are models (if not all… ask Kings what agency)

Ok these below are definitely models (ask Shanghai Tang what agency). These are some of the looks during the “commercial break” where Shanghai Tang took to the stage with New Year fashion choices, before the talk resumed.

Notice something interesting about the wardrobe recommendations? (Other than that pant hemlines are fashionably shorter?) Scroll down for answer…

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That’s right. NO RED. The most auspicious colors specific to the new year are apparently blue, purple and yellow. (And black, white, beige are useful neutrals to take your look from runway to realway.) I didn’t catch the science behind it, Professor Choo delivered a very meaty presentation that night and there were times I was checking back home re how the kids were doing in between getting up onstage, but I do view know-how of colors the same way I view knowing not to wear black to someone’s house at CNY (even if we ourselves are fine with it – my mum has bought me all black blouses that I’ve worn to go shopping with her at CNY, but I would not say, visit another person’s home in that. They may not believe in it being totally “unlucky” either but they’ll probably think you’re being rude)

So yes, I checked what I was wearing before de day. (For the 2 of you who like that kind of stuff – gold sequined Alessandro Dell A’cqua pencil skirt circa 7 years ago, Chloe brooch from different Chloe sweater bought maybe 5 years ago, boots from a Spanish designer I forget, that have seen me through the IPO of 1398 HK (ICBC Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, where Accumulators were KO-ing in 20 minutes of having been locked in), 9 year old cashmere sweater from Victoriassecret.com, Theory shirt that is at least 4 years old and one of my uniforms. Nothing new. 5 Minute Face and nothing done to my hair either. The only reason I even have long hair instead of a very short crop is because of the hot husband.)

Now, Kings initially asked if I was “wearing a pretty dress”, but there are many pretty young girls in dresses 🙂 I am a former banker who strove not to be seen as a “pretty young girl” for many years (even when I was young enough to qualify haha). I did meet Kings more than 12 years ago when we were market competitors in Singapore, he did propose in under 5 months thereabouts, I did introduce him as my husband of 10 years, that night. I did stay in the market some 7 years after we married (and up until Rockstar was about 2.5), just not as his direct competitor thereafter. (We avoided each other like the plague whenever we could in the markets, because there was just no way that ends well, with the whole conflict of interest thing.)

People who don’t know the history of Us might sometimes think we look an odd couple. It’s because they don’t know the history of Us. There is a banking story behind why Kings proposed within 5 months of our meeting (he wasn’t insane, I wasn’t pregnant – which I can’t thank him enough for pointing out on stage humph), the same reason I said Yes (and btw Kings and I are almost exactly the same age). It is why I have had bosses who were later Kings’ clients, it is why I would go on to have had bosses who used to be Kings’ clients. The market is small and has its own version of The Kevin Bacon Game. Kings and I got married that quickly because of what we saw of each others characters in the markets. That was how we’d got to know each other that quickly.

And now, some of the things I learned from Professor Choo:

 Here’s a few things I took away from Professor Choo’s very detailed talk that night:

Because the sun’s solar flares and solar cycle as well as the lunar cycle particularly at full moon are said to affect the Earth’s climate, individuals with weaker mental and/or physical health are said to be especially susceptible. While people don’t turn into actual werewolves when the moon is full and “Werewolf syndrome” or Hypertrichosis doesn’t have anything to do with lunar cycles, I can certainly buy that subtle changes in climate can affect levels of depression and therefore by extension your decision making ability. It’s certainly been proven that if you don’t get enough sunlight for instance, you’re much more likely to feel depressed. When it gets too damp I feel the onslaught of rheumatism.

Geomancy science to me can be applied as how solar, lunar etc cycles affect more susceptible individuals’ moods. By extension then also their open-ness to say, the productiveness of your discussions with them. Or maybe even if you are trading vanilla markets.

Seniors used to tell me that some of the best vanilla market traders have very, very good memories. Why? Because they remember, how other traders in the market reacted to certain market information. When the US Consumer Price Index came out how this many percentages of a point below expectations, the other traders in the market did that other thing. They remember when Central Banks and the people who worked for them intervened in certain currencies and markets, based on their interpretations of policies. Remembering helps them to stick it out during Should I Sell moments, or to actually run, cut their position. And obviously they care about Feng Shui because say, they can’t afford to have their judgment impaired by a lot of noisy traffic or etc.

At the end of the day by extension every “thing” – trading behavior, inventions etc – is affected by a human element. In the sense that a knife is a knife until you give it to either a sushi chef or Hannibal. If that human element is affected by solar flares and other easily measurable (if humans were smart enough to know how to measure them) astronomical occurrences, there’s nothing spiritual or hocus-pocusy about it.

A lot of Professor Choo’s talk revolved around the shape of a property, it’s location, the general shape of a development, as well as layout – things like placement of doors within your unit. Why? Because of the flow of energy.

How energy moves or stays, based on location of mountains, the sea or other bodies of water etc in relation to where you are living, where you are raising a family. How your unit stores energy, be it of the calming sort or the kind that makes you more anxious. (It’s a no-brainer that if you had a front door facing a busy junction for eg, the simple energy and momentum of cars driving head-on at your home throughout the day, then having to come to abrupt stops, doesn’t feel very calming. (So too living very near a whole bunch of flyovers and roads – intuitively you would already probably close all your doors or windows facing very busy traffic.) The constant kinetic energy (not to mention noise, I guess) is not going to make you feel very grounded or secure. How will that then affect your ability to make important decisions in your life?)

A guest who does martial arts later commented that he could understand the similarity to martial arts, how you might employ an opponents’ energy against them, or how you would use or focus your own energy in delivering a good punch. This helped me picture it as how much more energy one would need, swimming upstream – location/apartment layout-wise.

Lastly, during the case studies, the good professor and Kings apologized beforehand if they offended anyone, then they talked about not just good but also bad points in various developments, including ones by Sansiri in Thailand. Yes with the CEO of Thailand’s largest property developer in the audience. Yes Sansiri is one of the event sponsors.

Professor Choo’s point was how no home or investment was ever “perfect.” One might view the Feng Shui of an investment or holiday abode meant to be rented out or very occasionally lived in as different from where you want to be more permanently. For making many life-changing big decisions. An investment buy can be more aggressively opportunistic of currency fluctuations for e.g. and yes, certain no-nos in Feng Shui.

A permanent home for your family, for being in the best mental state that you can be in…………………… was never that objective a decision to make, to begin with. Because when have we ever found it easy to be coldly objective when it involves our kids?

And so for that, we have prayer, and then faith, that where we land is His will. Because no decision of ours can ever be made with perfect knowledge. Even if the Feng Shui-perfect home did exist.

ps: there might be an Epilogue…