Three in a photo and the middle will die.....what's that all about.

My story begins shortly after I arrived from Melbourne. Now, Melbourne is a few hours ahead of Kuala Lumpur time, so I found myself awake at 6am and in the office by 7.30am hoping to get some work done at least.

A call came in just as I had sat down: my secretary had not come in and s I did the only thing I could do - answered the call. I assumed that it must have been an overseas call since it was much too early for the average Malaysian.

"Can I speak to Mr. Joey Yap, please?" a lady's pleasant voice on the phone greeted me. She sounded just a little surprised since she must have not thought anyone would have been there so early, much less to reach me personally.

"I don't mean to bother you Joey, but I wanted to let you know that I have sent in my questions five times already and I still haven't gotten any answer."

"Well Mrs. Tan, I get a large number of e-mails and sometimes, I may not be able to get around to answering them right away. But since you have me on the phone, why don't you tell me what the problem is."

THE BIG PROBLEM

I found out from her that her friend who is now a Feng Shui practitioner had come to have dinner at her home a couple of weeks ago. She had taken advantage of the situation and asked this person for free advice over dinner. Now she was a little bit worried over his comments about the Feng shui of her home.

In addition to asking her to renovate her house extensively (hers was a Period 7 house), her friend had also pointed to a family portrait that hang in the wall and said that this "type" of photo was very bad feng Shui. As there were three people in the picture, the one in the middle would surely die.

"I don't want my husband to die Joey!" she was naturally quite distraught and the emotions were quite apparent in her tone.

Mrs. Tan had only one son and the family portrait was a simple one of their family. It would not have been so worse, she told me, if her friend hadn't ominously called three days later to warn her to take down the photo lest a tragedy befall the family.

BATTLING MYTHS

Even though she laughed it off at that point, the worry had left her with sleepless nights. Her husband had declared the feng Shui practitioner as a nuttier and ignored it completely. Still it plagued her after all, her husband know nothing about Feng Shui and its effects.

"No wonder your husband is skeptic Mrs. Tan - with such absurd ideas floating about Feng Shui, I myself am starting to wonder where all of this coming from." I was a little irritated with the nonsensical nature of the while advice given.

I explained further: "If this theory was true in any way, then we would not need guns and bombs, all we need to do is to have two people stand nest to your worst enemy and snap a picture of him or her. This person would be history before the photo was even developed if this theory was really so potent!"

"Professional photographers would be professional assassins. They would be out of proper job."

"Having said all of that Mrs. Tan, think back. Wasn't there at least ONE photo of three people where you were in the middle? Aren't you very much alive and calling me at 7.30am this Monday morning?"

She paused for a moment on the phone...... "Yes", she said, "You are right there Joey. Why did I never even think of that?"

She sounded relieved by the end of it and asked me more about upcoming Feng Shui classes.

I also told her after looking at her house plans, that it was already well positioned to receive Period 8 Qi and no renovations were really needed.

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