The Feng Shui Detective Goes South by Nury Vittachi Page A

the geomancer down a dark corridor to a large, gloomy room with no door. It contained several desks and cabinets, all of which were piled high with dusty, yellowing papers.
    ‘She has very big office,’ said Wong. ‘For very young woman.’
    ‘Oh, this isn’t her office. This is my office,’ said Mirpuri. ‘I thought you might like to do my office farst? Business has not been so great recently. Also I have had a bad flu which I cannot shake off. So much snot, you know. Very uncomfortable.
    I wonder if you can fix all that? Why do Danita’s office when she is not even here? Seems pointless. Do mine now, and when she comes back, do hers. Can do?’
    ‘Can.’
    Wong spent an hour gathering basic details of the office. The premises as a whole had a dragon hill to the north-east. The charts revealed that the most favourable direction was the fourth sector, and the least favourable the ninth. It was a K’un building, with the door oriented to the north. For a more detailed examination, he needed the occupant’s personal details, key dates of his life history and job description; the date the building was built and the company moved in; and he needed an understanding of what each cabinet or desk in the room contained. He asked the import–export man more than two dozen questions, and then sent him out of the room so that he could think in peace. The geomancer sketched out various charts, all covered with scribbled writing in tiny Chinese characters.
    When he had covered nine sheets with writing and diagrams, Mirpuri reappeared in the doorway. ‘How are you going? Come to any interesting conclusions?’ he asked.
    ‘Many,’ said Wong. ‘There is much you can do to make your fortune better.’
    Mirpuri produced a magazine. ‘Let me show you something. I got this from a friend. It’s a catalogue of feng shui stuff from Hong Kong. Mail order. I was thinking, I could get a cat at the entrance, and then a hanging money sword over that side, pointing to the room where we process the orders, and then a pair of door gods for the entrance, plus this thing called a seven fortunes bowl—’ ‘No need,’ said the geomancer. ‘Trinkets no need.’
    Mirpuri looked suddenly deflated. ‘Really? I’m tinking I would be doing very, very good thing to get some objects scattered around the place, and perhaps a fish tank at the front entrance. Fish tanks are good, right? You think gold fish or tropical?’
    Wong shook his head. ‘Hong Kong feng shui is too much superstition. Very silly. First job in feng shui is not to add things to room like this, already too much-much overcrowded. First job is to clear things. Not add things.’
    ‘Oh. I see,’ Mirpuri said. ‘What do I have to clear out of it?’
    ‘I tell you. Lot of things. You sit down.’
    The businessman moved awkwardly around the desk to get into his large padded leather seat. ‘Okay. I’m sitting. Now tell.’
    The geomancer looked around the room. Then he turned his gaze back to his client. ‘Main problem with this office is dead energy. Too much dead energy. This kills your energy.’ Wong pointed to the piles of yellowing paper on the cabinets. ‘This pieces of paper. I think they are old, you don’t use them now. You must get rid of them. Common problem in old offices, even some new offices. Dead energy makes—’ He looked in his notebook for an English word he had written down. ‘Leth-ar-gy.’
    Mirpuri moved his head diagonally from side to side three times to indicate qualified agreement. He had a guilty expression on his face, like a small boy caught with his hand in a cookie jar. ‘I am having spring clean from time to time. Things are piling up, you know how it is.’
    Wong nodded. ‘Some people are file people. They file-file-file, put everything away in cabinet. Some people are pile people. They put on paper on top of another paper, pile-pile-pile.’
    ‘Which is better?’
    ‘File people better than pile people. But throw-away people best of