 |
| |
|
|
| |
Bring Feng Shui Into Your Kitchen
Afternoon Despatch & Courier,
July 2002
By Farzana Contractor
FARZANA CONTRACTOR interviews world renowned Feng Shui expert LILLIAN TOO and gets her to do the Feng Shui of her home kitchen.
LILLIAN TOO, the leading Feng Shui expert of the world, is an Oriental Oprah Winfrey of a woman. Large, jolly, extremely colourful in thought, speech and attire, warm-hearted, sympathetic, and a great lover of food. Let me explain the last bit first. I met her over lunch at the Taj Mahal Hotel's Golden Dragon restaurant in Bombay. And Lillian can eat! "But I am not a gourmet," she clarified over a cup of jasmine tea, "I'm not so bold as to claim to be one. Of course, I love food. I appreciate fine wining and dining. I like tastes that are subtle and not loud. Or those that are stunning, exquisite, a nicely married fusion cuisine. Like an Italian spaghetti in Chinese sauce. Yum, yum, excellent!"
Our table which was being cleared, had a short while earlier been groaning under the weight of food. She had tucked into a good bit of this with flashing chopsticks, relishing every morsel I thought. I suggested to her, "May be the feng shui here in the restaurant is good for your appetite." And Lillian, who is Malaysian, not Chinese, had paused in between eating. "Yes," she replied thoughtfully. Then she drew out a small but expensive-looking Tiffany compass and got it working for her. When it stopped spinning, Lillian frowned. "Actually, I am facing the south-east, which is not a good direction. I should have been sitting in that chair (she pointed west), then the lunch would have been much better!"
That's when I had an idea. "Do you do the feng shui of home kitchens," I asked eagerly. And a short while later, we were driving to my home, Lillian Too, her husband Too Wan Jin, and their adopted son Lim Han Jin. She has a daughter, Jeniffer Too, who is an electrical engineer. The whole family is into feng shui, but not all professionally. "We're not obsessed by it," Lillian said. "We have a lot of fun with feng shui and that's the way it should be. But we don't go around doing people's feng shui. I don't describe myself as a feng shui consultant. First and foremost, I am a writer. Read my books, I've written 50 on feng shui, and none of them overlap. Through them, I'm slowly, progressively giving out the secrets of feng shui to the world."
Now she steamed into my home and kitchen majestically, a jazzy and flamboyant personality with her peaches and cream complexion, red coat and black trousers. "Kitchens," Lillian had told me on the way up, "decide the health and harmony of homes. They should be located in that part of the house that represents the bad luck direction of the residents. Kitchens have the ability to press down the bad luck and keep it under control." I was mystified, and now most anxious to see what she would say about my kitchen. "There's health, wealth and happiness here," she pronounced first step in. I was amazed. Then Lillian pointed out to the large, bone china statuettes of the three Chinese gods - Fuk, Luk and Sua - that somebody had brought for me from Bangkok and which I had installed on the kitchen window ledge. "They're facing the dining table, they bring wealth, affluence and longevity, but put them higher up at some place prominent. Fuk symbolises happiness and wealth, he stands a head taller, place him in the centre. Luk, the god of high rank and affluence, holds the sceptre of power and authority, place him on the right. And Sau, with his domed head and carrying a peach in one hand and a walking stick in the other, stands on the left. Let them look down on you eating. And put something solid behind them. They will protect you from premature death through accidents and the like." Fuk, Luk and Sau grinned at me happily.
She was at the dining table next, rapping her knuckles on the wooden top. "The dining table's fine. It's nice and cosy. Oval tables are good. And you got eight dining chairs, that's a good number. Even ten is fine. But not 12. Also, your kitchen faces the south. That too is fine. South is fire. Fire is energy." She talked about her own kitchen.
"Mine is a feng shui kitchen. The refrigerator is far from the stove and oven. Also from the sink. To have fire and water confront each other is bad feng shui. A kitchen can create disharmony in a family. It manifests in different ways. The maid will act up. Your health will be affected. A kitchen is not so much about the cooking itself as the health and harmony of the house! The kitchen also depends on the layout and direction of the rest of the house, it depends on the date of birth of the owner, that's your chi. And in the kitchen, the stove is all important. Don't place it in the north-west corner, that can effect the patriarch of the house, there could be serious illness or even death!" And we talked about food. Lillian Too is of the opinion that foods are not intrinsically good or bad. "It depends on you," she said. "You must find out what kind of person you are. A yin person who ought to be eating cooling foods.
Or a yang person with whom warm foods go well. And she might have told me more about food, but Lillian Too's attention was suddenly distracted by the soft pealing of bells coming from my kitchen window. They were wind chimes, actually, swinging gently in the afternoon breeze and jingling-jangling as they bumped into one another. Her face lit up. "Wind chimes! It's fabulous, all over the world people are using wind chimes because I popularised them.
They are a very powerful feng shui tool and act as an energiser and cure. Hang them in the south-west corner of your house. This year, the south-west corner is afflicted by the Flying Star feng shui affliction. It is a formula that determines good and bad time dimensions for homes and buildings. It applies to everybody. So hang your wind chimes in the south west corner for good luck. Tell everybody, tell your friends."
Courtesy, the UpperCrust. |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Find out more about events from Lillian Too. |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Download Lillian Too's latest video clips. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Talk 640 with Lillian Too. Live! Lillian Too on feng shui. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Download Lillian Too's wallpapers and screensavers. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
