Feng Shui, Chinese Dinners and the Engagement Ring

If it hadn’t been for Fly Girl 01, I wouldn’t be writing this very moment. I wouldn’t have a blog page in the first place. Because last year, sensing that I was moping over a bad heart break (or boredom), she dragged me by the hair and smashed my face on the keyboard – “Get over that dork and open a web diary!” Ok, that’s an exaggeration- my sister won’t do that. What she did was fix my page, install widgets… and treat me to free cappuccinos. Don’t get fooled by her flying suits and kickass adventures. Fly Girl has a marshmallow heart and candy- sweet girly-ness like Rainbowbrite. If people’s personalities were desserts, she’d be like Krispy Kreme’s best- selling melt-in-your mouth donut or a caramel sundae.

And to return the favor… I didn’t frankly know what to do, except to be grateful. Grateful for everything as if someone has feng- shuied you, or pre- arranged your life way before you were born: you were given great siblings. You were like two peas in a pod, and until you were ten years old you had the same haircut, same knapsacks, and the same clothes cut from the same fabric.

You travel together.

You eat from the same plate.

And there at the dinner table are where our differences most evident. Fly Girl can’t do without a fork and a knife while I had been a little used to chopsticks. She asks me why I like Chinese dinners because she would never eat buchi or ma-chang, and would prefer bloody steak over peking duck.

She once confessed to see the Chinese as mysterious and a little creepy. She said she’s more comfortable walking around the streets of Jolo than Chinatown; and while I am genuinely fascinated by Zhang Yimou films and Jet Li’s wushu, she likes Paris Hilton and the Desperate Housewives. She’d rather see the Grand Canyon than the Great Wall. Or the White House over the Forbidden City. She’s among the gun people, I’m among the knife people. And when our uniforms are hung side by side at home, anyone could immediately see what the other is doing: chopper flyer, onion chopper. She reads helicopter manuals, I sleep with cookbooks. I’m fat, she’s not. Let's leave it right there...

Highly logical and inclined into the scientific method of doing things, my sister is a non- believer of feng shui and white magic. I am a believer of anything – take belief away from me and I’ll be no less than a squashed fruitfly. So at the start of the Year of the Rat, I was listening to feng shui gurus on TV who said that if you want to meet the love of your life, place a peony flower on the southwest of your house. I didn’t have a peony flower, and at this point, I wouldn’t want to see the love of my life yet (nope, am not in the proper mindset). But according to feng shui, though, like the Rabbits, this is the perfect year for the Sheep to bump into their soul mates- if soul mates ever exist. I am a Sheep, alright, and I do bump into people. But… soul mates? What soul mates?

Anyway, for all my badness and stupidities, I still feel more comfortable to see others becoming happy first before I do. My life rule #9, before I get hitched (or even meet that true love- whoever the hell he is), I want my older sisters to go first. A good virtue of hunters is to park their spears sometimes and lie back and wait patiently.

Behind her back, I experimented the feng shui guru’s advise on my sister who isn’t into things Chinese nor believes that the universe has a certain harmonious orderliness. I proceeded anyway- what have I got to lose?

I placed Fly Girl's picture at the southwest of our house with a… not a peony- but a pink pony (my sister is born in the Year of the Horse) last January. I was visualizing her to be that “pink pony”- all flushed with love. I said, (though coupled with a strong belief), I just wanted to see if it works. The theory is that, if Fly Girl falls in love this year- or finds her mate- then without a doubt, feng shui makes sense. It doesn’t matter if she believes in it. What matters is that, it is true that the universe has certain harmonious order and whether we like it or not, it works on our lives in mysterious ways.

Well, did she meet the love of her life? Scroll below.

What does the ring on Fly Girl's finger tell you?

Don't ask me if feng shui works, I'm no expert. But while I can make you a good wok- fragrant stir- fry, ask the Chinese what feng shui does for them.