Not Feng Shui - Square One With An Equation Twist

Three consecutive years and a stunning new record!(well at least for me it is...)  After a year living in this house my family and I are moving again and I don't think there's not gonna be an end to the 'Not Feng Shui' series for my blog.  If any of you who are reading this don't know what I'm talking about, you can check out 'Not Feng Shui - A True Blue Story, Seriously! Part-1'.

But here's a quick review.  2 years ago, my family and I moved from a small, old, shabby and lousy apartment to a bigger newer apartment far away from town just to ram ourselves into lots of spiritual trouble without knowing that we would at first.  Then after a year, after knowing that, we moved to a double-storey terraced house to get ourselves away from the uneasiness.  Now, it's been almost a year since we lived in this house and unfortunately, although not as bad as the haunted apartment before, my family still feel spooked.

At first, things were fine.  The psychic said the house and the land the house was on were fine.  Feng Shui, nothing bad except for the house facing straight at a Void and Emptiness degree.  My room was smaller but I could live with that.  But my family, especially my brother and mother, were still complaining about having numbness and swelling in the lower part of the legs.  At first we thought it was just an effect of the ground.  Unlike apartments(2nd floor and above), houses are built directly on the ground.  Sometimes, the ground can be too cool. And for some people, stepping on the cool ground can cause leg discomfort.  So for that, we wore slippers whenever we were downstairs.  But after all that, my brother's and mother's legs were still the same.  It got worse when they climbed up the stairs.

From my observation, their condition was pretty odd.  Sometimes, their legs were okey.  Sometimes, they're just thick.  They even tried experimenting on them.  From their experiment, their legs were okey when they spend more time outdoors or after they wake up in the morning.  And the strangest part was only my brother and mom were complaining about their legs.  My brother also often said that he felt weak.  For that, mom always told him that he worked to long on his computer.  But hey, I work whole day on my computer too.  I feel tired too but after a meal and a night's sleep, I'm charged and back in strength.  Besides the leg discomfort, my mom also claimed to have heard noises like footsteps and things-placement noises around the house day and night just to see nothing and no one there.  Freeky!  So as usual, we suspected that some 'unseen company' was at work again so we turned to the psychic again.

The psychic was unavailable at that time so we consulted the other psychic who knew the psychic we know and he said that the house we were living in, although not haunted, get visits from spirits often.  It's like they pass our house as if it were a public path - like how humans consider the sidewalk public.  He also said that the house was too big for the 4 of us.  Most of the house wasn't occupied most of the time and when there are empty places, spirit activity is more probable because spirits like empty, quiet and dark places.   When I heard that, it reminded me of a few occasions when the corner of my eyes actually caught sight of some wispy figures around the house.  Those wispy figures looked like smoke and I couldn't really identify if there were far or near.  I knew what I saw but I just couldn't be too sure.

The psychic then told us that to make out house 'private', we have to burn some joss-sticks stuck in an orange and some hell notes at each corner of the house.  We did what he told but the results were minimal.  Legs, still swollen and brother, still weak.  Some time after putting the joss-sticks and oranges, my brother claimed that he saw a figure in his room in the middle of the night.  He then decided to sleep in the bigger bedroom with my parents but for his first night sleeping in the bigger bedroom, my dad tried to sleep in his room to see if the figure would show up.  Well the figure didn't show up but in the middle of the night, he was awakened by a slap on his thigh.  He woke up just to see no one there.  I seemed like a dream and yet it felt so real!  We had to do something about this because it is definitely not good to sleep in a room with a ghost hanging out in the next room so again we turned to the psychic.  The psychic then confirmed that there WAS some activity in my brother's room at night.  He also included that it was a bored Iban spirit which hung out at my brother's room just to ease its boredom.  And to keep him out of my brother's room for good, the psychic told us to hang a net-like pattern with red string over the window.  He said doing that would make the spirit to give up getting into the room and finally leave.  We did what the psychic said and for the first night and the following nights with the string upon the window, my family had soundless nights' sleeps.

Besides that whole spiritual problem, we were also running short of cash.  The rental for this house was 800 bucks per month but our family income was running low.  Since the psychic said the house was too big for the 4 of us and, of course we realized that from the start, we were paying the rent not just for shelter but more empty space to clean up plus a whole lot of spirit disturbances.  And on top of that, out landlord was a stingy scrooge and he often gave us an impression that we were not to damage the house.  From what he told my parents, he bought this house by loaning a big sum from the bank and he's actually using the rental we pay to pay the house loan.  We just think it wasn't worth paying.

So we brought up out objectives again and rearranged out mission which we kinda forgot about.  The reason why we rented this house was because we wanted to get away from the haunted apartment.  And then wherever we move to from there is temporary.  So it seems that it's about time we got ourselves a real home.  So it's that time again - house hunting time!  We hunted online as well as offline but luck just wasn't on our side this time.  So many hunts and they were all fruitless.

Desperate, we turned to our last resort which was to go back to the cramped, shabby, old apartment where we so wanted to get away from.  That apartment was owned by the state government.  We haven't surrendered it to them yet and we still had the right to go back and live there although it had been abandoned for 2 years.  For my family it was the reason why we moved out of it in the first place despite it's cheap rental and now we are actually going back to square one?!  Well for me, it wasn't a bad idea considering that the current mental and physical health situation of my family now was way worse than it was when we were living there just that compared to living here, we had to tolerate leaks and dirty walls.

We all knew it was the best bet.  But this time we ain't moving back to see those leaks and black moss on the walls.  It's about time it went through some serious renovation that it should have gone through 15 years ago.  So my parents arranged for the renovations, and of course, we also picked a good date to start the renovations.  At first, we thought it was gonna burn another hole in out pockets but after getting the price quotation from the contractor, it cost less than renting this house for 4 months.  And come to think of it, we've been paying 800 to live in this house for about a year!  

Now, at the time of typing this post, that shabby apartment looks better than what we could have ever imagined before.  It was totally occupiable!  Going back to square one isn't so bad if it were the square one of a different equation.  Ha ha...  All is good but there is still one thing that can't be changed about this apartment which is its size.  It was obvious that it couldn't accommodate the couch and some few pieces of furniture we bought since we moved to a bigger place.  So my mom decided to sell those bulk before moving back to the apartment.  That sales fetched us about 2000+ bucks which was about the same amount we spent on the renovations.  After doing the math we actually realized we got some home improvement for almost free!  Not bad!  Not bad at all!

For the sake of this 'Not Feng Shui' series, I decided to include this part because what's a Feng Shui related story without Feng Shui in it, right?  Hehe...  Before the renovations, I managed to do check out the Feng Shui of the apartment to see how it affected us in the first place and how it would affect us if we were to live there again after the renovations.  It wasn't facing any void directions and after plotting the Flying Stars chart, it turned out its Feng Shui wasn't THAT bad at all.  Our lousy feeling of living there and desire to move out of that place that we had in the first place were probably caused by the impression we got when we saw the damages of that apartment.  Maybe living there could be better now that it has been renovated with a new coat of paint.  Well in terms of Feng Shui, this is what is called Sheng Qi.

Sick Of Chemical Off-shelf PB? - How You Can Make Your Very Own Homemade Peanut Butter

I had always loved peanut butter when I was a kid.  It was like a compulsory element for my family every breakfast.  One 510g jar of peanut butter cost about 9 bucks and that finished in about a week's time.  We never really paid attention of the food labels.  And when we did, we felt like we were actually on board the carriage bound for doom so we stopped eating peanut butter.

Since then, we always felt that our breakfasts were always missing something.  We decided to bring back our daily spread again but we just couldn't bring ourselves to eat those nasty chemicals again.  So I searched the Internet about peanut butter to see if things like those were REALLY edible and found all sorts of stuff about PB.  There are lots of people out there who say that the common peanut butter sold at supermarkets contain lots of chemicals that include, food preservatives, coloring, chemical sugar and salt and trans fat in the form of vegetable oil that are not good for the body when consumed.  And because of that, they make their own peanut butter.

So I thought it was a splendid idea.  Then I went in search for videos on how to make peanut butter and found some good instructional videos.  I couldn't follow exactly what they did because I didn't have the proper equipment so I improvised.

Ingredients:

• 500g peanuts
  
• Himalayan rock salt
  
• Organic brown sugar (the really brown and moist one)
  
• some water

Main Tools:

• pot
  
• blender

How I did it, well, first, I soaked the peanuts.  Then I boiled them until they were cooked.  Then I put them in the blender, added the sugar and salt and blended them!  Walla!  Homemade organic, chemical free, peanut butter.

After an afternoon's work, I finally made myself some healthy peanut butter.  But there was still one more thing to go - The Moment of Truth - Tasting!

No doubt, it was indeed edible.  There weren't any complains about it from the rest but when my mom tasted it, she said it was a little too bland and couldn't stand feeling the texture in her mouth.  It wasn't smooth and creamy.  The blender couldn't blend all the peanuts and made the peanut butter chuncky with some peanuts still in one piece.  It was kinda hard to spread due to the chucks.  Then I came to conclusion that my peanut butter turned out that way because 1) I didn't add oil to it.  Factory peanut butter is packed with oil that contributes to the smoothness of its texture.  And 2) I used a blender instead of a food processor.  Probably a food processor is more powerful than a blender and can mince food more evenly.

Unlike regular peanut butter, even regular homemade peanut butter, this one I made has a cream pale white color.  It's probably because I boiled the peanuts instead of roasted it.  Roasted peanuts tend to be more golden brown and that color is what makes the peanut butter made out of it browner.

I kept my homemade peanut butter in a jar which was formerly used to hold rock salt and kept it in the fridge.  After 3 days, it still didn't smell bad but I decided to finish it fast because my mom didn't really like it so I enjoyed the very last bit of it.  Since then, I always felt hesitant to make peanut butter because I knew I am likely to be scolded for doing it.

Anyways, I got the inspiration, ideas and guide for making my peanut butter from this video at Howcast.com.

Come to think of what I just did, I used 500g of peanuts to make just one jar of peanut butter.  I wonder where the peanut butter factories get their peanuts to make like hundreds and thousands of jars to be distributed and sold in numerous supermarkets.  Did they really use peanuts?  Oh please tell me they did...

Not Feng Shui! - A True Blue Story Revisited

This is the sequel of this story which I posted in my previous blog posts.  Well, personally, I really hope this is the last part and I think it should be (maybe I should call it 'Not Feng Shui! - The Final ... just kidding haha) because... well you'll know if you read it.  Besides, all this is getting old and I just wanna get over with it.

About more than a month has passed since the whole incident.  Everything really seemed to be normal.  Everybody, especially my brother, was feeling better.  After my brother's birthday, we headed out of town again to seek the chiropractic treatment.  We were there for 5 days and 4 nights and I found something interesting there.

All was good until recently when my brother started to feel weak and breathless again.  This time, we knew that it was definitely some spiritual disturbance again because my brother had no physical reason to be sick.  If it were something he ate, we would all be sick because we share the food we eat every meal!  My mom then asked my brother when he started to feel his sickness.  He then said that it came overnight.  We were all puzzled.  After a bit of thinking and recalling, my brother then realized that that sickly feeling always came after he used his laptop.  He also recalled that it was also after he bought that laptop that the whole spiritual incident started to happen.  And besides, he never felt good using that laptop.  He never even wanted to buy it in the first place but he had to because it had a slot for wireless modems.  Now that he's not using the wireless modem anymore because we're using an external modem for better a faster Internet connection, he felt like getting rid of it.  But all we could think of were speculations.  We still need confirmation.

So mom decided to consult the psychic about this.  That psychic said that there was a spirit of a guy disturbing my brother.  That spirit likes the laptop that my brother used.  He also said that, in spiritual terms, my brother's frequency somehow matches that laptop's frequency.  And whenever my brother uses that laptop, it triggers certain other frequency that attracts spirits.  He also added that the spirit of the guy of that laptop was always displeased with my brother using that laptop because he claims that laptop to be his and my brother using it was actually snatching it from him disturbs my brother for it.  Then my mom asked the psychic why I don't feel the same when I use that laptop.  The psychic then answered, in spiritual terms again, that my brother is more vulnerable for that spirit compared to me.  That's why I don't feel anything when I use that laptop.  Then he summarized that in my brother's case, that laptop served as some sort of gateway for spirit attraction and it would be best if he got rid of it ASAP.

Finally, the mystery was unfolded for real.  After about 5 months of our stay at that apartment at the uneasy ground, my brother bought that laptop.  After that, things started to happen.  This time we really believed it was caused by that laptop and were sure blaming the laptop wasn't creating a false cause fallacy.  Then it was completely logical that my brother using that laptop attracted all the spirits into out home because a 'gateway' was created every time my brother used that laptop.  And then when we moved to our current home, my brother felt okay when he chucked that laptop out of his room downstairs and used our other laptop.  So all in all, everything started with that laptop!

We decided to get rid of the laptop.  There, we paused a sec.  It's a laptop.  Something more expensive than twice the whole load of Feng Shui stuff we threw away due to what that it caused.  So we thought of giving it away instead.  But what if someone got 'lucky' to get a laptop out of the blue and get a queue of spirits after that?  Finally, we decided to give it to a friend of the psychic who also happened to be psychic because we figured that if the laptop starts acting up again, he'll know what to do.

Now that the laptop is gone, my brother seems more free, as in no more 'disturbances' kinda free.  He bought a desktop PC with Windows Vista and a fast 2GHz RAM and is pretty happy working with it.  I hope he stays like that.

Spiritual things really are unpredictable for us normal non-psychic humans.  Sometimes they are already there when you don't even know that it's there!  It can haunt you, swing your mood round the clock, change your diet, even change your looks for some serious cases!  However, humans can train to be more powerful to overcome them.  Even if they don't train, they can chant a protector chant that calls upon a protector that the spirits fear.  But nowadays, people are just too busy to even talk.  So if that's the case, at least try not to have a confused or an uneasy heart because that's what makes people vulnerable to hauntings.  That's about what the psychic said.

Oh and by the way, be careful when buying a laptop.

Although it looks like a good idea to have such a laptop skin like that one, it is not advisable because you can't paste talismans anywhere you like without consulting a taoist or a talisman expert.  I made that laptop skin just for fun.  Haha...

Top 10 Ways On How To Learn Correct English

English was, is and, I think, always known as an international language.  Wherever you go, you're gonna need it somehow.  So English is indispensable especially for those who wish to travel.  For me, English ain't a problem.  (If not I won't be able to type all the blog posts I have so far)  But for those out there who are trying hard to learn English, or those like me but still seek English reference once a while, I've written this post of 10 ways to learn correct English specially for them.  Okay! Let's start the count!

1. Buy a bilingual dictionary that translates words in your language to English and vice-versa and start reading it.
2. If you are a beginner (I actually mean noob kind of beginner but I just wanted to save the offense), start recognizing and trying to read simple English words wherever you go.  Start with 3-letter English words and slowly increase the length as you get more familiar with English words.  This helps builds basic English vocabulary.  If you come across a word that you don't know, refer to your bilingual dictionary or ask someone who knows to teach you about that word.
3. Join English classes.  It helps a lot more when there's someone there to teach you and others to discuss with.  But you have to be careful because some English teachers are not qualified to teach English and may even make English mistakes and teach wrong things about English.
4. Read, read, read.  Look for anything like books, magazine, ads and product labels written in English and read them.  Reading English can help you know more about the structure of the language and its grammar.  This can also give you a boost in English vocabulary.
5. Listen to lots of English speeches.  You can watch English movies, play English video games or even catch English advertisements on TV. When you are listening to them, pay attention to pronunciation and intonation. Make sure you pick a media that has a level of English that suits you.  For starters, pick the easy ones first.  During your free time, test yourself by asking yourself how to say words and phrases in English.
6. Practice your English often.  Try forming sentences in English and say them out.  If possible, converse with them.  Don't be shy about making mistakes or afraid of making a fool out of yourself.  Just do your best.  It's okay to make mistake because you can learn better through experience and mistakes.
7. Do not do direct translation when learning how to form English speeches or phrases.  English grammar may differ from grammar of other languages.  Direct translating can cause English sentences to sound awkward, be grammatically wrong or give your listeners the wrong meaning of what you want to say.
8. When you are already good at basic English, you can start going into advanced English by picking books written in more advanced English.  Although English poetry is a good English reading material, I don't really recommend it because some contain archaic English that may seem confusing to readers especially those who are not very familiar with English.
9. Have English references like notes, reference books or online websites or blogs that provide explanations and examples about English grammar like this one.  Although you seem like you know a part of English grammar correctly, it is always better to seek reference to make sure what you know is really correct.  This can boost your confidence in English and capability of committing English grammar to memory.
10. Teach others English.  This only applies to those who are very good at English.  When teaching others who are weaker than you in English, you might discover a thing or two about English that you can be unsure of that you missed when learning English.  This is twofold because this way, you can help others avoid making such mistakes and at the same time, learn something new for yourself.

There you have it!  Learning new languages is always difficult at first but once you get used to it, it's actually kinda fun.  Hope this helps those who want to learn English.

A Spider's Diet - To Eat Or Not To Eat

Things are so far so good since the day my family moved to the current house we are staying in.  But unlike living in apartments, there is one uncomfortable difference - BUGS.  Well unlike apartments, houses are ground-leveled.  And because of that, bugs from all around can enter our house.  Now we get more mosquitoes, 24-7, ants, flies and even spiders - big ones!

A few days ago, my mom spotted a spider in the living room clenching something.  I went to check it out and there it was with it's catch of the day.  It actually caught a fly about its size but it wasn't eating it.  I seldom see spiders with such a big achievement and was actually feeling lucky to see one so I decided to snap a picture of it.

For people who get goosebumps at the sight of bugs, this might probably make their hairs stand on ends as well and probably think of this spider when they are having their meals.  Haha... don't sweat it.  I know it looks creepy at that size but actually it's really not that.  Sometimes things give different impressions when they are in different sizes.  That's what I thought so I decided to take a close up picture of it.

If you see it as-is, it still seems small.  The origninal size of this picture is 848x558 pixels.  The white spot on top of it is the reflection of the living room light on the ceiling.  But anyway, just look at this furry little itsy-bitsy cutie.  It was having part of the fly between it's mandibles when it looked up at my camera for a snapshot.  You can actually see it's 2 front compound eyes looking innocently at you.  What a pose for a bug!

After I took its picture, it crawled away to the corner of the living room.  My mom and I thought, "The fly is almost as big as it is.  How's it gonna eat they fly?"  That actually gave me a funny imagination of what that spider would look like if it really DID swallow the whole fly.  But my mom and I really didn't know what was gonna happen next.  Probably that spider was also going through its worst predicament in its life.  To eat or not to eat.....  

The next day, when I was sweeping the floor, I found the fly on the floor of that corner of my living room.  The spider was nowhere to be found.  I guess it took the bitter better choice.

A Gingerbread Castle! Food Lovers' Fantasy Dream Come True?!

It's those trips out of town again.  Well, if you have read my previous posts about my spiritual supernatural 'Not Feng Shui' experience, you'll know that my family and I travel out of town once a while to seek a Taiwanese chiropractor.  During my last trip, we stayed at the same hotel we stayed during out last last trip.  This time something in the lobby caught my eye.  It's so big I practically caught everyone's eyes!  Well, here it is.

'Tis THE season again.  When the Christmas spirit is in the air and in everyone's heart including those of the people of the hotel management.  I guess that is why they came up with this brilliant idea.  According to the hotel newsletter, it's called the Gingerbread House.  Personally, I think they should call it The Bread Barracks.  It is made for a special event that is going to be held at the hotel at the end of this year in conjunction with Christmas.  There will be Carol singers and obviously, Christmas goodies and treats  (the gingerbread theme gave that away for me).  The goodies will be prepared by the hotel's top chefs.

They finished it a little too early for the event and as you can see they enclosed the gingerbread house within red and white no-entry lines and pasted 'Do not touch!" signs all over it.  Ask my why they did it early, I would say that they probably want to catch people's attention about what's going on in the hotel.  I actually wanted to take a video of it but I was too busy.  The gingerbread house has a window, like in the picture, a door on the opposite side of that view and 2 windows each on the other 2 sides.  It reminded my mom of the candy house in the "Hansel and Gretel" story.  (that got me thinking if the hotel management's gonna put a kid-eating witch in there. Haha...)  But anyway, I must say it's indeed one of the unique one-of-a kind landmarks I've seen throughout my entire life.  You'll know why when I tell you how its made.

Well, I didn't actually see it in the making but I did a really good close-up analysis on it (even with the no-entry lines and 'Do not touch' signs).  Of course, at first sight, I wouldn't believe that it really is made of bread even though the walls really look like bread.  The baker in charge even poked holes in it to not let the wall pieces rise when they are baked.  The holes seem like enough proof but did they really bake all those to build their gingerbread house?

So I just have to have proof.  But...

...says the sign!  You know what?....

...Touched it anyway.  The hell with the sign.  I took a pinch at one of the walls of the gingerbread house.  It really was bread-like.  The texture was soft and rather moist and compact and it kinda crumbles when you try to tear it.  The pinch I made there in the picture left a tiny piece halfway pried.  And as a result, I could see what was behind the bread.  Behind the bread was some hardened cream (the white ooze in the picture) and hard dark jelly.  This really could be bread!  The bread actually made up only a thin layer of the walls of that house.  It layered the real foundation of the building which I think was made of wood.

As far as I know, bread can't last that long unless it is made for special purposes to last.  Trust me, I know.  Bread was practically my trademark food when I was at school.  I ate bread everyday when I was at school and even had bread almost every recess.  Normal edible bread is spongy when fresh, hard when left for 2-3 days and emits an alcoholic smell, and gets moldy after a week or so.  So the bread of that house is different.  It doesn't smell and it's not moldy.  I bet it was already there before my family and I went there for our 5-day stay.

Okay.  Now I'm convinced.  It IS a bread house.  But something is still missing.  So when I got back home, I googled that hotel's name together with "gingerbread house" and hit something.  It turned out that someone else had already posted about this gingerbread house in a blog in December 2007.  That post was about the hotel's event of selling cookes for Christmas at a main attraction - The Gingerbread House.  Oh... so that hotel holds that special event every year with the same gingerbread house!  I wonder if they re-patch their gingerbread house walls with fresh bread every year...

Well, like what everyone says, festive seasons are special and full of surprises.  That makes everyone have the magical feeling when that time comes.  And I guess that's what makes people love festive season so much and can't wait for them all year!

There is still one more thing about that Gingerbread House.  Now that I know it's really bread-walled but is it really ginger-flavored?  Nobody knows except for the bakers who made it.  I didn't want to find out because after finding out about it, no way I'm taking a bite off that thing!

Not Feng Shui - A True Blue Story, Seriously! Part-4

Read Part 1 here: Not Feng Shui - A True Blue Story, Seriously! Part-1

Read Part 2 here: Not Feng Shui - A True Blue Story, Seriously! Part-2

Read Part 3 here: Not Feng Shui - A True Blue Story, Seriously! Part-3

After trashing 400 buck overnight, my family and I thought that now that the source of our misery had been gotten rid off for good, things are gonna be good for real this time.  Well, things really did start to get better.  I was able to sleep peacefully and my brother became a more cheerful like his old self.  Mom's knee was still aching.  We thought that was nothing because she used to complain about knee aches years ago.  So we hoped that it can recover now that there are no more 'disturbances'.  But if nothing else happened after that, I wouldn't have typed a "Not Feng Shui - A True Blue Story, Seriously! Part-4", right?

Throughout the few days after throwing away all the Feng Shui items, dad started acting up.  We frequently acted like a mean badass when actually he had the wrong points about things all the time.  My mom's knee ached.  Mom said there definitely was something wrong as her knee would recover after taking supplements for three days.  Then my brother complained about his ankle being swollen and feeling discomfort in his lower abdomen.  But this time, he had more conscience in him and did suspect that it was still some spirit at work.  As for me, although I slept better at night, I would wake up like a bear with a sore head and start getting a little moody at little things.  I could sense something but it just couldn't be.  All the haunted objects were gone but things just got a little better but didn't go back to normal.  Since day one of our haunting, we had somehow become experienced in this.  We knew there was still something wrong so mom suggested meeting with the psychic again.  I didn't go because I thought I was fine now that I could fall asleep properly.

It was a morning when my brother and parent went to meet the psychic once more.  During the meeting, the psychic revealed that all 4 of us were tainted.  For my brother and my parents, he said that it happened when dad opened the pagoda and let out all the dirt.  That sort of released whatever was occupying the pagoda.  That thing affected my brother and mom and the residue made a direct hit at my dad since he was the one that opened the pagoda. That caused him to have a black patch in front of his face, according to what the psychic saw.  I wasn't there when the pagoda was opened so my case was definitely something else.  According to the psychic, I was followed by an Iban girl and I had to do the regular drill and offer what she asked for.  The psychic sure is something.  He could even see what's wrong with me without even seeing me!  Anyway, the Iban girl asked for "Kolo Kueh Tiau" which is actually something similar to fried spaghetti.  My brother called me to tell me as soon as the psychic told him and my parents about it.  I'll get to my case later on.

For my brother and parents, they had to make some offerings.  The psychic also told us to bath floral water to cleanse ourselves.  Making the offerings took whole morning.  A tiny part of it was actually about dad being scolded for being such a troublemaker.  After making the offerings, mom's knee recovered like magic.  Brother's discomfort in his lower gut and ankles were gone.  Dad just had to take the floral bath to rid himself off the 'dark cloud'.  At the time my brother told me about the Iban girl, it made me remember 2 dreams I had about a week from then and they were about an Iban girl.  I wasn't sure if it was the same Iban girl but here's what it was all about.  In the first dream, I dreamed about an Iban girl came to me telling me that she was ill and wanted my help on how to eat to get healthy.  I then told her to eat more vegetables with rice and less meat.  In the second dream, it was like a second meet-up with her.  I asked her if she was fine and she told me that she smoked.

When my parents and brother came home that morning after making the offerings, I told my mom about the 2 dreams I had about an Iban girl.  Come to think of it, my case was like my brother's case about him dreaming about a guy telling him that he was being helped with gaining profits (that can be found in part 2).  My mom strongly suspected that it was the same Iban girl.  At that time, the dream was still quite clear to me and I could describe almost every single detail of that girl.  She was no doubt not an adult.  She looked like she was in her teens.   She had short, curly hair and, if I wasn't mistaken, also wearing glasses.  She looked a lot like a schoolmate of my back at high school but I was sure it wasn't really her.  Mom couldn't ask the psychic about my dream because the he had a busy schedule that afternoon.  So we decided to ask him the following day.  That evening, I just offered the Kolo Kueh Tiau like what the psychic told me to do.

Come to think of it, I got really puzzled by 3 things.  First, that girl couldn't have come from the pagoda. I had those dreams days before that pagoda got discarded.  Then if it really was something from the pagoda, the psychic would have spotted it without even looking at my palms the first time he saw me.  Second, I couldn't figure out when she started haunting me.  I was guessing it was quite recent at that time but I just couldn't be sure.  And third, why did she ask for my help?  Those really made me feel uneasy.  The next day, I actually thought of approaching the psychic to tell him my dream and ask him myself but mom said it wasn't necessary since he could detect the presence of the Iban girl without even seeing me.  So I just stayed while my mom went to see the psychic.  The psychic confirmed that it was the same girl in the dream that followed me.  He said she was really ill and she asked for a flu tonic and a bowl of rice with some cabbage.  So we went to a Chinese drug store to get the tonic and prepared the dish and offered it to her right at the spot where I offered her the Kolo Kueh Tiau.  I didn't know if that really sufficed but it seemed pretty clear that it would.

A few days after all that, my brother went to meditate again.  This time I went along because those three things about the Iban girl were still bugging me.  When I asked the psychic when she started haunting me and where it started, he said that she was too far to be traced and wasn't really worth knowing now that she's gone.  He had a point there so I just chucked that aside.  Then I asked him why she came to me for help.  The psychic said it was just a bad coincidence - like being picked by a snatch-thief to lose a handbag to.  So I came to a conclusion that it really wasn't anything big about it.  I just got unlucky.  And besides that, spirits like to take advantage of an uneasy heart.

From the first day all this started, I kept feeling worried about my family when I saw that they weren't like themselves.  I tried all I could to help them but I just end up failing or getting backfired.  All I could do was stand by hopelessly and watch them get more and more miserable day after day.  That made me develop an uneasy feeling in my heart that often affected my thoughts leaving me vulnerable to spirits.  I guess the Iban girl saw that part of me and worked on that.

So things are now really back to normal.  Oh and one evening my brother even brought his laptop with him to meditate to get it checked by the psychic because he always felt that his head was heavy when using it especially when looking at the screen.  The psychic said that there was a spirit of a Malay woman in that laptop.  He also said that that spirit nested in the laptop recently and it's form was only about the size of a thumb.  So he helped my brother get rid of it by chanting something while waving 3 joss-sticks over the laptop.  Then he told us that electronics, even CDs can get haunted.  And to keep them from coming, he advised us to stick some shiny red stickers on our belongings.  Besides, he also advised us to pray more often to sort of keep up our spirits so that the ghostly spirits don't get a chance at us.

So far, the house that I'm living in seems fine.  Life's got pretty normal already and we pray more often.  For those out there who read my story, I swear this is 100% true even though I don't reveal most of the names of the people involved, especially about the uneasy ground apartments and hauntings of stuff and of course the 400-buck trash too.  The reason why I'm typing this is because I just wanna wrap this whole thing up and dump it somewhere and get over with it as a thing of the past and never look back at it again.  Besides, this is also for you guys out there who are into Feng Shui objects.  BE CAREFUL.  You may not believe me but I'm speaking from experience here.  There ain't no such thing as Feng Shui objects that make Feng Shui better.  They are just for marketing purposes.  But if you really can't resist yourselves from buying those attractive stuff, make sure they are not mojo-ed through some ritual.

Well, that's about my tale.  - Fin - 

Read Part 1 here: Not Feng Shui - A True Blue Story, Seriously! Part-1

Read Part 2 here: Not Feng Shui - A True Blue Story, Seriously! Part-2

Read Part 3 here: Not Feng Shui - A True Blue Story, Seriously! Part-3