Living with Feng Shui

These days Oriental culture is in fashion. Occidental people want to prove a new way to live, a new option to make their lives more comfortable and cosy. It is in our cities, around us. The main point is harmony. We must be in harmony with ourselves, among us and with the environment. A practice, that is now taking new followers, is Feng Shui. The origin was in China and it interprets time and space energy flows in the nature for ensuring the harmony of human constructions with the environment. Basis for feng shui recognize several origins.

This practice believes in the existence of a vital breath or chi and it is altered substantially by the shape and position, cardinal points and temporary changes. If we move that to our life, we must study the structure of our house and the position in the street, locations of rooms and the furniture. For instance, when we choose a house, we have to take into account several questions: the floor of the house has to be at the same level to the street, regular shapes are better than irregular. If we have a terraced house, it can't be too high or too low, we must avoid corners and roofs to our house, the front door has to have a favourable measure, the kitchen and the bathroom can't be in the middle of the house or flat…This practice takes care for all details around us to put in order our house, from the structure to where we must place the oven. Every thing has its place and its time, because it thinks we mustn't keep very old things at home and for that reason, sometimes, we have to throw away old things to let new things come in.

It's an interesting way to live but very stressing if we are too strict with rules, because you can feel very well at your home with a mirror, the position of a wall, or a room without feng shui. But when you visit a house or an apartment of a follower of this practice, it’s a very pleasant feeling because every thing seems in its place, it’s very curious. I don’t know, maybe I will have to start to practice, why not?

The Battle for a Mortgage

On 1^st April of 2007, The New York Times published an article about mortgages. The author of the article, Christine Haughney, tells us what it happens in New York when you want to buy a house. I thought that if you had a high salary (with six-figure salary) you would have more facilities to borrow money from banks. But, it seems that in recent weeks, it has begun to be very difficult, because lenders try to stem losses from loans to the weakest borrowers. Of course, lenders always lend money when they don’t loose anything, but it’s curious that they try to make up for money with high level people. You could think that it’s a justice question.

But if you continue reading the article, you realize that it isn’t the question. The problem is new lending requirements and the kind of payer. Basically, banks say: ‘You are going to pay the piper for any little mistake’. I mean, for instance, delays in their mortgage applications. Then, when New Yorkers want to have a mortgage, potential problems are low credit scores, high credit-card balances or listing a suspiciously high salary for a given job. And these things aren’t a problem for rich people, but it’s a problem for people with a high salary. The main point is that they have a not bad salary, their mortgage brokers have problems to negotiate the deal, and if this kind of people have problems, what happens with medium salaries? Is it impossible to buy a flat without a six-figure salary? Now, in New York seems impossible, but I think we could have the same discussion here, maybe without the figure of mortgage broker, only the bank.