Tree of Life

The refurbishment is now in the finishing up stage...another 2 - 3 days for completion. Unfortunately, the builders have other assignments to attend to, so no significant progress has been made yesterday, but things should start to pick up again tomorrow.

The tiling in the kitchen has been almost completed on Monday, with green/ivory colored marbles. They've somewhat modernized the kitchen.

And...the decorative tiles from Istanbul is fixed on the bathroom wall! The painting on the tiles is called "Tree of Life", and I thought it appropriate to place them on the bathroom wall, where water, the source of all lives are used everyday.

One other thing about the bathroom...I used to manage an office in Taiwan, and as we moved to a new office, I was asked by my Taiwanese staff to bring in the Feng Shui master for the office layout. It took him 2 full hours of careful calculation to lay-out the office...and we did exactly what he has instructed.

It's not that I became the true believer of Feng Shui, but now that I'm introduced to the concept, it's not something I could completely ignore. So, as I was putting together a design for my flat, I searched several Feng Shui websites for the general understanding of what I should avoid.

One thing that I found out along the way was that the location of the bathroom is not a very good one according to Feng Shui. There was no way I could change the location, but there seem to be few things I could do, such as avoiding to locate taps in several points and not moving the toilet. The focal "bad luck" point in the bathroom is where the "Tree of Life" is tiled...and what better shield could I think of to block the bad luck with "Tree of Life"!

Of course, I was not thinking all that when I went to buy "decorative" tiles on one Saturday in Istanbul. I was quite impressed with the tiles on the mosque, and thought it would be nice to have a piece of beauty at home. I also had no idea what colors I wanted my bathroom to be, and imagined that the decorative tiles would dictate me in the right direction. The idea of "protective shield" only came in when I encountered these tiles at the bazaar.

These tiles really dictated the entire color scheme of the bathroom. I decided to choose turquoise color because of the colors that appear on these tiles. I also went nuts on mosaics because I wanted "Tree of Life" to be in the right environment. I didn't think it would fit with the large stone tiles that are more modern and cool. Actually, I didn't want "modern and cool" at all, because I spend too much time at the designer hotels, absolutely beautiful but not "home".

I'm taking holidays starting today until the end of next week for the move. By the end of next week, I should be quite settled in...at least I should be living at "home" as opposed to the rented place.