publications in Singapore. Small staff in editorial, big staff in the ad sales department.’
‘Is Dudley Singh real?’
‘Dudley Singh is real and so is Susannah Lo. You Westerners say many hands, light work. We Singaporeans say few hands, many profits.’ He gave a theatrical frown. ‘But sadly not so in this case. Never mind. Your Mr Wong I hope will help in this regard. Oh, do please excuse me. I shall be right back.’ The helmet-haired woman was waving at him through an internal window. He scurried off to take a phone call.
Wong had already sketched out a rough chart and was examining it with puzzlement. This assignment, which he had believed would be the easiest of the month, had turned into a challenge. How could an office he had already done, and counted as a success, have turned into such a financial flop? There must be something dramatically wrong with timing. Lo shu charts should provide the answer. But first, he must check the basic shape and direction of the premises.
As he pored over the floor plan, Joyce made an announcement, evidently feeling the need to make amends. ‘Hey, here’s something I can do for you. You need to find the middle first, right? Difficult because the office is such a weird shape with the curved window and that L-shaped bit that goes towards the lift, right? Well, I can calculate the middle of a complex rhomboid. I learned it in geometry. You gotta calculator?’ She held out her hand.
Wong just looked at her.
‘Okay, no calculator, huh? Never mind. I can borrow one from B K’s secretary.’
‘Mr Tin.’
‘Yeah.’
She returned two minutes later with a desk calculator from the accountant’s room and sat down in Tin’s leather seat at the head of the conference table. ‘Lemme see. You measure the sides of these bits first, and then . . .’ The young woman was relatively silent for the next ten minutes as she sat with her tongue caught between her teeth and covered a sheet of paper with scribbled calculations.
‘Bloody difficult, because of this curved bit,’ she said. ‘Hang on a mo. Hmm. Three point five. Plus a half . . .’
Another five minutes of scribbled calculations flowed. At last, she sat back and surveyed her handiwork with pride. ‘I think the middle is sort of here. Or maybe a bit this way. Hey, what are you doing?’
She looked up to see the old geomancer had cut a piece of cardboard into the shape of the floor plan. He held up a pencil and attempted to balance the card on it. After a few attempts, he found the point at which the card stayed balanced on the tip of the pencil lead. ‘Here is the middle of the premises,’ he said.
Joyce looked deflated. ‘Oh. Right. Yeah, I suppose that’s a quicker way of doing it.’
She compared the middle of the room, according to his pencil-balancing method, with her own result. ‘Well, I was nearly right, sort of, well not too far out, I guess, anyway, I was in the same sort of bit. Think I’ll go and get some Coke from the machine, want some? No? Whatever.’
Wong soon lost himself in his most arcane charts, studying floor plans, consulting almanacs, taking measurements, taking light readings, taking magnetic readings, examining what was outside the windows, going through each room carefully to make sketches. He drew more than a dozen lo shu charts.
Tin, in an interlude between his endless phone calls, re-entered the room and carefully explained the activities of the office. ‘The writers, artists and so on are in that space over there, because it is supposedly the most creative. Dudley is the chief there. The pages, once read by the proofreaders, are taken to the Sam Long Output Centre, two floors down, for processing by my deputy, Susannah Lo, who is also production editor. We bring each plate back here when ready to go. The final camera-ready pages are prepared by 1.15 p.m. exactly, the day before distribution, which is when it goes to the printers. Hollis News Retail distributes them, largely through its own outlets. Money from dealers, subscribers and advertisers is all dealt with in that little room there. The previous tenants told us that is supposedly the best place for attracting gold and holding on to it, in feng shui terms.’
‘Your office design is correct,’ said Wong. ‘It fits with what I said on my earlier reading of the room. For the previous tenant. What exactly is the