Thursday, November 24, 2005

A CHI-nese Attitude!

A conversation that I heard on one of the programmes in Discovery Travel and Living struck a nice-sounding chord within me. The programme – <an adjective like ‘amazing’ or something to that effect> Vacation Homes. One of the places featured was a beautiful vacation home built on a huge mound of rock in a golf-course overlooking beautiful mountains, trees and a big river – overall, a dazzling scene.  The person who owns the house is a Chinese - An energetic, vibrant, cheerful, naughty *OLD* man. :) The programme anchor met up with this remarkable man and took the viewers on a house tour along with the former and in the process they spoke about something interesting – ChiChi is Chinese for Energy! The owner (I unfortunately did not catch the name of this man) went on to explain that the house was designed and built around the concepts of natural energy. For example, the open spaces for relaxing/reading/reclining were facing the direction in which natural energy would supposedly ‘come in’. Hmmm. Interesting! I was completely taken in by the concept because the behaviour of the owner suggested that he had absolutely no shortage of ‘energy’ whatsoever. His attitude was infectious. The anchor, obviously impressed by what he saw, finally asked him “What did you tell your architect that your neighbours should say when they saw your house?”  And the old man paused for a second or two, looked away from the anchor and said with what seemed like a tolerant smile “I don’t think like that. This is what I wanted…………..my way. What others think is another thing!” To which the anchor quickly recovered and said “Ya, that’s the way it should be”  

 

The next scene showed the old man admiring the scene from one of his balconies and telling the anchor “This is God’s painting! Such a beautiful painting! No one can paint like this.....such a huge painting.” Another thing that got me in the same programme was when the anchor asked the old man’s wife as to what kind of a role she had to play in this dream of his, she said “I asked him what he was going to do with a rock and how he would build a house on a huge piece of rock when he told me about buying this area and he simply said “just you wait and see!””.  :)

 

Remarkable man with a great mix of qualities – determination, connoisseurship, self-confidence, enthusiasm, and full of life! :-) And, three cheers to God, the master painter…!!

 

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