“The Flyer was going against the sun and taking fortune away from Singapore.”
Turns out the wheel of fortune was going in the wrong direction after all. Singapore recently made a couple of tweaks to their latest tourist attraction, a local version of the London Eye, upon the advice of feng shui masters who had approached the operator about 4 months ago since the Flyer started revolving.
Currently the world’s largest observation wheel at 165m, the Singapore Flyer was constructed at a cost of US$180 million. Great Wheel Corporation runs the Flyer and develops similar wheels and observation platforms worldwide.
According to feng shui experts, the Flyer is on the perfect site to pick up the good qi (energy) flowing into Singapore. It was originally rising to face the central business centre and descended on the other side overlooking the sea and the eastern part of the island.
This literally meant the wheel was turning its back on Singapore’s financial district, which prides itself as one of Asia’s leading banking and finance hubs. The half-hour ride has now been reconfigured to turn the opposite way since last Monday.
So far this year has been a mixed bag of fortunes for Singapore. After the country’s economy expanded 6.9% for the first 3 months, the government reported economic growth of 1.9% in the 2nd quarter of 2008 from a year earlier. The Flyer started operations in April and had reported that sales crossed the one million mark with half of the tickets sold to tourists and the rest to locals.
The operator declined to elaborate further except that the ‘reversal of fortunes’ was carried out in the region of a 6-figure sum, which includes costs to rebuild sensors in the system and resolve technical complications. So if you thought feng shui was an exotic personal fascination not to be taken seriously, think again.
In terms of attractions, the Singapore Flyer is set to be eclipsed next year by Beijing’s Great Observation Wheel standing tall at 208m (read more on the ‘Significance of 0808‘ in Chinese culture).
