Yeoh Siew Hoon meets a handwriting expert in Bali and is told some home truths -

I have had my fortune told, my birth date and my stars read but I have to confess, I've never had my handwriting analysed.Until last weekend in Bali when I met Malcolm McLeod, who's known as Australia's #1 handwriting expert and who was the speaker brought in to motivate participants at the WORLDHOTELS conference in Bali last week.

As part of his presentation, McLeod, a former officer with the Queensland police, analyses the handwriting and signatures of delegates by getting them to write on a whiteboard. He does a pretty good job of getting the audience involved and keeping them interested in his 60-minute show.

McLeod taking a break from handwriting analysis in Bali

McLeod believes that your handwriting is the window to the real you – if your handwriting has lots of squiggles at the bottom, well, apparently you are a sexual athlete.

For some reason, that was the only bit that stuck in my mind.

He also believes that to take charge of our lives, we need to revisit our signature. As he puts it, "A great catalyst for a positive personal shake-up is to make 
an intentional change to your signature."

Some people, he says, have not changed their signature for 20 years which might mean that their view of the world is rather outdated.

So if you have a scribbled signature, it shows you have a fast mind – it could also be construed as arrogance – ie someone who says, "My time is more important than yours so work out yourself what I'm trying to say."

If you only use the first initial and surname, then you tend to sit on the fence emotionally. And if you put a full stop between your surname and first name, well, then you have a Jekyll and Hyde character.

One would think that being a handwriting expert is a bit of an endangered profession, just like the postman – after all, very few of us write these days. We type, we text and we touch but we don't write much today – imagine kids growing up today straight into the world of ebooks and touch-screen devices. My friend's two-year daughter, whenever she sees a screen, touches it, expecting it to "play" with her.

The only writing I do are the scribbles I make when taking notes. Nobody can read my writing, even me.

But Malcolm apparently can read not only my handwriting but also my character. At a dinner in Metis, the new restaurant-to-be-at in Bali, he took me to a corner, removed my notebook from my grasp and launched into his character analysis or should we call it assassination?

I had it recorded since I couldn't take notes in my notebook but essentially this is what he said of me. (I have to tone it down somewhat because Malcolm, being an Australian, is rather colourful with the English language.)

My head rules my heart. I am slow to share my true self. It takes a long time to get to know me. I work hard but I work dumb. I over-clutter my life with too much fluff. I am restless. The grass is always greener on the other side. I lie awake all night, I toss and turn with ideas. I am a sexy girl when I want to be and I am not when I don't want to be. I am a selfish b…. I am clever, sometimes too clever that nobody understands what the hell I am talking about and so I should dumb down.

Other than that, he says, I am a nice girl and he loves me.

Yeoh Siew Hoon, one of Asia's most respected travel editors and commentators, writes a regular column on news, trends and issues in the hospitality industry for 4Hoteliers.com.

Siew Hoon, who has covered the tourism industry in Asia/Pacific for the past 20 years, runs SHY Ventures Pte Ltd. Her other writings can be found at www.thetransitcafe.com

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