A funny man

A funny man | October 7, 2010

One of the investments that I made literally days before the trip was buying a new camera. I started my search after realizing that my camera had somehow vanished. My old Pentax fit comfortably inside a green Altoids can. I guess after years of being easily found within an Altoids can, the miniscule size of the camera was bound to get lost. So I did some quick research. Realized that the camera I wanted was a discontinued Canon G10 and started my search on craigslist. I did not find one in Phoenix but after talking to one of my friends, I was able to locate one in Denver. Now you may wonder, how in the heck am I going to get a camera from Denver into my hands literally days before I leave. Well thanks to some good teamwork from my friends Karen (who is becoming quite a good photographer, become a fan of hers on facebook) who found the camera in CO and my traveling friends Erica and Mariana, who helped traffic my camera back to PHX for me. The whole deal seemed very shady how we handled it but it all worked out for the best 🙂

Now that I am done with that wild tangent here is the camera that I got. I have been having a great time with it so far and hope that I can get some good pics from it this trip.

I decided on my first morning out that I would go to TST and get some pics of the city. The weather was still quite hot and humid on this day. I hate the that combination. I ended up taking a minibus to Jordan not remembering that it could actually take me to my final destination. I ended up walking to a completely new nearby named Austin that has some on HK’s newest and tallest high rises. From there I walked to the harbor at TST which ended up becoming quite a long walk for me that day.

Walking. That is an interesting topic that leads me to another investment that I made on this trip, TOMS! By now i’m sure you have heard of TOMS shoes which is a brand developed by social entrepreneur Blake Mycoskie. For every pair you buy, TOMS donates a pair to a child in need. The idea is quite brilliant I must say. It just makes the customer feel that much better about making their purchase. So for the next 4 weeks, these are my primary mode of transportation. I’ve got no complaints so far. They are light and comfortable. I can’t really ask for more except for an amazing TOMS tan.

The day was a bit cloudy which would turn out to be nice for photos. I never get sick of looking across Victoria Harbor and seeing this sight.

While I was taking some pics of the city, I was approached by a Hindu man in a turban. Well all I knew at first was that he was a man with a turban, I did not realize he was Hindu at first but thats beside the point. He came up to me and said “I can tell you are a funny man.” I kind of laughed it off and said thank you. Then he proceeds to take my hand and start giving me a palm reading. It was quite uncomfortable to have a strange man start giving me a palm reading. To be respectful, I allowed him to do this thing and do his spiel. He said a bunch of stuff that I can’t remember. He stopped touch my forehead which was also weird and then stopped to write something down. I looked down at his feet and he was rocking out these sweet Adidas shoes with rainbow shoelaces, double rainbow all the way across the sky… (if you don’t get that reference watch this), and I told him he had some sweet kicks. He didn’t respond to my comment. Maybe I wasn’t so funny to him which is kind of ironic no? So he finished writing whatever he was writing, crumpled it up and gave it to me. He proceeded to ask me what my favorite color was. I said blue (in hindsight I should have said some ridiculous color like periwinkle). He told me to open the note, and lo and behold it said blue. Creepy huh? He then told me to wear blue from on Fridays from now on and yada yada yada he opened up his little book, saw some pictures of hindu gods in there and he asked for money. So I lied to him and told him I didn’t have money because I just came in the day before. He’s like I don’t care give me your American money. I took out my change purse (don’t make fun of that because it is necessary to have on in hk) and gave him $1 HK dollar (equivalent to a bit more than 10 US cents). He mockingly laughed at me for my generous offering to him. I guess I was funny after all 🙂