Just came back from Frankfurt's PaperWorld and Tokyo's Gift Show. A continuous trip to two different time zones did worn me out a bit, yet new stuffs I discovered and experienced helps to focus my energy positively. This is so important. If I were to travel that much just for work and never took opportunities to see things I chose to see, my body simply could not cope with the sheer volume of activities.
"To have faith is to be sure of the things we have, to be certain of the things we cannot see". A Bible verse I always carry with me to see things beyond and to be grateful of what I already have. Along with the verse, I also carry 3 cameras (a broken digital IXUS, a Polaroid SLR690 and a Rollei 35SE) to give me different eyes to see beyond the obvious. And I'm grateful I always find peace and satisfaction within.
The first instant I saw this Dulton tin truck in Tokyo I immediately fell in love with it. I decided to use it to store some of my daily craft items. I also got this 1952 Volkswagen Beetle for my son, beautiful pastel blue color, he LOVES it! I got these two things from different places but they have one thing in common which I didn't know until I came back to Hong Kong. The license plate on the Dulton truck is "1952"! Magic, I couldn't believe my eyes.
In Frankfurt's airport there were these two things sitting together peacefully. A blue "Smoking area" sign high above and a red "fire alarm" below. They have great color contrast, only if you put these two photos together. Interestingly, "Raucherzone" (a German word for smoking area) and "Feuermelder" (a German word for fire alarm) both have 11 characters, even the English "Smoking area" has 11 characters too. That was 11:27 am when I shot these pictures. Now, what about 27? 2+7=9. "Fire alarm" has 9 characters! Yeah, I know you can explain everything with numerology but that's a good exercise for me too to find connections between things. 11 = smoking area, 27 = 9 = fire alarm and they goes together like I had this idea when I shot the photo with the clock intentionally included behind. Now count the number of characters in "Frankfurt"!
The rest of the trip in Tokyo was meticulous hunting of interesting stuffs for our retail customers. In an antique shop where I get refurbished SX-70 Polaroid cameras (in this photo dozens of naked white SX-70s) they sell old bowling pins too, I took a picture and later at dinner with several colleagues I found 2 of them are bowling enthusiasts.
I stayed in Ebisu, Tokyo as usual. Almost every night I went to this darts bar called "Lani Girl" to play darts with colleagues. Guess what, I've never went to this bar with any guy before, there is a reason why they named it "Lani Girl" you know. So, this concludes my "Connections" post and a fabulous trip too short. I'll be back to Tokyo in July, I hope to extend a few days to discover more. Any of you readers out there wanna meet, let's plant this in our minds and things will happen accordingly.
