Wrapped Heads

Date: 1996
Place: Hong Kong, HK
Modus operandi: Jet lagged
Weather: Muggy
Time: 3 pm
Gear: Olympus Stylus Quartz
Medium: Kodachrome 64
Me: Awed by the electricity of this special place
My age: 45

There’s nothing good about the flight from LA to Hong Kong, unless you include the lovely Singapore Airlines stewardess waking you with a warm meal and a smile. You arrive so zonked out on jet lag that for the first day or two eveything is strange. Sorround that strangeness with the frenetic pace of the world’s most crowded place and you have a prescription for strangeness. And fun.

These statues were patiently awaiting probably illegal export to some loony collector in New York; long live free trade!

As this really was meant to be a business trip, I restricted my gear to the small, clamshell Olympus Stylus, as sweet a piece as Olympus ever made. When not in use the built-in cover slid over the wide angle lens and the whole thing slipped nicely into a pocket. Or suit. The lens may not have been the greatest – barely better than the one on its predecessor, the Rollei 35 – but it was adequate for little memorabilia like this. And how could anyone resist the wild surrealism of this scene?