Shanghai Bob

I attract lost people.  When I was living in London, people stopped me to ask for directions about twice a day.  I made tally marks until it got to over a hundred requests in the first six weeks, then I stopped keeping track.  I spent a fair amount of time quizzing friends about why it would be that people would ask me in particular.  The first time I was explaining the situation to Manny was when we were waiting for friends at a crowded Picadilly Circus, and in the two minutes that I was talking about it, two people interrupted to ask for directions, nicely illustrating my point.

An acquaintance suggested that the real test would come when I was living in Asia again — would people still ask me?  Last night I was sitting two flights of stairs above the entrance to the XuJiaHui metro station, and an Asian guy walked all the way up to ask me where a certain cafe was.  I counted afterward and there were 57 people in the plaza, including other white guys.  Why did he walk up to ask me?

We were waiting for a light today on Hauihai Road on the way to XinTianDi and this “mannequin” made a face at us, which startled us more than a little.  It’s a real girl.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 12th, 2008 at 10:19 am and is filed under shanghai.