say cheese!

god that was scary.

i dont know why, i just had a bad feeling about going to china this time. maybe it was cuz i was alone. or it was something i ate last night (or didn't eat), or i slept the wrong way or something. whatever it was, the moment i left will's apartment...i kept 2nd guessing myself about everything. i kept worrying if i forgot my phone or my keys or my wallet...and on the hk-bus i then started to worry if i had remembered to shut the door or if i forgot to turn the stove off....then i kept double checking my pockets for cash, passport etc....

i had 2 cups of coffee for breakfast and was probably on paranoia jitters until the bowl of wonton noodles helped ease my train ride into shenzhen. at which point i started worrying about the way i looked - my blatant foreign exterior that screams "swindle me". so i changed shirts, took off my earing and tried to look unkempt even though i had shaved earlier in the morning. i got through immigration painlessly and didn't skip a step in finding the bus to hou jie.

i found my bus pickup point and shoved my luggage in the trunk below. without a luggage ticket, i had started to worry a bit, so after i paid for my bus ticket i found a seat on the same side of the luggage compartment to make sure no one would pull a quick one and take my luggage while we waited for more passengers. and just as i started to feel a bit more calm, the ticket lady swings by and takes a picture of me. (will had written me an email saying that bus companies take pictures of passengers "just in case"). i looked over to the neighboring bus and saw the ticket collecter video-camming passengers as they boarded. that had me a bit flipped out, thinking tons of "what ifs" - "what if someone hijacked the bus?" "what if the bus got into an accident and flipped over?", "what if i got on the wrong bus?", "what if someone took my luggage during the elapsed time of me storing the luggage away below and actually sitting down above?"

it's not like i've never been to china before or worse places...it's not like i didn't know what to expect or how to take care of myself. it's just that i had a bad feeling today...but since i'm sitting at the hotel lobby having a johnny walker.....i feel much much better.