Luck

Last Thursday night, the gals from Hong Kong U and I hit Lang Kwai Fong, where the drinks were free and the bass was pumping. On the way back from a round on the dance floor, I plopped down next to a man in our couch area and started chatting. (My pickup line was so lame, I'm not going to even repeat it here.)I soon discovered that he and his business partner founded a company that buys LED lights manufactured in China and sells them in Uganda and Tanzania as a replacement for dim, smoky, kerosene lighting. But the good tunes just kept coming, so after a few minutes, I ended the conversation by giving him my card and told him to email me. It was an innocent, but genuine gesture-- I thought our environment reporter could do a story on their company.I said goodbye when we left, and that, I thought was that.

When I woke up the next morning, there was a sweet message from him on my phone. So many smses later, I met him and his business partner with the reporter that Saturday. We ran into two groups of other friends (I going to call this Hong Kong luck). and then migrated to Jardin's. I spent 99% of the night talking to him: He's from Tasmania; his father is a tomato farmer who plays classical music to his crop. He wants to sail the world for a few years. All though the night I was thinking how the HELL did I find this guy in Lan Kwai Fong. He's not a banker! He's passionate about his work because it helps people! He's cute! He's kind! He's with me! (This I thought, was beginner's luck. If he was Irish it could be luck of the Irish...)

Well, that was Saturday and this is Thursday. He texted me a few times after he went back to China but then didn't reply to an email I sent. I was a bit bummed about this as I was washing the dishes today. But then I looked down, and the necklace I had been missing since December what lying at my feet. (I don't have a luck term for this. I'm just plain shocked.) I think it must have been caught in the cuff of my sweatpants, which I had just washed, but I'm not sure (So maybe it was dumb luck). I do know that I could have lost it forever if I had taken my clothes to the laundrymat. So within the space of a week, a random man I chatted up in a bar turned out to be a sweet soul, and the necklace I thought I had lost forever reappeared. Whatever kind of serendipity that is, I'm feeling pretty lucky.


Some recent finds:

Jane Hirschfield poem with the Virginia Quartly.

Steven Martin and other readings about home with Pen.

Got this link from Tuyet, her professor from MIT has a blog with links to his design buddies, I clicked on some of the Japanese names, they have very cool pages.

An interview with Maxine Kumin.

Sonya's bags have hit the market, I'm using her onion bag for my grocery bag, and the penguins for yoga.

I had the chance over the past couple of weeks to cut 30 to 50 lines out of some stories for the magazine, it was fun to get down and dirty in the circuitry of the articles. And this New Yorker exhibit of their edit of a Raymond Carver story made me feel like I was part of a grand tradition, even though I was just hacking, and Gordon Lish was performing neurosurgery.

The photo below is of the small shrine outside of my apartment. The man who lives across the way lights the candles everyone once in a while, for luck and good fortune I imagine. Perhaps some of his blessing have been passed on to me.