A Photo Per Day

So awhile back, I tried to write 1 blog post per day for an entire month. I was really satisfied with some of the posts I churned out, but after about 2 weeks my travel/work got to be too much, and I was unable to complete the month. Bummer, though cheers to a 2-week stretch that brought articles on Bangladesh, Islam in Europe, Somalian Cab Drivers, and idiotic haircutters, among many other various nuggets of wisdom dispersed throughout the psychological rantings of someone who clearly has (or had, anyway) too much time on their hands.

Anyway, so that failed. Bummer, though to be fair I did move to Hong Kong about 3 weeks in, and spent 14 hour days working in Denver, gambling in Vegas, and catching up with friends in LA immediately before those 3 weeks...so yeah, was a bit busy.

Why am I recounting this hilarious and disgraceful story of my personal failure, you ask? Well, I have a confession to make. I caved. I swore I wouldn't. I was adamant that it was terrible value for the money. But I finally bought an iPhone. Now before people start predicting for the world to end on December 21, 2012, due to my purchasing an iPhone, let's here the whole story--my phone was starting to get glitchy. My iPod was starting to get glitchy. iPhone 3GS's were only $2,888HK (~$350US) fully unlocked at the Apple store in Hong Kong. So I figured what the hey. Also got a pretty awesome radioactive green iPhone cover for 15 yuan in Dongmen (15 yuan=$2.20 or so).

So what does this have to do with my quest to write one blog post per day? Well turns out the iPhone has a decent-ish camera on it. I've been making use of it so far, and have decided to try to take one photo per day and upload it. Now you're probably saying "well lots of people do that", and you're probably right. But you know why lots of people do that? Because it's a fairly entertaining way of chronicling one's life through a series of photos that will be nice to look back on one day. So before you criticize me for not being original, I encourage you to go to hell for even thinking of such a thing.

So am I a good photographer? Not really. Am I as good a photographer as I am a writer? God no. However, I'm competent enough, and see enough bizarre interesting stuff on a daily basis in China to where I think this is fairly justified, or just me being both arrogant and self-absorbed. Either way.

Anyway, so that's how that's going to go. I'll probably post the photo both on the blog and in the Facebook album appropriately titled "Life", and will probably include a decent little blurb about the photo, maybe an interesting fact or two, on here every day.

So without further ado, today's photo:

This is a photo of Shenzhen City Hall (深圳市民中心), taken from the overpass of what I'm fairly certain is Shennan Blvd...though maybe not. But anyway, taken about 10:30pm, fairly interesting to note how incredibly bright red/orange the sky is due to the innumerable amount of neon lights in the area. As crappy as the photo quality is, please keep in mind it was taken using like a 2.0 megapixel camera.

Brief fact: Shenzhen City Hall is supposed to look like a phoenix's wings rising from the ground. Well, when your city has grown from 0 to 14 million in less than half of an average human lifetime, I guess you can use whatever kind of analogies you want.

Anyway, so that's that, one photo per day. Also should be noted that I'm pretty sure the iPhone was the greatest $350 I ever spent...such a great piece of electronics. For those who read this blog, big thanks, hopefully more to come in the next few days.