Confessions of a Corporate Shopaholic

I love the city during this past Easter weekend.  A big part of the population was gone vacationing somewhere and what’s left was an adorable quiet city at a much slower pace everywhere.  Add on the light spring breeze and a hint of sunshine, I am falling in love with Hong Kong all over again.

On Friday I picked a normally bustling Starbucks in Central and found that the place was completely deserted, at 1pm in the afternoon.  I almost cried out for joy.  I picked up my usual venti cappuccino, grabbed all the male fashion magazines I could find, and picked the best sofa to lounge myself away.  Half hour later, an Indian fellow wearing a white shirt, a big gold pendant around his neck, and khaki pants (I believe) walked by where I was sitting with a big smile and saying “Congratulations my friend.”   Normally if I were on the streets, I would have headed off without a doubt.  But I was trapped.  There was nowhere for me to run and I kind of hesitated to get out of my heavenly seat.  Plus, I was in a public place with witnesses.  I took a mental note of where my belongings were and got myself prepared for the worst.

“Pardon me?” I asked.

“My friend, I just want to congratulate you today.  You are a lucky man.” “May I sit down?” He pointed to the seat next to me and invited himself to sit down.

“Errr….I guess.”  I reluctantly replied.  You get the drift of what happened next.  He then went on saying that he was from Singapore, showed me a picture of his “master” from his filofax, and told me 3 great things will be heading my way in May.  My work is going to be much better, my love life is going to be eventful with multiple people loving me (I can’t help giggling even when I’m writing this now), and I’m going to make a lot more money.  He gave me a small crumpled-up yellow paper knot, told me to hold on to it while asking me how many siblings I have in my family, and my favorite color.  After he wrote down what I said, he asked me to unroll the crumpled yellow paper to reveal exactly the same answers I provided to him.  To be honest, I wasn’t really that surprised at all, perhaps due to the all-too-predictable setup.

I wonder how he was going to wrap this up.  He opened his filofax, asked me to return the yellow piece of paper with his predicted answers in it, and said “If you could put in some money for your good luck.”  Alright, the secrets of the trick were finally revealed.   “$100 or $200 would be enough,” he said.  No to hell would I give him $100, but I was prepared to reward him with something for the time and entertainment he had provided.  “You have $30 more?”  He asked seeing the $20 note I was putting in.  I gave him my biggest and brightest smile with a no, and I thanked him for the 10 minute spectacle.

After this self-proclaimed psychic walked out, a tall caucasian man sitting opposite me approached.  I almost thought there was part 2.  “Hey I am just curious to find out what he said,” the man shared.  “I ran into someone similar somewhere before and he could name my dog’s name.  I felt that was spooky then.  And by the way you seem totally calm and in control of the whole thing.”  I replied saying that I just found the whole encounter entertaining.

It was surely unanticipated entertainment of an otherwise quiet Good Friday.  My friends are amazed with how generous I was with a scam artist, but I really had nowhere to run at the time.  Plus I know I am a rational minded person and I made a quick assessment of the worst case scenario right when he started to sit down.  I seriously paid little attention to his predictions at all, but as I told my friends, 3 great things coming my way are way better than him telling me I have only one month to live.

Guess I see a silver lining to everything, huh?