Camera

During our trip to Asia I eventually got sick of taking self-portraits of us, where I hold the camera out in front and aim it backwards, and then, thanks to a miracle of perspective and proportion, a nice picture comes out. We would be standing in front of any kind of vista or open window or body of water, and L would thrust the camera towards me and say, "here, take one of your pictures." Gradually I became self-conscious doing it, especially when there were other English-speaking people around, because I feared that it made us look weird and untrusting. Sometimes people would stand nearby sort of expectantly, ready to engage in the tacit tourist pact where someone asks you to take their picture, with a subtext of "...and please don't run away with my camera," and then you actually do it and give it back. Being the antisocial misanthropes we are, we rejected this whole thing and just did it ourselves. Because otherwise we would have spent the whole trip apologizing extravagantly for interrupting other tourists from their sightseeing, and then discreetly wiping the camera down with Purel after those dirty Europeans returned it to us.

Also, here you can see that L and I basically have the same glasses, since we got the his 'n' hers versions. Stateside we are careful to avoid wearing them at the same time, since we've already started dressing in a dangerously similar fashion ("Hey, you're wearing Gap jeans, Reef brand flips, and a North Face fleece over a t-shirt? Me too!" "Ha ha! How white does it get!"). But eventually we realized that of all the reasons the local Asian people would be laughing at us, identical eyewear is probably not at the top of the list.

Finally, I like this photo because I feel like it tells a nice story as you read it left to right: first you see a pretty mountain backdrop, then you see L looking all cute and happy to be there, and then your eye keeps moving to find me apparently asleep and completely disinterested -- I think it's kind of funny.