One of the truly hidden pleasures of travelling [for me] is experiencing new strange and weird people of the world. Only when you travel do the real freaks and oddities begin to seep out of the woodwork and slide into the limelight. In reality, these people are hidden to the native citizens of that land you have travelled to. They are ghosts to them; and only visible to those with special powers or abilities - or in this case, travellers.

And just like ghosts, there is always a strange, unexplainable inability to get your camera prepared to take a photo in time to capture them on film. Perhaps it’s for the better - I read a story in the Toronto Star about a fellow from South Dakota who happened to capture such a an ‘oddity’ in Manhattan. Moments after snapping a photo with his point and shoot disposible camera, a black van arrived and sneering dark-suited government agents jumped out, smashed his camera on the sidewalk, and then drove away. It seems he had flown too close to the sun with wax wings.

That could have also been a fever-induced dream. I can’t remember.

There are certainly stranger things that have happened in this world today. Upon my return to the lab this morning my desk was mysteriously covered in unused inkjet printer cartridges, along with a sheet of paper that had “5013” boldly written on it and underlined twice. Why twice?