starting a new book. Pictures of hope by a Hong Kong Drifter

In 2008/9 I was stranded in Hong Kong.  Couldn't go back to Shanghai, couldn't afford the price of a plane ticket to Oregon (home).  39 years old, penniless and stranded.  I had lost everything in Shanghai.  I still had a phone with an 8 megapixle camera (a luxury left over from better times) and I occupied myself, found hope for myself in documenting the wonderful city I was stuck in.  This will be the first picture in the book, which will be basically a collection of photos taken at the time.  Me in the tiny hostel room I rented at first in Tsim Sha Tsui in a shirt I had stolen from a vendor, a self given haircut (with really bad scissors borrowed from the front desk and a beard due to saving funds (no money for a razor) and water lifted from a convenience store.  When I look at this knowing how lonely and destitute I truly was, I can't help but see a joyful determination to survive in my face.  I will survive!  I will smile down my dire circumstances and survive. 

The end result were 1000s of amazing pictures of people and places in Hong Kong.  And yes, my survival.