In Continuum.

A single slipper.

A single bottle cap.

So, I have decided to start taking pictures of lost lonely shoes all around Singapore, the ones that can no longer find their partners in this vast urban jungle. It is going to be a vast undertaking, but I suppose it is fun to notice such things now and then. Though, I must say, trying to take pictures of a shoe on the expressway (where I usually spot them) is going to be pretty dangerous at high speeds. If you are a guy who likes to wear slippers or sandals, I understand how they could slip off easier than most of the other footwear. I mean, one of them is called a "slipper" after all - easy on, easy off, you know? No excuses for those people who prefer to wear normal shoes, or boots if you must. And believe me, you do find them littered around the roads of this country as well, and thus thickens the plot. Even if you are a fan of slippers, and you also like to wear them when you are riding a bicycle, for example, wouldn't you stop and then go back just to pick up your lost slipper? It just seems like whenever it decides to slip off a foot of a rider, it is considered lost or something. I don't understand how you can not notice a lost footwear, it's not like a key slipping out of your wallet or something. It's kind of like losing your clothes in the public and not knowing it - same thing. 

Anyway, speaking of collecting these pictures (with the one above being the first), I have collected things over the years in bits and pieces, with some collections being more extensive than the others. I think it began with my collection for toy cars, though it doesn't necessarily mean that I took fantastic care of them by placing them in glass shelves. I banged them against one another and ran them against the walls and the cupboards. Why? Because as a child, I was a fan of destruction, and toy cars were always an essential part of my bedroom mayhem. Cars crashing into cars, cars crashing into buildings, cars crashing into pyramids made of erasers, and everything else cars can crash into in a bedroom. Oh, they crashed alright, in every way possible. That is also why the paints came off, the wheels fell off, the plastic windshields cracked, and let's just say the most avid fan of old school toy cars would murder me with a pincer (I don't know why I said pincer). I had boxes after boxes of cars, and I think my parents did a count of how many cars I had in the past - a lot. They have a numerical number in their heads, though they have probably forgotten about that right now. Still, I considered myself a collector of toy cars, simply because I had a lot of them. 

Then sometime in primary school, I got into collecting stickers. I had two sticker books, with those smooth glossy pages to paste stickers on, and I remember the covers were that of a bunch of Dragonball characters - yeah, I know. So I stuck stickers inside the books, any kind of stickers I could get my hands on. McDonald's gave out this series of Ronald McDonald stickers, I had those in the books. Wang Wang biscuits had five circular stickers inside every packaging, I had those in the books. The school gave out stickers of insects in every packaged drink that they sold, I had those in the books. They weren't particularly nice stickers for the most part, though some of them were. I threw them all into the sticker books because I just wanted to fill up the pages. At the same time, however, I didn't like gigantic stickers that filled up half the page, they were too big and grotesque for my liking. So I stuck to the smaller ones, and shiny stickers were also welcomed back then. I think I had a couple of 3-D stickers, those hologram pictures, those were great. In fact, my sticker collection got so extensive that they eventually migrated onto my desk. I had stickers on my drawers, and that posed as a problem a few years later when I grew up and had to scrub them off one by one. That one took a night and a whole lot of scrubbing. 

My sister was for, a period of time, into stamps. It is strange, because my sister isn't exactly the kind of person with a long-term hobby. I mean, the first guitar in the family was bought because my sister wanted to learn it. That fire burned for three days before it went out, and it was passed on to me - the rest is history. History is against the idea that my sister is a collector of any kind, and that has been the case for the most part. She collected her stamps in a small hardcover book, and I remember that it smelled funny. She filled up about a quarter of the book with stamps, and it was left for dead before it was being swept away by one of those spring cleaning sessions many years ago. I myself, am guilty of these temporary collections as well, and one of them is my Coke can collection. I have a couple of Coke cans from different countries, all with different designs. I am a proud owner of a Coke glass bottle, and it is a pity that they do not serve anything in glass bottles any longer. I understand the hygiene issues, but come on! They were cool. Anyway, there is a short and petite one that is about two-third the height of an ordinary bottle, and that one I got from Taiwan. Also, the commemorative World Cup editions and stuff like that. It didn't last very long, though, and Coke isn't exactly healthy for you after all. By the way, I drink the content before I put them on my shelf. Not drinking them is just disgusting. 

I have recently started collecting sands and rocks from different countries from all over the world. I haven't traveled much, and it kind of sucks that I didn't start this hobby of mine earlier when I was in India. I mean, the place that I was at had nothing but miles upon miles of sand. It's strange that it didn't occur to me to bring a handful back to Singapore just for kicks. Then again, if you think about it, judging from the amount of cow dung on the grounds there, it is probably very hard to find a decent handful of sand that hasn't been, at any one time, touched by cow dung. Still, I'd have liked the idea of bring a bit of India home with me, and I have been asking people to bring back sand for me from other countries, above all other gifts really. I have little gravels from Paris, sand from London, Australia, Japan, and a few of my friends did promise to bring me back some of them as well, though I think they forgot. Namely, Samuel who went to Vietnam and Kerri who went to Turkey. Perhaps I should really do this on my own, at least it'd be a tad bit more meaningful. 

Over the years, I have seen people collecting other non-conventional things, and the ones that interest me the most are usually photographs of normal everyday objects. There was a guy I mentioned before on my blog who took pictures of himself, once everyday, for six years. That is a collection of some sort, right? Then there was this other man who took a polaroid picture of something in his life, everyday, until the day that he died - really. It'd be random things like a stack of records, a bird on the window sill, a coffee stain on a napkin. Then he got cancer at one point, and you start to see his body break down through the series of polaroid pictures. It was rather disturbing to say the least, but it was still an interesting collection of pictures definitely. So, I have started taking pictures of lost shoes, and the one above is my very first one. It isn't terribly original, but then there are millions of people collecting stamps from all around the world, right? So, creativity hardly matters here, it all depends on whether or not you carry on with something you have started. I am not sure if I am really going to continue this habit, but it is definitely something interesting to say the least. Perhaps someday, I'd figure out why people do not realize that they have a missing shoe. That'd be the day, that'd be the day!