HAVE I SEEN YOU?

I don't know why, but I love watching people. When I go shopping with Peta, thats usually my best chance to just stand there watching people. She's in the shop, looking at every possible item........TWICE, and I just quietly meander back out the door and wait out the front of the shop against the railing, watching people. Its an amazing time, wondering what people are thinking about, do they realise someone is watching them closely in amongst all of this hectic activity, what has been happening in their life to get them to this point, what happened in the past that could possibly have led them to have that haircut, or wear those clothes..... At these times I often see some strange things, and then start little experiments to watch other 'like' people to see if they all do that same strange thing. For example in Europe recently, I discovered that 'generally' (of course the odd exception may occur) girls drink out of a bottle differently to guys. I saw one girl sucking whilst drinking the water, so the bottle was ridiculously squashing in as she drank. Then I thought, oh my, I wonder if other people drink like that, and do you know what, HEAPS of girls started just sucking bottles. Its like I'd never noticed it before, even people back here in Hong Kong. In fact I can't stop it, I notice it everywhere now, its CRAZY!! So anyway, I had to watch guys to see how they did it, and you would not believe it, but most guys DON'T SUCK. They tilt the bottle and let the water flow in, but leave an air hole so the bottle doesn't suck in. Its quite fascinating, and an amazing piece of research in my opinion...... so here are some strange anomolies I've seen or heard around the traps;

* more people than you think almost collide whilst walking along corridors, footpaths etc... doing that, 'dodge one way and then the other' thing, where neither knows which way you want to go, until eventually you just embarrassingly say sorry and pass on by
* when there's a spare seat next to an adult (usually male) a kid will almost never sit in it
* chivalry (especially in HK) is very close to dead - particularly holding a door for someone, loading onto buses, helping a lady with her pram up stairs
* nude sun-bakers always put their bikinis back on to go for a swim - why bother??
* women are almost always more attracted to, and more likely to goo-gar over babies than men (even ugly ones), they just can't seem to help themselves
* the better people know each other, the more they don't look at each other when they're talking
* old people don't seem to be bothered at all, by not doing A THING all day EVERYDAY
* many people use 'up' and 'down' totally wrong eg.. someone from Melbourne says 'I went down to Sydney' when actually Sydney is clearly, geographically, above Melbourne - or 'I went up to my brothers house' when actually the brothers house is closer to the bottom of the hill
* a guy with no legs, and no wheelchair, in Rome was begging on a side-walk......then an hour later we saw the same guy about a mile away, begging on a different side-walk - WHAT THE??
* more than 75% of the people you see taking photos, take FAR too long to actually press the button