I'm thankful for... songs on my travelling guitar

When I made the biggest decision of my life last summer to live by myself and work in Hong Kong for one year, the first thing I did after getting settled in was BUY A GUITAR. I had been looking for something portable and I had been eyeing all the mini-guitars in the store windows. But when I tried playing on the cheap ones, they would go out of tune after a few strums. So I made a slightly more expensive purchase, bought a Baby Taylor (which played MUCH better), and named it POTATO. I had Potato with me the whole year and he kept me company through the good and bad. (Did you notice I started referring to the guitar as "he"? Creepy...) haha! Potato accompanied me on many random adventures - on the bus, in cafes, in grassy fields - he even had a little cameo appearance in my friends' engagement shoot. Some of the greatest memories were made when my cousin and I would go out to the Tsim Sha Tsui area to look at the gorgeous harbour view at night and play on the guitar for hours. When I was with Potato, I pretty much looked like one of those travelling musicians lurking around public places without a busking license. While looking at my Hong Kong pictures, it turns out my cousin did document some of these little adventures...

*side note: Seeing these pictures of Hong Kong makes me miss the place so much. Isn't Hong Kong just gorgeous in the daytime and at night as well? 

 Then... one day... something happened to Potato!! =O

When I left Hong Kong, I didn't have enough carry-on space to bring back Potato so I asked my cousin to help me bring the guitar with him when he came back this October. But when my cousin got to the airport, he was told that he couldn't bring the guitar on the plane as a carry-on and that it would have to go into the cargo hold (even though my cousin didn't feel comfortable with that). The airline assured him that the guitar would be "safe" and put a fragile sticker on the guitar case. Well unfortunately, Potato did not survive the plane ride because obviously, the fragile sticker meant nothing and he arrived at Vancouver International Airport all cracked and bruised.

Fortunately, this story has a happy ending. Even though Potato was damaged, he still works! The day that I got my guitar back, I went to my friend's house later that evening and we were able to sing together and still have an awesome time. I figured I could probably duct-tape Potato but I decided not to, since I was thinking it would turn into that Mr. Bean episode where he ruins a painting and tries to fix it, but makes it worse (any Mr. Bean fans??? He's my hero).The best part is, my cousin happened to report the broken guitar to a SUPER NICE airport employee who did an awesome job following up on the case. Even though some of his other coworkers told us that "it was our fault" and were adamant that we couldn't get any compensation for the accident, this one employee made the decision to give us back the full amount that I paid for the guitar! So now, I could technically go out and buy a brand new Baby Taylor... but that would be cheating on my old one. Besides, Potato's a tough one and this little scar is just a battle wound. So I think I'm going to look up a luthier and see how much it costs to fix him up, and after that, hopefully there's a bit of leftover money to buy some ICE-CREAM or something. =) Thank God for understanding airline workers!! Now I can have many more adventures with Potato in the years to come. And now I will stop weirding you all out with my constant references to my guitar as "Potato".

The End.