Asian-Camera-Syndrome

I once heard a joke that Asians will take pictures of everything. EVERYTHING. Especially tourists. They take pictures of everything, such as exit signs. If they ever get lost, they can always look through their pictures to find where the exit is! [I know it's not funny retold by me, much less retold via blog entry, but just go with it]

Over the years, I've observed that tours that are organized by Asian companies love to visit campuses of higher education. At least whenever I was at Stanford, there would always be Asians hopping off their tour buses and taking pictures of everything in sight. Apparently they love coming to USC too because I've seen groups of tourists all dressed up in their touristy clothes and following their tour guide who holds some flashy flag or whatnot. ANYWAY, so the other day I was walking past the cinema building and witnessed the following:

Caption: Asian guy takes picture of random sign. He was really into it. Like, no joke, he was really excited taking this picture.

I cracked up and laughed out loud. Why? Because it wasn't an exit sign. The sign was:

Seriously, why the hell would you take a picture of this sign?! No Smoking, Bicycles, Rollerblades, or Skateboard Riding. First of all, you're a tourist probably from China. I assume the tour company isn't having its clients bike, blade, or board around. The only part of this sign that actually applies to you is the No Smoking part. But is the concept of "No Smoking" really that hard to grasp or that intriguing? No, it isn't. He must have a problem. I'll name it Asian-Camera-Syndrome.

It just seemed so absurd as to why anyone would take a picture of this sign. Watching him take multiple pictures of this sign greatly amused me because it reminded me about the whole Asians-take-pictures-of-everything issue. However, watching him made me realize that I do it too. I currently have 358 MG left on my hard drive, probably because of the millions of pictures I take. Whenever I want to take a picture of scenery or random flowers or even post-its for that matter [yes, I once camera whored post-its], I take a million shots of the same thing. So I admit it. I have a problem. I too have Asian-Camera-Syndrome.

I can't figure out why I do this [or why other people do it]. I don't mean to be racist or anything by saying that this is what Asians do. In fact, I'm not sure whether or not other Asians do this at all. Or if non-Asians do this. Do they?

Anyway, thank you man who loves taking pictures of random signs. Fifteen seconds of watching you allowed me to discover my own problem. And provided amusement. I think my hard drive will forgive me if I ever get around to purging all the random pictures. I should do it soon. I have gigs worth of pictures of blades of grass and insignificant looking clouds.