August 21, 2008 3:57 PM
One in a Million
On the subway today, a Chinese student asked me if I'd like to trade pins with her. Pin-trading is an Olympic hobby dating back to -- and please, correct me if I'm wrong -- ancient Greece, when Hephaestus would sculpt tiny pieces of flair and attempt to trade them for lightning bolts or ambrosia. Little has changed today.I agreed to her offer and pulled out one of my pins -- a University of Missouri centennial piece. She went into her bag to find one to trade. But she didn't have a pin on hand, so she asked if she could trade me a wrist bracelet instead. I agreed to swap my pin for a red Chinastrong bracelet.
She excitedly put on my pin and then handed the bracelet to me. "Look," she said, pointing to a number on the inside of the bracelet. "It is a limited edition."
I squinted at the number imprinted inside. "#0372270" it read.
In a country of 1.3 billion people, one-in-a-million is still considered pretty exclusive.
January 24, 2009
10:59 AM
Adrian Eden writes:
Nice post, sometimes one in a million means so much more than the literal translation. :-)