While exploring the new city right after we checked into the hotel, we wandered into the entrance of a night club that looked to our foreign eyes like a mall. It was not until we were almost at the door that I realized this and then turned back. I thought it was interesting how differently I saw the young people who had come there to party on my way in compared to how I did on the way out. On the way in I thought this is probably how all young people here dress specially on a Saturday night. There was nothing more to take in about their look and how they were interacting with each other. The club personnel were all dressed in black uniforms to me and in my mind they were just working at that shopping mall in some capacity.
I am sure there were eyes on us with the population being more J's age than mine, but I attributed that to me being a foreigner - nothing out of the ordinary. Some of them were smiling at us. On the way out, I caught the details - the club attire the young people wore, the look of surprised amusement that I had seen as friendly smiling and so on. When you are missing basic data to anchor on, it's sometimes impossible to make sense of the stimulus in the environment. This happens in many other situations in life too when we wander into situations and events unaware of what we are doing and even what we expect. Things happen around us it that make sense once we have the anchor in place. If we retrace our steps like that evening out from the nightclub to the street all the data is laid bare.
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