Air Compressors and moving a life to Vietnam

In my quest to find an air compressor that actually works, I took another chance on trust and faith in the goodness of humans. Craigslist provided yet another oportunity to purchase a slightly used unit at a very good price as compared to new. I also have been thinking quite a bit about the impact of my purchasing of "things" on this planet. Purchasing something used helps cut down "just a little bit" on my impact to this whole delicate system. I was thinking about buying a new one, but then I started pondering about the process that triggers. Purchasing, packing, the distribution of that unit to my house via UPS or whatever, the packaging materials and all that associated waste.. uggg... Instead of introducing something new into the system why can't I just re-use something that has already gone through that whole process already.

I met this guy named Hong who was selling lots of stuff. The compressor looked great, he started it up and even used it to shoot a few nails to show me that it worked fine. He showed me nail guns, nails, saws, sanders, dust collection systems, drills, and so many things that he wanted to sell. I asked him, "Why are you selling all this stuff" He replied, "I am moving to Vietnam"

I was really surprised at his answer but even more surprised by what he mentioned next.

I asked him, "What are you going to be doing in Vietnam? Why are you moving there?" Without hesitation he replied, "I am going to be a farmer."

He proceeded to tell me more about how he couldn't sit in an office anymore and basically it was not a proper existence of life and living. He wanted to go work with the land and with people to try and make things better. He told me that he also had hopes to save some animals that are treated quite poorly or even used for food and other medicines especially in Northern Vietnam. Many of these wild animals are endangered and he wanted to help try and change the way that people thought about these creatures of the earth. He talked about a golden eagle and a little monkey that he saw when he was in some market during a recent trip back to Vietnam. He told me that he wanted to purchase these animals and bring them back to his farm and then hopefully one day he could release them back into the wild.

My feelings about the inner goodness of most people has now been restored thanks to a guy named Hong. We talked for a bit more about life and what is living. How most people from the United States don't like to challenge themselves and only like to travel when all the comforts of home are guarenteed. We said goodbye with sharing email addresses and I told him that I will email him if I get the chance to travel to Vietnam. I have always thought that a trip to South East Asia would be awesome, and now I am thinking that it would be even cooler to see Hong on his farm taking care of his Eagle and Monkey.