As promised in my first post about tats, here are the photos of my new tattoo.

I found a little tattoo shop in Baishizhou village near my new place in Shenzhen and decided to go with it. My design idea was fairly simple, and I bargained a bit with the proprietor, which kind of makes me nervous. This is almost a medical procedure, why act like it’s you’re buying knockoff bags or something? Settled for 300 yuan, which I think is fair but not so cheap I’ll be afraid I’m getting hepatitis.

The design is a hexagram which represents the Anahata heart chakra, as per my long-running spinal cord design idea. To me, the two overlapping triangles are not necessarily the (more famous in the West) Jewish Star of David, but an important symbol of meditation. One triangle points up, towards “Heaven,” the higher realities we hope we can understand when becoming more enlightened. The other triangle points down because we all come from the Earth and we must get our affairs in order on this plane while trying to simultaneously achieve something higher. Right?

However, I decided to have triangles point from side to side, because why not. Something different. And, less construed to be jewy. The cosmic Left & Right, perhaps.

It is not finished. Still needs color, some more flashy designs, bells and whistles. This is just the outline of the more complex tattoo I hope to have in the future. But a decent outline I’m happy to show off.

So, why now? The answer is, I happen to be writing this while on my big America trip and I wanted to have something new on my person before going home. It was one of my final errands on the to-do list, along with packing and buying souvenirs.

And to answer the question people often ask, yes it hurts. Not that bad, but it’s an odd uncomfortable feeling on the back. The arms didn’t hurt that much, I recommend to everyone that you get a needle piercing through your shoulder or forearm before the backside.

That is my update.

Tell me: what do you think?