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SCMP Reporter

Some people dream of climbing Everest, others of circumnavigating the globe. American student Lorencio Schwarz chose to make his mark in the urban jungle.
He set out to visit all the 7-Eleven stores in Hong Kong and has since submitted an application to Guinness World Records for having been to the most  outlets in the shortest time: 801 stores in 60 days.
'Having lived in Hong Kong for some time now, I wanted to do something special to remember my time here when I left,' says Schwarz, who is part Chinese. The American-born 23-year-old arrived three years ago to volunteer at the Crossroads Foundation charity and, after  that,  enrolled for  a law course at City University.
Schwarz's madcap scheme came to him during  a boozy evening when a friend told him the chain had more than 800 outlets  in the city. 'I toyed with the idea of visiting every MTR station or going to every bar in Wan Chai and Lan Kwai Fong but they didn't seem to have too much significance.'
The convenience-store idea appealed because of the high ratio of outlets to the population - close to one for every 1,000 people.
'It was supposed to be a group of us doing it but everyone else dropped out,' he says. 'I hate it when people decide on something and then back out.'
Schwarz went ahead on his own and  made the venture more meaningful by making a donation to Crossroads, hoping it would encourage more contributions.
On October 3 last year he set out  with a map, an Octopus card and a camera to record each visit.
Deciding to tackle the more remote areas first, he began with a vague plan of searching out stores in malls, main streets and MTR stations in the New Territories. 'I didn't know all the locations, but thought it would be interesting to discover them,' he says. 'The blind search made me feel like I was participating in The Amazing Race or some kind of military operation ... looking for directions, clearing area after area and marking down whatever I had accomplished.'
His early efforts were disappointing. 'I travelled the whole of Lantau, Lamma and Peng Chau - covering half the area of Hong Kong - and came away with only 20 photographs,' he recalls. 'I was beginning to doubt that I could do it. And it was really hot at that time.'
Although the outlying islands yielded far fewer outlets, Schwarz says the natural scenery made up for it, especially Po Toi and Peng Chau. 'They have many hiking trails and cool rock formations.' But the greenery of Grass Island made that his favourite spot. 'I felt like I was in Switzerland,' he says.
He also sometimes found it dispiriting to be on his own. 'You begin to wonder why you're the only one doing this, but I then realised that any kind of charitable work is solitary,' he says.
But Schwarz eventually got the hang of things and on a good day would  visit more than 40 shops. The going got easier after he started in Kowloon and by the 500th store, he was revved up enough to compose a song for the brand.
He received a shot in the arm in November when 7-Eleven finally responded to his request for information to help the quest and invited him to visit its offices in Sham Shui Po. 'I really didn't expect that,' he says.
The company presented him with a customised Octopus card and a list of all its stores, which made his search easier.
But he found himself  tongue-tied when executives asked for feedback on store operations. 'Thinking back, I wish some of the stores had a list of products displayed because although they all look somewhat the same, they don't all have the same products,' he says. 'And sometimes it gets too crowded at the counters.'
Surprisingly, Schwarz's click-and-go routine rarely attracted curiosity. 'I thought people would look at me all the time because often I was making faces at the camera but hardly anyone did, even when I had my shirt off,' he says.
He is chuffed to have travelled to the 'four corners of Hong Kong', the quest  having brought him to places he would never have considered otherwise, including the Hong Kong Airport Freight Terminal. Snapping the 7-Eleven inside the container terminal at Kwai Chung was a challenge. He found a bus to the entrance, but spent hours wandering around the enormous yard before locating the store.
Housing estates presented the greatest hurdles, sometimes due to his fondness for taking shortcuts.
'I didn't always follow the main roads because I wanted to get to places fast. So I tried to walk in a straight line and sometimes this meant climbing over a little hillock, scaling a wall or wading through a stream,' he says. 'Somehow, I always seemed to end up at the back of the housing estate instead of the entrance.'
He once clambered over a wall to get into a Tsuen Wan development, and has had to sneak past security guards at gated communities. A  7-Eleven  in an isolated residential development in Yuen Long might have defeated him if it weren't for a kindly resident who helped him get onto the estate shuttle bus.
Before embarking on the venture, he had never used the West Rail or the Light Rail but  has since learned to make efficient use of the city's network of buses, mini-buses and rail services.
'When I went to Lo Wu, I wanted to get off, take a photograph without exiting the station and take the same train back to Lok Ma Chau but the doors closed and I had to buy another ticket,' says Schwarz, who spent about HK$2,000 on travel. Friends also made small contributions towards his expenses.
He ended his quest on December 3 at the 7-Eleven near City University, and as friends cheered, he marked the occasion by taking some ebullient photos of himself with the store logo painted on his chest. The Crossroads Foundation later received HK$,8,000 from Schwarz and his friends, and held an exhibition of the pictures that he took along the way.
Perhaps predictably, Schwarz has developed a soft spot for the convenience-store chain and still takes snaps of stores wherever he travels. 'Did you know there are 30 7-Elevens in Macau?' he asks.



At his convenience