back from the land of internetless despair....there are obviously much worse hardships to endure in this lifetime, but i sure did feel disconnected. and now i'm back. didn't know what to do with those extra late night hours usually filled by googling stuff like "mars cola thriftshop rabbit" and seeing what happened.
it's been a strange few weeks. things are moving forward rapidly and i just had the biggest sense of deja vu. that's a weird feeling, deja vu. who knows what it actually is, but it's weird. anyway - much has happened and is happening. i am dealing with both the excitement and frustrations of moving to a new country. spent an hour and a half in a black cab yesterday morning, finally so fed up with the feeble attempts of the delivery company to bring me my broadband equipment! decided to go fetch it myself and ended up lost in a taxi in park royal, which is on the outskirts of london. there's nothing like the utterly helpless feeling of being lost in a city you know relatively nothing about, at the mercy of a cab driver and his limited knowledge of the less populated areas....
it is my second month in london and i am beginning to notice some of the differences in day to day life. i often feel lost and disoriented in this city and now realize that it's not only a symptom of my recent move as most of the local people i meet have very little sense of the layout of the city and how to navigate its disjointed roads. i also find people to be less concerned with things we take for granted in the US...things like street numbers! can't tell you how many times i get the address for a pub or shop and the person giving the address says something like "kensington high street." and when i ask for a cross-street as reference, the usual response is "oh, we don't do that over here." ok, so it's on kensington high street....but where?!? apparently the taxi drivers are meant to know every pub, restaurant and shop on every street in london. this, as i have found, is a lovely plan, but falls a bit short of realistic.
i enjoy some of the differences in social behavior. (behaviour) i like being the new person at a party and not being expected to remember peoples' names. or, to take it a step further, not even meeting most of the people at the party. because, let's face it, i will probably never see those people again so i might as well save myself and everyone else the trouble of pretending to remember all these new peoples' names. they shouldn't waste their time on me while i smile, struggle through some small talk, try to say something interesting - they should continue to enjoy the company of the people they came to see.
ok...more later. it's a lovely day (lies - it's grey and raining) and i'm off.
xo
terra