across the pond

I feel like an impostor, no I feel like I sell out. Just a year ago I was travelling the ‘rugged’ way – backpack up and down, sharing rooms and bathrooms, saving every penny to make the days last… now today I arrived in the UK in a business class flight retrieved my big luggage on wheels, took a cab to my hotel and now am sitting on my laptop at a starbucks in the center of town. Yup, a total sell out.

Not that there isn’t merit to this kind of travel… I'm sure there is and I'm just being judgemental (of myself and of others who travel this way). Perhaps I'm a little disenchanted because I am here for work after all. Maybe the disenchantment comes from this whole globalization thing… see I am sitting in a different continent and still see Subway sandwich bags on the floor, BP gas stations, McDonalds, Burger King, posters of American artists… maybe the language is part of the story. I can read all the signs, I can understand what people say easily… maybe it’s the not feeling like a total fish out of the water thing. I don’t know but I wont discard the trip just… after all I've just been here for a few hours. See I'm waiting for the shops and museums to open, so I can get a city map and figure out what this city has to offer – after all it must offer something. Every city somehow always has those random things that it clings to as its ‘claim to face’ be it a statue carved by someone who knew someone who carved a famous statue or the birthplace of a civilization.

Anyway… off to sit at Picaddilly Gardens and hopefully take a good nap under the warm sun. After all the sun hasn’t even risen at home just yet.

Pree

PS: After I typed this up I ended up peoople watching in the middle of a plaza, picnicking on this big garden and taking a good 45 minute nap under the sun alongside a bunch of Brits... starting to feel a little better :)