Today was my lazy day. I was still sore from my surfing adventure yesterday, and we're headed back to London tonight, so I'm not feeling terribly motivated to actually "do" anything.
Finally roll out of the hotel around 11, and just head down to the Baixa district. Wander around for a while looking for a cafe with wireless, fail miserably (seriously? No cafes with wireless? Even the bar at the beach offered wireless!), and end up at a dedicated internet shop, sit down, and spend about 2 hours checking email, (finally) posting to the blog, paying bills, etc. Wander around some more, stop at a plain cafe for a coke, look for a "Maniche" Portugal jersey, and before I know it it's 4:30 and time to head back to the hotel to catch a 7pm flight back to London. Hang out with Christie, more free beer on the flight (I like British Airways).
That's it. That was my whole day. I rule.
So, some mental house cleaning:
Don't do the Math: Everything here (England & Portugal) appears to cost the same as in the US. Let me rephrase that, all the numbers are the same. A coke that's $2 in the US, is L2 in London, and 2E in Lisbon. Of course, that means in London my coke was really $4, and in Lisbon it was $2.50. With a coke, that's no big deal, but now apply it to meals. My $20 meal in the US, is now $40 in London, and $25 in Lisbon. A cab ride from Gatwick to Clapham that feels like "40", is in fact L40, which is really $80. Don't do the math. You'll feel much better. Things cost what they cost, and if you start doing the math, you'll just start to feel like you're getting screwed (and you probably are).
London vs. US cities: a point that Christie and I have spent some time going back and forth on, is that so far, being in London doesn't really feel like being in another country to me. While it's certainly very different from San Francisco (and even more so compared to Orange County, where she grew up), it doesn't strike me as all the different from Boston/New England: narrow and windy roads, the bare trees in winter, the weather, the underground and, the mostly brick construction, the architecture, rotaries... all very New Englandish. I have enough friends with different accents, that I barely even notice the British accent when I'm out and about. In fact, I'd say the only time I really notice the accent is when Christie's sometimes falls out, but that's only because I have a preconceived expectation of how words/sentences should sound when she says them. The sports fanaticism is relatively similar, just with various football/rugby clubs instead of the Red Sox/Patriots/etc. I haven't even had a problem with the whole "driving on the wrong side of the road" thing. Doesn't everyone look both ways before crossing the street? So pretty much everything that I see around me feels very familiar. The differences I am noticing are more in the category of "day to day life". For example, while it is very common for people to have washing machines in their flats (more so than in the US), almost no one has a dryer. So, it's fairly common to walk into a flat, and see clothes draped over the radiators. Another would be that consuming alcohol is socially acceptable pretty much all day (remember my beer on the flight to Lisbon at 11:30am?). A last example would be that things we pretty much take for granted in the US, all have some sort of tax or fee associated with them. Buy a TV, and you have to pay a "TV License Fee" to the BBC. Buy a car, and not only do you have pay the crazy gas prices, but there's a "congestion fee" of L5/day if you want to drive it in central London.
Public Transportation: why on earth can't we have better public transportation in the US? I think I go on this rant every time I'm in Europe. I know the public transportation systems on the east coast are much better (ie. subways, accela, etc.), but why don't we have any of that on the west coast? Why isn't their a train from SF to Tahoe? Or SF to LA? Or SF/LA to Vegas? Where's our TGV? Ugh.
What's wrong with the Women?: In London at least, I've been very underwhelmed with the "quality" of the women I've seen out and about. Granted, I haven't even been into Central London yet, but having been on the tube a few times now, and just walking here and there to the various pubs, on my run, etc. I think I can count on one hand the number of genuinely attractive women I've seen. Lisbon and Cambridge, I've seen plenty, but, thus far, London has just been dreadful.
Verizon sucks: There are all these really cool phones available in Europe that never even show up in the US because Verizon, the dominant carrier in the US, uses a different technology (CDMA), and Cingular/AT&T -- which is GSM -- uses a different GSm frequency than Europe. So not only is the market segmented by the different technologies, but even the people that are GSM are a different GSM. I have verizon, I love verizon, and they either have to switch over to GSM, or die.
No comments:
Post a Comment