Tuesday 15 August 2006

Britain is a foreign country!

I have now been back in the nation of my birth and upbringing for 214 hours.
Upon landing, i spent a couple of culture schocked days in London... and it seems that England has become a foreign country to me - everything is strange yet oddly familiar.
I have been at home for almost a week - pretty much everything at home is the same (but for minor details like the phone, kettle, digital tv, dining room table etc...)
i found myself wondering - has my Pre-JET self been waiting here in my bedroom to re-engulf me upon my return?

Jetlag slowly seeped from my system, and i eventually got around to
unpacking, while i compiled a list of things i noticed (and got enthusiastic/懐かしい/culture shocked about) on my return to England.

People (airport baggage handlers) are a British kind of shape... the language is very "normal"

Heathrow Airport is not on the whole very modern (compared to Kansai / Hong Kong) but a Vodaphone or Virgin stand seemed to bee pretty flashy / pseudo-futuristic. (is there ever anything really futuristic? surely any design can only ever be pseudo-futuristic, 'cos as soon as it is complete, the future has come and gone, and is just the same as the past with it's retro-future style)

The cars here are all rounded/strange shapes and shiny! so many different colours!

The motorways are Free!

3-pin plugs and sockets!

English Bathroom

no genkan in the home.

Radiators!

The smell of damp morning England seeping through the morning windows.
Drizzly kind of non-rain ... a mix of suburban scents with European overtones + a hint of manure!

WEETABIX!!! WOW!
breakfast with skimmed milk and Strauss!
Nectarines!

Apples here are Tiny! and taste very earthy and real.

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On walking around Hampton/Kingston:

Grey English summer with green treey smells.

ha! I almost nodded to a 外人! Everyone looks so foreign!
My eyes are unaccustomed to this environment.

so there.
i think i've kind of got used to it a bit more now

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