So. Day Two. The British pound is currently worth 1.94 US Dollars. I'm living in an old dormitory on Gray's Inn Road, about a ten minute walk from the British Museum, and skimping on groceries. I've left my room basically empty. Blank walls are better for me this year anyway. I sleep better without the junk.
Yesterday as I was walking to the university library I realized the English are secretly copying everything Americans do. They drive just as many cars, but they do it on the wrong side of the road. They smoke millions of Dunhills. They eat at McDonalds and Starbucks, but they pay twice as much. They speak English, but oddly. Their government does everything just as stupidly as ours, right after ours does it, except they throw in some free healthcare to make it seem unique.
I must have walked ten miles today in circles. The global time/day thing is a trip, though that has nothing to do with my misdirection. I just realized that in the US, there is really no time of any consequence during the day where any significant part of the world is laboring in "yesterday" relative to it. Yet in China, it is already tomorrow, and the US is laboring in their "yesterday" even as I write this. And the US will be so doing for another nine hours, by which time – as Americans are sleeping soundly by midnight—the Chinese will be having tomorrow's lunch. And as I wrap up for the day tonight, the US will be just getting home from work, and by the time I'm having tea and crumpets tomorrow morning, Americans will be fast asleep in bed.
I don't know who it was, but someone told me before I got here that Brits don't actually say "bollocks." Well, for the record, they do. They definitely do.
