[travel] London

London is the perfect place to end my adventures. It has brought together many of the threads of my journey into a nice conclusion. I'm surrounded by restaurants and shops with names and goods for sale that remind me of places I've been. The city is perhaps the most multicultural place I've seen. Centuries of imperialism have led to a sort of imperialism in reverse; cultural influences have poured in from former British colonies and spheres of influence around the world. The famously mediocre British food has been supplanted by Indian, Middle Eastern, and Asian cuisine. As I shared a Lebanese meal with my friend I met in Petra (who lives near London) and heard about her travels in the Middle East while listening to Lebanese folk music, I momentarily forgot where I was. The British Museum (combined with the Pergammon museum in Berlin) provided the missing pieces from my visits to ancient sites in Egypt, Turkey, and Greece, showing me microcosms of the long-lost cultures I had seen, all placed together for comparison.*

( A quick digression on when I feel it's acceptable to loot antiquarian treasures. )

Overall, London feels like a posher, older-money version of New York. It's polished and stately, but still strong and bustling. It's been around the world and has the souveniers to prove it. It has an endless range of diversions, enough to entertain almost anyone for weeks. And this is a new one for me... it's the first time since Singapore, way back in January, that the local language has been English. I can understand these people (well, some of them). I can read their newspapers. It's wild.

Although I've spent time in the alternative shoppers' paradise of Camden Town and hit up the city's plentiful free museums, I'm really here in the UK to meet up with the three friends I met at different points on the journey. One of these friends emphatically points out that she lives in Scotland, not England. Don't ever call a Scot English. They might get violent. (Or rather, they might point out that after centuries of struggle, they built up the political will to vote in 1997 to form their own house of Parliament separate from the one in London).

[travel] Live Japanese TV show

There's a subset of male Japanese tourists that seem to derive a lot of pleasure from taking their immaculately made-up and demure girlfriends and putting them in degrading situations. I saw it many times in Italy – I saw several men put pigeon feed in their girlfriends' hair and then take pictures as the rats of the air landed on their screaming heads for a bit of a snack. Perhaps they fancy themselves the directors of one of the many extreme game shows that form the bulk of Japanese TV.

In any case, there's one Japanese tourist who brought his poor girlfriend along to the bungee jump I did. She was dressed in a short skirt with stockings and heels, almost as if she had been directly airlifted out of a major city tourist attraction into the outdoor sports paradise of Interlaken. It's actually fortunate her skirt wasn't longer because then the bungee harness leg loops would have scrunched it up into a goofy pair of leg wings. Prior to the bungee jump there was a weigh-in.

Woman: “I'm 59kg.”
Bungee operator: “Please get on the scale.”
Woman: “I'm 59kg.”
Bungee operator: “We need your exact weight. It's very important. You could get hurt if we set the bungee wrong.”
Woman: “I'm 59kg.”
Bungee operator: “If you don't get on the scale, you can't go.”
A few seconds pass. Woman gets on the scale.
Bungee operator: (Loudly) “67kg. Put her in group B!”
Bungee operator 2 (Loudly): “67kg. Got it!”
Bungee operator: (Loudly) “Yep, 67kg!”

Socially constructed embarrassment vs physical danger... Ah, priorities.

I talked to her after the jump and she said she liked it, though she could have just been saying that to be
polite. She screamed a perfect horror-movie scream on the way out of the gondola.

[travel] (North) America!

I arrive in America tomorrow.

I've decided to go to the Canada part of America first and visit a friend in Toronto. It turns out there's a walk-across border crossing into the US at Niagra Falls. Once I get across, I'll make my way to the Buffalo airport and then get my free flight out.

I've been mostly excited about entering the next phase of my life upon my return, but today I finally felt a bit of sadness that my 4 1/2 months of world-hopping adventures are coming to an end.