England

Home.

Stop and think for a moment of “home.”

What did you think of? Did you think of the place you live now? Did you think of the house you grew up in? Did you think of some place you used to live but have moved away from? Did you think of some place you want to live – a house in the country or a cottage on the lake?

Why did I ask you to think of home?

I did this same exercise back in July, and again recently a few days ago, and came up with some interesting results.

Why was I thinking of home?

It has to do with some thinking I’ve been doing recently about my move to London.

I recently posted an article on the website travelblogs.com about existential migration called Feeling at Home as the Foreigner. As I’ve mentioned previously in my entry I am not a Traveller, I am a Migrant, existential migration is a term invented by Dr. Greg Madison to describe the process that some people go through in deciding and executing a voluntary move abroad. It is those who choose migration as a means to find or drive a meaning in their life that they feel they cannot get in their native country.

One of the key themes in Madison’s research on migration deals with the concept of home. Home, Madison says, is not a place, but rather an interaction between a person and their surroundings. The ‘feeling of home’ arises from specific interactions with our surroundings that could potentially occur anywhere, at any time.

When I first read that in statement in July, I sat back and thought of home. The first thing that popped into my head was the Residence Inn San Ramon in California. It is an extended stay hotel in a town just south of Oakland, California, about an hour from San Francisco. I stayed there for 75 days in 2002 and haven’t been back since.

As I mulled it over a little more, I came up with other places that felt homey, at least for a time. My corporate apartment in Denver, the hotel I stayed at for my last two weeks in Paris, my place last November in Phoenix and my parent’s house all came to mind, along with other places.

In each of these places, I experienced a period where I felt comfortable and settled in my work and life. That comfort in my personal life bled over into my physical surroundings. For a time, I felt comfortable enough in a place to call it home, even if it was just a hotel or a temporary corporate apartment.

It was interesting that in all the places I thought of as home, my apartment in Toronto where I lived for 12 years never came to mind.

In the article on travelblogs, I talk about the feelings that drove me to leave Canada in the first place, and my feelings now that I am living in London.

I realise now that I never really felt comfortable in Canada. Despite having a good set of friends and a loving family, I always felt like I was a bit of an outsider. My Toronto apartment never really felt like home to me because I never quite felt at ease in Toronto.

Since moving to London, I feel more at ease with my surroundings. I’ve started to not just reference my London flat as my home, but actually feel it as such. I’ve started to connect with my neighbourhood as well, even going as far as buying a t-shirt with a close up of the King’s Cross St. Pancras tube station just down the street from me.

I am starting to feel like London is home and I feel at ease here. It is not because I necessarily fit better in London, but because I am free to feel like a foreigner here in England because, after all, I am one.

I am a stranger in a strange land. However, at home I felt like a stranger as well. If home is the interaction between a person and a place, then living abroad allows me to match my internal feelings of being foreign with my external environment.

I’ve become a foreigner so that I can feel more at home.

I'm not much of a museum person. Generally when I go into a museum, my primary goal is to see how quickly I can make it through to the other side. For all the time I spent in Paris in 2005, I only made it to one Museum, the Orsay. I never went to the Louvre, frankly the lines scared me away. And in 2006 when I made all those trips into New York, I skipped most of the big museums, only venturing into the Skyscraper Museum down in Battery Park and one visit to the Natural History Museum, which I liked because they had exhibits with mannequins, which is always cool. Plus, dinosaurs.

For this reason, despite living for the last year and a bit in London, a cultural capital with a large selection of museums for all tastes, I haven't really been to many of them. I have been to the London Transport museum (because I am a train geek), the Canal Museum (because I like boats) and a visit to the British Museum (because I felt like I had to).

Today, though, I was out for a walk and found myself outside Charing Cross Station, looking down the street at the National Gallery and I thought to myself, "I need to go to the National Gallery." So I went.

In 2001, in a bid to increase attendance and bring culture to the masses, the Labour government of Tony Blair introduced free admission to many museums and galleries. In London, all the big museums and galleries are free, which means my one visit to the British Museum didn't cost me a penny, though I did drop a pound in the voluntary donation box, because I am good like that.

Today, upon spying the National Gallery, it was this lack of admission charge that had me thinking I would go in.

See, just a few minutes before, I had been wandering through Charing Cross Station, looking for a free toilet. I had hoped that it wouldn't be the case but was not actually shocked to find that the toilets cost money to use. It is a sad fact that most of the train stations have pay-per-use toilets. Only St. Pancras Station seems to have free ones. Perhaps it is to impress those coming from the continent aboard the Eurostar. We wouldn't want the French to think us too money grubbing. At least not until they've exited the train station and tried to take a black cab.

Anyway, Charing Cross wanted £0.30 to use the facilities. Thirty P for a ... pee? Outrageous. Not when there are cleaner and free bathrooms to be had at the museum down the street.

So I went to the National Gallery, walked in, walked down the stairs, did my business, and left.

That is the story of my first visit to the National Gallery. I wasn't inspired by any of the art, or the beautiful architecture of the building, but I did think the toilet very clean and tidy.

Clean toilets. The true benefit of Government subsidised Culture.

Today I travelled to Ascot for the day.

Before you ask, yes, the same Ascot as the one with the famous famous racetrack, which hosts the Royal Ascot race meeting every year, which in turn gave its name to a type of neckwear.

I however, was not going to play the ponies nor was I wearing a cravat. I was off to a business meeting, so I got myself suited and booted, grabbed my laptop computer, my mobile phone, my TFL Oyster card (to pay for the tube) and hit the road.

Oh, I packed one more thing for my trip, a new piece of kit that I just bought.

Let’s come back to that in a minute though.

Back in May of this year, I was asked by the editor of the site travelblogs.com to contribute to an article they were putting together on what not to pack when you travel.

I don’t know why I agreed to offer up my advice on the topic, because I am about the worst packer imaginable. I always end up with a bag full of things I don’t need and never use. When packing, I suffer from a severe case of the “what ifs?”

What if there is a freak snow storm in July in Mexico? I better pack thermal underwear.

What if I go to London and get invited to have dinner with the Queen? I better pack a suit.

What if the atmosphere of the planet drains away while I am visiting Japan? I better pack a self-enclosed space suit and supplemental oxygen.

Despite my inability to pack, I decided to throw in my suggestion of something you don’t need.

I picked something I’d seen a lot of people travelling with, but that I had never travelled with myself. Therefore, I figured, you don’t NEED to bring it, do you?

I knew when I picked the item I chose to write about, it would be controversial. I had met more than a few people travelling in the past few years who have said to me that they could not imagine travelling without this item. This despite the fact that the item in question didn’t exist before 2001, and wasn’t in regular use until a few year after that.

The item I suggested people could travel without was the iPod.

What I wrote was:

I see so many people travelling nowadays with their eyes closed and those white buds in their ears.  That is fine and good for a commuter train rides.  When riding a bus through the wilds of Costa Rica though, you lose something when you throw in your ear buds and select your “groove out” playlist instead of taking the opportunity to watch the scenery, listen to the sounds of travel and most importantly interact with your fellow travellers and locals.  Of course, I could be wrong and this all could be jealousy on my part seeing as I have no mp3 player to speak of…  But I am pretty sure I’m right.

As you can see, I tried to make it a bit of a joke. After all, I’ve already admitted that I pack too much stuff, so I figured I would fluff off the entry with a bit of a light, jokey entry.

My advice on the iPod got posted as one of the 18 Things You Don’t Need On Your Packing List.

Looking at the 18 things, I do agree with some of the things - money belts and water filters aren’t needed on the majority of trips. Some of things I understand, but still bring anyway. I know that you shouldn’t bring jeans - they are heavy and slow to dry, but I always bring them. They are just more comfortable. Some items I disagree with. I only brought one book with me to South America, figuring I could trade with folks along the road or pick up books at English book stores. Didn’t work, and I wound up spending 5 days in Patagonia without a single thing to read.

Among the other suggestions was my iPod entry. I was expecting a few negative comments, but I got a bit of an avalanche of them. Only one person agreed with me, with ten disagreeing, including calling me a “retard” for suggesting it and calling the suggest to travel without an iPod “the most stupid thing, I´ve ever heard, seriously!”

I’m pretty sure stupider things have been said in the entire history of humanity, but I suppose that’s a bit of an objective call, so perhaps I have, in fact, said the most stupid thing ever said.

When it comes right down to it, you don’t actually need much of anything to travel. If you’ve ever backpacked, you’ve probably run into someone who is travelling long term with nothing more than one change of clothes and a passport. That’s all you need, and you really only need the passport if you want to leave the country. In fact, I’ve come across blogs and articles about people travelling with no money at all, so a passport and clothes is about it.

Even with the inspiration of those who travel with nothing and a handy list of 18 things not to pack, I’ll probably still pack too much.

Turning back to my day trip to Ascot today, readers with keen deduction skills will already have guessed what the new bit of kit that I took with me.

It was my brand new iPod.

I bought it last weekend and loaded it up with the 2617 songs that I recently ripped from my CD collection. I put together a few cool playlists too, “Road Trippin’” and “Dance Dance Revolution” among them.

You know what. I liked it.

The iPod came in especially handy when, due to “severe delays on the circle line,” I wound up catching a later train out of Paddington and therefore missed a connection in Reading. With 25 minutes until the next train, being able to sit back and listen to some tunes was much appreciated.

After my meeting, I caught the train back to Paddington. Instead of hopping on the tube of catching a bus, I decided to walk home. It’s about an hour walk, but it is good exercise, so I decided to hoof it. I kept my iPod in my ears, and started the walk down Praed street with my “Car Chase Music” playlist on shuffle.

It made me realise what my life up to this point had been missing.

A soundtrack. Walking along the busy city streets with “Busy Child” by The Crystal Method made me feel a little like Jason Bourne on his way to punch the crap out of some of his evil CIA pursuers.

Therefore, I will admit I was wrong. Travelling with an iPod is fine. It helps pass the time when waiting, which those who travel will know is something that happens often - whether it is on a train platform, a bus station, a ferry terminal or an airport lounge. The music also provides an additional layer of experience to the passing scenery, whether out of a train window or walking the city.

Yes, I will admit I was wrong. At least, I’m pretty sure I was wrong...

...but...

Listening to my iPod today on the train got me thinking about another trip I did my train, but this one much longer than the hour from Ascot to Paddington (via Reading).

I got to thinking about my trip from Paris to Hong Kong, which I did without the benefit of an iPod or other MP3 player.

The iPod would have come in handy a few times. I no doubt would have gone a lot less stir crazy when I spent four days straight on the train between Moscow and Irkutsk, and iPod might have made the train station in Jining seem a lot less depressing and scary.

It would have been a shame though, if instead of spending my time trying to speak with Stan and Ollie or Soonay and Alex, that I put my ear buds in and spent my time lying on my bunk.

Plus, the iPod would have been an absolute life changer for the worse if I spent my time listening to U2’s latest on the train from Beijing to Hong Kong. On that trip, without an iPod to entertain me, I instead sought out some English speakers to chat with. I wound up chatting with a Canadian-born girl who was travelling with a British passport. She told me about the UK Ancestry visa, which three years later led to me moving over here to London.

So, yeah, I was wrong. Travelling with an iPod is fine. Just make sure you take the ear buds out and talk to those around you.

You never know where it might lead.

Sunday morning. There’s nothing quite like a decent Sunday morning with nothing at all on the daily calendar, is there? A day to wake up, wander around the house, avoid showering, have a leisurely breakfast and read the Sunday newspaper. Then, maybe about 1 o’clock, after spending the day flipping through every section of the massive Sunday press, then maybe its time to get outside and do something.

Back in Toronto, when I would wander around the house, eating my breakfast and reading the newspaper, it would be the Toronto Star. A good, decent solid liberal newspaper (by Canadian standards).

The question I faced when I first arrived in London is what newspaper I should read. There are a lot of choices, and what you choose to read says a lot about who you are, or at least who you think you are.

During the week, of course, I don’t have time to sit around a leisurely read the paper. I, like most of the rest of London, read the same thing on weekdays.

The Metro.


The London Metro is a free newspaper distributed every weekday morning. It has just about enough news to digest in about 20 minutes, and if you are feeling really ambitious or want something to do at lunch or on the evening train home, there is a Suduko.

Everyone who commutes in London seems to read the Metro newspaper. Comedian Michael McIntyre commented on this in his Live at the Apollo appearance.

And everyone's reading, you have to read, you can't be on the tube without reading, reading is very important. You get on on the morning and every single person is reading the Metro. Everyone, everyone. Why doesn't one person just read it to the carriage?

if you want to see him do it (much funnier with his delivery), check out this clip on Youtube, starting at about 2:30. Stick around for the bit at about five minutes in, when he talks about the guy trying to get on the crowded tube train. Classic stuff.

We used to have a free Metro newspaper in Toronto, one of many cities with a free morning newspaper called the Metro. The London Metro is not, however, one of that brand. The Metro papers in Toronto, New York, Philly, Paris, Sydney, Rome et al are run by a Swedish company based in Luxembourg.

The London Metro, along with the other Metro editions in the UK are run by a separate company, though they stole the name from the Swedes, so the papers are named the same.

So that covers me on the weekdays and my commutes. On weekends, though, that’s where you are faced with the decision. Saturday and Sunday editions of the many newspapers available in London are numerous, and the local news agents counters are groaning under the weight of all the editions.

As I said, what paper you read says a lot about who you are.

If you like sports, gossip and boobies, hate immigrants and have little patience for big words or long articles, then the tabloids are for you. The tabloids, also known as red-tops due to the fact many have a red banner at the top of the page, include The Star, The Sport, The Mirror and most famously the The Sun, and her Sunday companion “The News of the World.”

The Sun is one of the most read newspapers in the world, with a daily distribution of almost 3 million copies. The Sun is famous for coverage of celebrities and the Royals, Sports coverage and the Page 3 girl. The Page 3 girl is usually a comely lass who is pictured after misplacing her top and bra.

It is often said of The Sun that it is read back-to-front, as the Sports pages are at the back of the paper, and many of the readers of The Sun are football fans drawn to their extensive football coverage. Of course, in reality The Sun is read in this order - Page 3, and then back to front.

While Page 3 is enticing, for real thrills you’d have to check out the Daily Sport. The Daily Sport ditches the concept of news entirely, simply publishing pictures of naked and near naked women instead and writing a few words of copy around the picture. I must admit that I was tempted to become a Daily Sport reader, but I do occasionally like to read some real news, so decided to go for something a little more high-brow.

The Daily Express or the Daily Mail are a little more high-brow than the tabloids, though at times not much more. The Express is fond of conspiracy stories regarding the death of Princess Diana, and the Daily Mail ran a headline in 1993 entitled “Abortion hope after 'gay genes' findings,” suggesting that if there was a “gay gene” pre-natal test, then parents could choose to terminate the pregnancy. A strange suggestion for a newspaper who is editorially anti-abortion.

The Daily Mail published a story on the seventh of January 1967 called “The Holes In Our Roads” about potholes. The story looked at the crumbling infrastructure of British roads, specifically quoting the example of Blackburn, Lancashire, where it said there were 4,000 potholes. In the same issue was a story about the death of John Lennon’s friend Tara Browne.

Lennon, when writing about the death of his friend, picked up on the story of the potholes to pen the lines, “four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire, and though the holes were rather small they had to count them all. Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall,” for the song Day in the Life.

Despite the historical link with my favourite Beatles song, The Mail and the similar Express, often called “middle-market” papers, tend to be conservative and euro-sceptic. As you can tell from my blog, I am pretty Euro-positive, so I decided to look for something a little more in line with my values.

That left me with the Broadsheets. These are the classy papers, the ones that fancy people read. Oh, and me, as well, even though I am not too fancy.

Each paper has a definite political slant. The Telegraph, sometimes called The Tory-graph, is conservative, while the other broadsheets tend to be more liberal. Well, the Financial Times isn’t really liberal, per se, but rather is so focused on business and the stock market to give too much care for liberal or conservative thoughts on social policy. Anyway, I am more liberal than conservative, so I decided to pick one of the other broadsheets.

The Independent is a centre-left paper, an out-growth from The Dublin Independent, but no one really reads it, so I was able to dismiss it pretty easily.

The Guardian and its Sunday edition called The Observer are left of centre and socially liberal.

The Guardian was originally published in Manchester, with the most early editions being sent from Manchester to London. I didn’t know this, but apparently the later runs of newspapers have less errors, because they are being caught and corrected as the run continues. To get the paper into the shops for the morning commuters, London papers sent their early editions to the North of England, whereas early editions of the Guardian came down to London.

Because of Londoners getting the early editions of the Guardian, many folks in London would find spelling errors in the Guardian, leading to it being dubbed the Grauniad, after an urban-myth of the newspaper’s name being misspelt on the banner.

I don’t mind the Guardian, and their headquarters aren’t in Manchester anymore, but rather down in King’s Cross, London, just a block from my flat.

However, I finally settled on reading the Times on Saturday and Sunday, mostly because my current flat mate reads The Times on Saturdays and Sundays, and therefore we can share the cost of buying the papers.

So, on Sunday mornings I get up, throw on a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and a pair of sandals and walk half a block up Caledonian Road to the News Agent. There, in exchange for two of my hard earned pounds, I get a thick newspaper that’ll keep me busy for the next four hours, plus a few hours here and there during the week thanks to the magazines.

I return home, make myself some toast and peanut butter and settle in to read the Sunday Times.

So, what does this choice of paper say about me? Well, officially, the paper is centre-right, so I guess that means I am a little bit conservative. I suppose that isn’t surprising. After all, I do tend to meander over the spectrum of voting. Mostly though, it says I like the concept of not always having to buy the paper.

Perhaps, though, it is best to leave it to others to determine what it says about me. For that, I turn to 1980s sitcom Yes, Prime Minister and their episode entitled “A Conflict of Interest.”

Prime Minister Jim Hacker: I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country. The Times is read by people who actually do run the country. The Daily Mirror is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who own the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country. The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.


Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about people who read the Sun.


Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country as long as she's got big tits.

I've been cocooning recently. Working from home and a spat of cooler weather has meant that staying in has been quite an attractive option. So for the past few weeks, other than the one day a week when I head down to my office, my life has pretty much taken place in a small radius of my flat, the outer limit of the radius being the N1 centre, which has a Sainsbury's, pharmacist and movie theatre. With the N1 centre, I want for nothing.

The other day I was re-reading some of the notes I had made after reading about Existential Migration, which I wrote about in my entry I'm not a Traveller, I'm a Migrant. Reading my notes at the time reminded me that I should be taking advantage of the opportunity I have created for myself by moving to England, and getting out and enjoying life in the city.

To that end, I have (for the past 4 days at least) made an effort to get out and see London. On Wednesday I walked up Caledonian Road and checked out Pentonville Prison, which I will admit isn't very high on the tourist trail, but it is a mile from my house and thought I should check it out, in the event there is ever an escape. On Thursday, after taking the train back from my office in Egham, I walked from Victoria Station to my house (about 4 miles), taking in Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus and Soho along the way. Friday I walked around Camden for an hour.

Yesterday, I headed over to Liverpool Street station and the nearby Old Spitalfields Market.

Spitalfields used to be a wholesale fruit and vegetable market, but that was moved in 1991 to the new Spitalfields Market out near the Olympic site in Stratford. Today, the old Spitalfields Market is used as a space for restaurants, shops, bars and the occasional small festival.

Yesterday, there was a Japanese festival called Matsuri.

I quite liked Japan when I was there in 2006. I found it an interesting mix of the familiar and the strange. It is a very modern country (at least the bits I saw of it), and other than a proliferation of neon that you wouldn't see anywhere in the west, the cities seem pretty similar to those of Europe or North America. On the other hand, some of the customs are very strange to Western eyes, and I always had a strong feeling that I was an outsider in Japan. I've read accounts of those who spent more time there, and they all point to this - no matter how long you spend in Japan or how well you speak the language, you are always an outsider.

I was mulling this over while wandering around with my first cold Asahi beer, and realized that may be why I liked it so much. The research on existential migration focused my attention on a potential driver for wanting to live abroad being that I often felt like a bit of an outsider at home. I was popular and had lots of friends and good relationship with my family, but there was a nagging little bit inside me that always seemed to indicate that perhaps I didn't quite belong. In moving abroad, I haven't changed that opinion - I still feel like I don't quite belong. But that doesn't bother me now because I actually don't belong. I am a foreigner, so it is fine to feel foreign. In effect, I have changed my external circumstances to make them match my internal feelings. If you feel like you don't quite belong, move somewhere where you don't actually belong. Then everything is fine.

Anyway, I'll come back to the idea of existential migration in more detail in a future entry. For now, let's just wander around the Matsuri festival and enjoy it...

There was a lot of Japanese goods for sale.

I was mostly there for the food, though. I enjoyed a couple of Asahi beers, had a nice plate of sushi and some yakitori.

There was Japanese entertainment. The drummers were good, and I liked the children's martial-arts-cum-dancing display. There was a Shamisen player from Brazil. The shamisen is a 3-stringed lute. I found it a little too plinky-plunky.

Lots of people got into the spirit of the day and dressed in traditional Japanese dress...

...and taking pleasure from the Japanese activities and art.

It looks like love at first sight!

All and all, a good day. I got out and got some exercise walking back and forth from my place and Liverpool Street Station (which I needed after the Japanese food and beer), I got to remind myself of the great time I had in Japan, and I got to ruminate a little more on why I undertook this adventure to live abroad in the first place. To experience a culture other than my own. Which I did at the Matsuri Festival, even if it wasn't quite the culture of the country I am living in.

It was good to get out the house and look at other lands.

Oh, and because I am a great flatmate, I bought my flatmates some presents. I present them to you now in haiku.

White cartoon feline
Hello Kitty Candy box
a gift for flatmates

Dewa mata atode!