Flight Delays

According to the excellent Coldplay song, Don't Panic, apparently "We live in a beautiful world, yeah we do, yeah we do", and I concede that point. Mostly.

Thoughtfully though, Aer Lingus have just awarded me with a very generous 90 minute delay to my flight to Dublin this evening. Presumably with good reason, like a loose engine or wing or something.

But, as they say, every cumuli nimbus has a sliver of Starbucks blueberry swirl cheesecake and a nice cuppa' arabica to ease the pain.

And a freebie copy of The Times, the front cover of which serves no useful purpose other than to remind me of just how stupendously fortunate I am.

You Can't Kill The Rooster

Over the weekend I've had a great insight into Seattle courtesy of three cool people, the hoover rolling Ann Craig who just relocated here two weeks ago, Jeannie whom Kevin Marks hooked me up with, and Ann's friend Todd.

Together we explored a Russian submarine that's moored in the harbour on Saturday - claiming that we were actually there to reclaim it for our soon to be re-born Soviet Union motherland - and yes, I was the irrepressible Sean Connery character of the troupe : "Gentlemen, we shail into hishtory...", and then we had a great BBQ at Todd's place where over some fine steak and beers, I was introduced to an awesomely funny book I will definitely be ordering, Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, whom I'd never heard of before - and we had some readings from it, this is the beginning of one of them, very, very funny...

When I was young, my father was transferred, and our family moved from western New York State to Raleigh, North Carolina. IBM had relocated a great many northerners, and, together, we made relentless fun of our new neighbors and their poky, backward way of life. Rumors circulated that locals ran stills out of their toolsheds and referred to their house cats as "good eatin'." Our parents coached us never to use the titles ma'am or sir when speaking to a teacher or shopkeeper. Tobacco was acceptable in the form of a cigarette, but should any of us experiment with plug or snuff, we would be automatically disinherited. Mountain Dew was forbidden, and our speech was monitored for the slightest hint of a Raleigh accent. Use the word y'all and, before you knew it, you'd find yourself in a haystack french-kissing an underage goat. Along with grits and hush puppies, the abbreviated form of "you all" was a dangerous step on an insidious path leading straight to the doors of the Baptist church.

Great times.

So Wrong

Voulas breakfast special yesterday: French Toast with strawberries and spray cream. That explains a LOT about this place. Actually, it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds, 'quite' being the operative word, of course. Euan warned me about this last month, when you arrive in the US everything is strangely familiar and then, after a while, you discover that the familiarity is quite superficial and the real differences emerge. Like, how I'm made to feel like an unfriendly, grumpy ne'er do well every time I walk into a store and don't immediately walk over to the counter to introduce myself to the assistant in excruciatingly personal detail, and instead I walk in and quietly go about my business before being welcomed by the store-assistant from half way across the bloody store, thus forcing me to offer back a surprised, stumbling reciprocal greeting rather belatedly. "Oh yeah, um, Hi, er, I'm fine thank you...."

Conversely, visiting a continental European country is quite the opposite, the superficial differences are obvious straight up front, not least language, but then after a while the European cultural similarities become apparent, unspoken politeness, over-respect for personal space, repressed cultural etiquette & protocols read: not in your face brazen-ness.