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My first transcontinental flight, Calgary to Glasgow. The inflight movies were Wild Hogs, which mediocre and contrived); Music and Lyrics, which was sweet but still contrived; Dreamgirls which I have no idea about because I managed to snooze through part of it.
Aside from an hour of fitful neck-breaking sleep on the plane, this will end up being the longest day of my life. This is because of the route the plane took. It took off from Cowtown at 6:40 pm, then crossed over the arctic circle around when the sun would normally go down for me. It came back below the arctic circle around dawn for the UK. Thus I've had sunlight for roughly 24 hours so far, and at least 12 hours more. I'm writing this right around the time I would normally pretend to wake up. It's about 12:30 local time.
I'm currently on the train going from Glasgow to Dundee (where I've agreed to meet Brain for lunch. I've only been in Scotland for a short while, but I've noticed that the cliché's are in full evidence. The first human being I saw on the ground (as the plane dipped low enough to make out individual people) was on a golf course. I've witnessed herds of sheep and several distilleries. All that's missing is bagpipers wearing kilts.
What's really stuck me so far are all the little differences. The symbols for the mens and women's restrooms are slightly different from what I'm used to. The call them "toilets" too, which is probably a more accurate description of their function (do we really "rest" in ours?). The ratio of vehicles is different. I've seen lots of cars that I've never seen in real life before (only movies), and I've yet to see any Ford trucks - absolutely unheard of in Calgary! In fact, the only pickup truck I've seen on the road was a Mitsubishi. They drive on the wrong side of the road of course (I say this with confidence because North America is really where car culture evolved, so we get to define what's "right" for this activity). I've seen many many buildings that are older then every single building in my hometown. Not that that's hard as Calgary doesn't have a single building older then 100 years.
It's hard to describe. The closest analogy I can think of is Vancouver if it was colonized 500 years earlier. There is the same overabundance of moisture, moss and green growing things. Every crack in the sidewalk has something growing from it. The roads and paths never really look dry ad dusty the say they do in Calgary.
There's a group of teens sitting a few seats down from me, having a fun, laugh-filled conversation the way perfectly normal teens do all over the western world. They're well behaved (i.e. not hooligans), but still boisterous. It took me a while to decipher what they're saying (and some of them have accents thick enough that I haven't cracked them), but at one point they were talking about sex. Their attitudes towards it seemed to be about ten years ahead of where I'd expect a group of similarly aged Calgary teens to have been. There was no false bravado, no vulgarity. Simple matter-of-fact comments on what and who they liked when getting busy. Now I may have simply found the most mature teens in Scotland, or it could be that attitudes are more relaxed here. My sample size is too small to make more then a wild-assed guess though.
It's wierd being the person with the accent. I'm not used to it. Hopefully people will think it's exotic and sexy. I have high hopes in that regard.
Aside from an hour of fitful neck-breaking sleep on the plane, this will end up being the longest day of my life. This is because of the route the plane took. It took off from Cowtown at 6:40 pm, then crossed over the arctic circle around when the sun would normally go down for me. It came back below the arctic circle around dawn for the UK. Thus I've had sunlight for roughly 24 hours so far, and at least 12 hours more. I'm writing this right around the time I would normally pretend to wake up. It's about 12:30 local time.
I'm currently on the train going from Glasgow to Dundee (where I've agreed to meet Brain for lunch. I've only been in Scotland for a short while, but I've noticed that the cliché's are in full evidence. The first human being I saw on the ground (as the plane dipped low enough to make out individual people) was on a golf course. I've witnessed herds of sheep and several distilleries. All that's missing is bagpipers wearing kilts.
What's really stuck me so far are all the little differences. The symbols for the mens and women's restrooms are slightly different from what I'm used to. The call them "toilets" too, which is probably a more accurate description of their function (do we really "rest" in ours?). The ratio of vehicles is different. I've seen lots of cars that I've never seen in real life before (only movies), and I've yet to see any Ford trucks - absolutely unheard of in Calgary! In fact, the only pickup truck I've seen on the road was a Mitsubishi. They drive on the wrong side of the road of course (I say this with confidence because North America is really where car culture evolved, so we get to define what's "right" for this activity). I've seen many many buildings that are older then every single building in my hometown. Not that that's hard as Calgary doesn't have a single building older then 100 years.
It's hard to describe. The closest analogy I can think of is Vancouver if it was colonized 500 years earlier. There is the same overabundance of moisture, moss and green growing things. Every crack in the sidewalk has something growing from it. The roads and paths never really look dry ad dusty the say they do in Calgary.
There's a group of teens sitting a few seats down from me, having a fun, laugh-filled conversation the way perfectly normal teens do all over the western world. They're well behaved (i.e. not hooligans), but still boisterous. It took me a while to decipher what they're saying (and some of them have accents thick enough that I haven't cracked them), but at one point they were talking about sex. Their attitudes towards it seemed to be about ten years ahead of where I'd expect a group of similarly aged Calgary teens to have been. There was no false bravado, no vulgarity. Simple matter-of-fact comments on what and who they liked when getting busy. Now I may have simply found the most mature teens in Scotland, or it could be that attitudes are more relaxed here. My sample size is too small to make more then a wild-assed guess though.
It's wierd being the person with the accent. I'm not used to it. Hopefully people will think it's exotic and sexy. I have high hopes in that regard.
