The Other World ?

...and so it came to pass that the young one stood in the Great Hall, in front of simple and noble men alike... and ne'er blinked at shining lights flashing in his eyes. Learned men greeted him with smiles and humility, dwarved by the greateness that would be.

Or something like that. Yea. That's why I never became a writer.

Speeches were nice, some moving, some more in the lines of "listen to me talking about me for forty minutes"....

I hope the young one realises it is the end of an era. An era when pints and shots were all you had to worry about at night, young one. An era that none realize exactly how missed it would be once it was over. I tried to make my point, without being too intrusive, but finally it is his choice... I will support him as best I can, but it rests with him, that final decision.

And less than 20 hours ago, I was back on this side of the sea... back from the other world.
It amazes me how simple things can be just 3 hours away from this City. You expect something to be in a certain way. And it really is. Of course, listening to Clarkson bitch about the other world, one would think it is most frustrating. Try living here for a year, Clarkson!

59 horns I counted on the way back from the airport to the apartment. 59... In a very empty city, on Sunday afternoon. Fortunately, it started raining. Hard. I think the rain drowned the horns.

There's a lot to be said about waking up in the middle of London and breathing in the cool, clean morning air through a wide open window through which an avalanche of sounds pour in: a bird chirping in the tree under the window; girls laughing in the parking lot; the deep growl of a coach pulling into the same parking lot to pick up the laughing girls... In contrast, I was pleasantly awakened this morning by the chirping of about 150 cars, all honking their horns at some poor bastard whose car had the nerve to die in the middle of the boulevard. I opened the window to breathe in the cool, clean morning air. At 0730 it was stifling already and it burned my lungs with fumes. No laughter from girls in the parking lot. You must be crazy to laugh out loud here...
I can't sleep with the window opened. Too many Valentino Rossi's and Emerson Fitipaldi's in this city. Oxford Street noise at the height of sales week is church-like quiet compared to the typical morning on Unirii.

And the young one wants to return to this dreamland. I understand the valid point he was making: working so that you may sleep at the weekend so you may work another week is indeed something one might not like. Not making new friends because people you meet at work are "work friends" and all you do is work. I understand that that is how it is in the other world.

But then I realized: except for the different chirping noise levels in the morning, I'm living in London!