Musings

Muse is really popular over here. I'm not really sure how popular they are at home, I'm not really a fan but I'm pretty sure they're more popular here. At any rate, their show sold out months in advance.

That wasn't really what I wanted to write about but it popped in my head so I wrote it down. Though, I suppose it does sortof relate to one of the things. That's one of the big differences I've noticed here - music. There's so much of it around. Maybe part of it is just that I'm in a much much much larger city than I've ever been before but there's music everywhere and alot of it is actually really good. Differences in different bands popularity is interesting though. For example, be prepared to pay out the nose for Snow Patrol or Arctic Monkeys here but it'll only be like 10 quid for The Tragically Hip.

Anyways, I sortof lost track. Being abroad is strange. I'm not particularly patriotic but here several times a day, my country of origin comes up. In fact, most of the people I hang out with here call me 'Canada'. I've always had trouble viewing people in terms of their nationality - countries on the whole don't really make sense to me.

It's curious to me how much a person tends to identify themselves in terms of their country. In reflection, I've been doing it quite alot, many times without realizing it. I'm going to try to keep better focus on that from now, and not let it happen so often. There's nothing wrong with being Canadian but I can't imagine a person not being anything more than their country. There's an interesting connection; an unconscious connection, I suppose, between a person and their country. There are so many things that you get used to seeing everywhere that they just become part of your landscape but then you shift and your landscape shifts accordingly.

Why the hell would I get excited to see a guy wearing a Maple Leafs hat? I don't like Toronto and I've never really followed the NHL. I do like hats but not that much so that's not it either. Nothing is particularly remarkable about a guy wearing a Maple Leafs hat, except maybe for that he's in Glasgow. The sudden inclusion of something formerly so commonplace to an area devoid of familiarities is memorable. Even if I've never in my life looked around me and gone, "Gee jolly! There sure are alot of people here with Toronto hats", there's something unconscious that recognizes it as being missing. I guess what I'm really trying to say here is fuck Toronto. Seriously, get out of my head you wanker.

Location can be everything it seems. I got dinner and a place to sleep because I was wearing a Team Canada jersey in Duone. Probably wouldn't happen in Canada. So in a way nationality is like a top-secret club. Seems a bit unfair doesn't it? But people will always be preferential.

Unreleted: Google is getting too smart. I wanted to search for Vinyl Cafe but instead searched for 'vinyl vsgr'. V, S, G, R being the letters directly to the right of C, A, F, E respectively. My top result was for Vinyl Cafe. Google didn't even ask me if I meant 'vinyl cafe'. It just fucking knew.

Welcome to Jolly Ol'

There's always something so uniquely strange about the night before going on a trip someplace. Tomorrow - no - in less than 12 hours I'm going to be in London. I think the average person would be excited and, don't get me wrong, I am but at the same time there's a flighty sort of misunderstanding of perception that I get before going someplace. Tomorrow, I'm still going to be me but I'm me somewhere new and that fact always seems to mess with me just a little bit. I think I have reality issues; something can't be real until I've seen it for myself. Right now, London holds the same level of believability over me as Never-Never Land. Soon, however, it will be solidified as fact in my mind, as a place that exists in both space and memory - at least to me anyways. It's that thought that puts me off slightly and gets me pondering.

Isn't odd how you can know exactly where you're going without ever having been there before? It's just one of the reasons that maps fascinate me. I may never have been to London but I already know what some of the places I want to go are and where they are. To me, that seems a bit against the point - isn't it? To go someplace new while having a full understanding of exactly what you're going to do there seems to defeat the purpose altogether of going somewhere new. I think, in alot of cases I tend to do the touristy type things simply because I wouldn't know what else to do or because it's expected of me ("How could you not have seen Buckingham Palace?") and not because that's actually what I want to do there. Honestly, I don't know what I want to do anywhere, not fully anyways. Maybe that's why I feel as though I can never stick around one place for too long - because maybe the next place might have something.

Who knows? It's too late though and I don't think I can properly articulate the rest of what's in my head so maybe that'll be for the night before I go someplace else. G'night.