It seems almost impossible to believe that I have a broadband connection in London; or at least I think so, as the modem is a tricky one it is, and the signal myseriously comes and goes. But for the moment it seems to be here for the moment. And I've missed blogging, oddly enough. I've missed it among other things that come with broadband internet access, which had become so reliable that it was jarring to turn on the computer and have all the widgets come out blank, my mail offline, my iDisk files unreachable.
Britain seems so wired (not in the sense of having had a great deal of caffeine, although there are coffee shops every two steps; whatever happened to a the English cuppa?): every company comes with an Internet address; you can pay the congestion fee over the internet. The congestion fee is apparently a toll that motorists have to pay when they drive their cars around in Central London; I've seen this in Singapore as well, but there it all seems (like the rest of the country) ruthlessly efficient: you drive your car under a bar wired with an ray-beam (or something) and it deducts money electronically. Drivers in London have to rush to a convenience store or get online to pay the toll; if they don't, there is a £50 fine. Which is fine by the Mayor of London, who runs the whole scheme and wants more people not be able to pay in time; the website is often down. Probably not deliberately, but an inefficiency that works to his advantage.
London would be a pleasant compromise city to live in if one had the means, and these are not lean means; one must be a very, very rich person to actually live well in London. It has the best theatre, bookstores, and basically can't be beat for as the cultural capital of the Anglophone world. But the shopping is better in New York, and the food is better in Paris. You can get about seventy per cent of what you'd find on these other great cities it is wedged between (and it meanders in the middle of the Atlantic if one ignores geography); but all at twice the price. You can eat well in London; but you can't eat well for little money in London; you can in Paris. Or New York for that matter. Which leaves the bookstores, which I haven't checked out yet; but in terms of theatre, there is something ironic about the fact that the best show on in the West End is The Producers.
But the British do have style; and when they put up an Apple store here they went to town. It is located in no less than Regent Street and flies a flag above the entrance; it's more like the lobby of an Ian Schrager hotel than a computer depot. One would wouldn't be surprised to see a royal warrant above the entrance, e.g., "Purveyors of digital musical equipment to HRH The Prince of Wales". Or even the Queen; who needs an iPod more than she does? Wouldn't an audiobook be just the thing to pass the time while sitting through the Trooping of the Colours?
1 comment:
Hi, have you ever tried Dublin? It's a burgeoning city, experiencing the new mixture of one hundred and one influences of nationalities, whereas seven years ago there was hardly an immigrant at all. Consequently the food, music and other cultural aspects are developing curiously. The price for things varies considerably depending on which street you walk down. But the people are very friendly, and the Irish Film Centre is a cultural Mecca. Theatre is alive in Ireland by undervalued and poor besides. London, in comparison, has only felt to me rather anonymous. But then Dublin is a small big city. Small is the new big.
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