v5#3

I occasionally find myself in that uncertain, hazy space between asleep and awake asking myself, "Where am I?". It's this strange moment which I find both exciting and disconcerting at the same time, when in the next instant it will be revealed if I'm in a hotel in Africa, or on a bamboo mat in Thailand, or perhaps on my couch in Canada. It's not really so much of a conscious thought as it is this feeling that my neurons have not quite fully booted up and connected me with all my peripherals (eyes, ears, nose, etc).

I once in while get a similar sensation when I'm driving, when I'm turning on to a new street and for a very very brief second, my instincts fail me and won't tell me whether I'm supposed be moving to the left side of the road or the right side. Again, it's not so much that I'm thinking about it, usually that stuff is hard-wired, no thinking required, but I guess I've done enough driving in former British colonies to establish two competing driving patterns.

The thing is, there seems to be less and less to tell my senses that one place is different from the next. Cell phones are everywhere, internet is well, not everywhere but many places, satellite TV, fast food, big name shoe brands, large volume retail stores. I might hear the same music in London as I hear in Kilimanjaro, or Port au Prince. This is not to say that every place is the same. There is still this huge and amazing diversity of culture, language, food, music, sometimes just a few kilometres apart in some regions. It's just that there's this superimposed layer of globalized meta-culture (am I using this word properly?) that one seems to encounter everywhere one turns now.

Someone will have to tell me whether this is a good thing or a bad thing for the global community. Myself, I'm just trying to stay out of on-coming traffic, or rolling out of bed face first into some random piece of furniture.

Fast food--Thai style