Wednesday 22 December 2010

Sunset over Waterloo Bridge

  This is a nearly empty blog. Why? Well, for one, I could say my ambition to detail every aspect of my experience as a foreign Erasmus student living and working in London in written word was too ambitious. It seemed almost insulting to sit down and write about trivial, every day things - but it is the sum of such nigh-instantaneous minutia that comprises my experience.

  Should I have written about the friends I made, now nearly all back to their respective homelands, only to return when I am no longer here? What would I write about? Fran's delicate concern for others? Mathieu's constant egging for new Portuguese curse words? Sabrina's incisive sarcasm? But they're much more than that. How to distill every little moment into simple words?

  Maybe I should have written about the city. It's mish-mash of ancient and ultra-modern architecture, tangible attitude of "work hard, play hard" and its well-deserved place as paragon of what a cultural crossroad is like? But London's more than that - and less than that. Without its people, it is but a collection of roads and buildings.

  Perhaps, then, I should have written about the people of London. The curse-spouting moms with their baby trolleys, the charity worker that spots you with a smile as you try to evade them, the businesswoman trying to ride a bycicle through the Strand in high-heels, the jolly drunkards that strike up a conversation with you over cocumber sandwiches in London Bridge's train station? Words alone cannot convey it. I cannot share this with you. Perhaps I can share the seeming of it, the barest concept, and that seems unsatisfactory.

  This blog's emptiness is perhaps the greatest testament to the fractal immensity of my scarce four months in this city and how involving it is. I would not say I am a different man. That would be a mistake. Instead I should say that I leave London feeling more like myself than ever before.

  I arrived with nothing and I leave with everything.

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