Day 14 - Family and technology

My family arrived this afternoon!!! They'll be here for 8 or 9 more days. I'm so happy to see them!!!

Today we didn't do much. We spent a lot of time looking for a hotel, which is not easy to do here, but eventually found one. We went to the Toby Carvery for dinner, which is one of my favorite places here. Then we went to ASDA and as usual it was fun looking at all the different foods and drinks.

Tomorrow we're planning to go to Windsor Castle and maybe a few other things around the Windsor/Reading area. I'm looking forward to that.

Something that I've noticed, and my family noticed immediately, is that a lot of basic things just don't work as well here. Lights, doors, toilets, showers, windows, heaters, ... they seem to be older technology and of lower quality in general.

Maybe that's not as true about newer places in England, but there aren't very many new places in England. It might be because we're so used to relatively young cities like Norman and San Jose, which barely existed 50 years ago. I've seen pictures of Reading from around 1900 and it looked very much like it does today. However, even new items in stores seem to be of slightly lower quality - for example, many of the electronics have a cheap plasticy feel to them, much like the newer electronics sold at the Beryessa Flea Market.

posted by Matt @ 11:24 PM