Land of the Free

It's great to be back in our hometown. We know where to buy anything we need, where to eat, where to go to pubs - it's great. We're driving on the right side of the road again, and there are open spaces. Relatively no traffic either.

Still, you can't help but be a little bit affected by time abroad. Here's three things I noticed about America, after having been away for eight months.

1 - We've still got a weight problem. It's obvious and everyone knows it, but it still struck me this time. A lot of people are, well, a bit larger.

2 - We're rich. The country is the richest in the world, and it shows. Everything was just a notch or two nicer than in the UK. Cleaner, newer, more designed. From the hair cut shops to the architecture. And cell phones seem to have caught up, though I can't be sure about that, since mine is the cheapest imaginable, and looks like its the first model developed with a color screen.

3 - Campaigns are way bigger. I just watched Barack Obama's big speech. This must be an area where the stereotypically reserved nature of the British continues to manifest. There is nothing like the American election that happens in the UK. People do not get this excited about candidates. Barack Obama is loved in the UK. He could probably fill a stadium there too (and he practically did in Germany). But no UK politician could.

Tony Blair, in his final, resignation address, said he was 'proud to have served the United Kingdom, the greatest nation on the Earth.' And people just scratched their heads. They were like, "we don't say that kind of thing here." The only people who fly the flags are soccer hooligans. On the way home from Chicago we drove through a small town with a bunch of flags hanging from the lamp posts on main street. Not uncommon here, not done there.