End of week one and I’m starting to feel comfortable in this place. It is so different from life back in the UK that I shall not try too hard to make a comparison. Chalk and cheese.

It’s damned hot but pleasantly so. Especially when you are fortunate enough to be staying in a huge, wonderfully equipped, modern house with air-conditioning. You step out of your cool house into a chilled car before entering your air-conditioned shopping mall. Only briefly are you ever forced to brave the extreme heat outside. But sometimes I choose to.

For a week, I’ve been settling into my aunt and uncle’s place. You could fit my own house back in the UK into it at least four times. It’s in the middle of nowhere sat in its own grounds, yet it has fast broadband, water, cable tv, in short, everything you’d want at home and more. It’s a very pleasant way to live, and I’m trying not to get too used to it.

My uncle was kind enough to pay me to come over, and in return, I’m looking after his two daughters. And in that there’s a long story, but I won’t bore you with specifics. Until this week, I’d never met my aunt or my two almost grown nieces. I now love them to bits and have bonded with them all – part of my family which I’ve missed out on in the past twelve years or so.

I have been given a truck to ferry the girls around in but this also means that I have the flexibility to travel around by myself, and I am now ready to start doing just that.

If you hadn’t noticed, I’ve become a parkour nut this past year. I take every opportunity to train and practise. The USA is no exception: before I left the country, I’d arranged to hook up with a load of american traceurs. We jammed in Chapel Hill today and I must say I’m impressed with the people and the places. This town was almost built for parkour! The whole of UNC (The University of North Carolina) is one huge concrete playground and boy did we play. Despite my injured knee, I did stuff I’d never thought to try, spurred on by people who are more obsessed with questions like “how can we have fun?” rather than “is this parkour?”

We went running across the rooftops of the city, as this was meant to be, hopping from wall to wall and under and over rails and gardens – not a security guard in sight to chase us away. Bliss! These lads put the fun back into it – it’s not illegal, ya know! – and I learnt new techniques and made a few new friends.

I will be sore tomorrow, but that’s the price I’m used to paying, by now.

I am in love with knowledge. When you stop learning, your life is over. Your mind is not like a glass; there is no ‘full’. My mind, like a sponge (albeit slightly leaker than a few years ago,) will absorb the majority of what it comes into contact with.

Knowledge is a powerful drug. Once you have had a taste of what it can do, you’d better get comfortable because you’re in for the ride, mate! Learning one thing prompts a whole raft of questions which you then have to try to find answers to, and the whole thing just snowballs. The quest for knowledge becomes part of you.

Simplistically, this divides us up into two basic types of person. The Surfer and the Scientist.

The Surfer finds an interesting fact and like most of us, asks himself a number of questions. He picks the most interesting one and follows it. *click*. The answer he gets prompts a few more questions, he looks at the shiniest one and follows that. *click*. Eventually, he gets bored, runs out of coffee and goes to bed easily satisfied.

The Scientist is different. As before, from his interesting nugget, he comes up with a number of questions. He realises just how complex this can be and sets to following ALL of these leads properly. *click* *click* *click*. When happy with this, he will pick the relevant ones and investigate these thoroughly too. *click* *click* *click* He never gets bored, but some time the following day will collapse from a caffeine overdose and sleep for 24hrs solid.

If you decide that you are a Scientist, you are condemning yourself to a life of little sleep and lots of commitment. But you’ll possess the true satisfaction of someone who knows that knowledge is a worthy goal, and that the journey to find it offers some spectacular sights.

Where did all this come from? I came across a quotation from Alexander Pope and ended up reading most of his Essay on Criticism. (I say most – it got a little dry in parts so I skimmed a little!) The first paragraph of this excerpt you might be familiar with.

——————-

A little Learning is a dang’rous Thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring:
There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fir’d at first Sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless Youth we tempt the Heights of Arts,
While from the bounded Level of our Mind,
Short Views we take, nor see the lengths behind,
But more advanc’d, behold with strange Surprize
New, distant Scenes of endless Science rise!
So pleas’d at first, the towring Alps we try,
Mount o’er the Vales, and seem to tread the Sky;
Th’ Eternal Snows appear already past,
And the first Clouds and Mountains seem the last:
But those attain’d, we tremble to survey
The growing Labours of the lengthen’d Way,
Th’ increasing Prospect tires our wandering Eyes,
Hills peep o’er Hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

It is less than two weeks until I board my flight for the States. It’s only just sinking in and I’m starting to get excited. Since Uncle Peter made the phone call to ask me to visit about four months ago, I’ve been laying my plans.