a word about London

Of course, I came here to study at The LSE.  Looking at the alumni notables, perusing my programme course lists, and observing my fellow students, there’s an awful lot of intellect available for me to absorb.  This is the place where futures are created, careers are advanced, multinational connections are made.  Make enough friends here, and you’re sure to not have to pay for accomodation anytime you visit a foreign country.     

But then, I have the rest of this thriving city: Londres, as they say in the French (and in the Spanish and in the Portuguese).  This metropolis of red telephone booths and double-decker buses, with its color-coded train lines and stone cobbled streets.  This mecca of finance and theatre.  London.  Although I’m at the university to study Urbanisation and Development, I can learn a thing or two from the rest of the city.  For my own, personal research, I need to discover how London manages to keep its roots and yet continues to advance.

For the majority of popular international cities, there is one, great, black marker dividing line between the people present there: residents and tourists.  Many times, the tourists are there to admire or critize, alert to things no longer visible to its residents.  The residents, on the one hand, are alert to a world of which the tourists are not aware, consisting of daily lives of nine to fives or, for some, five to nines.  London’s tourists have much to observe, being that its history is so tangible in the Cathedral down the street, or the pavement on which one is walking.   This city has this wonderful talent for preservation and the discipline to hold on to original designs and structures.  For example, the earliest walls of the Parliament (a.k.a. “Palace of Westminster”) were built c.1097, and let’s not forget the Globe Theatre built in 1599.  A preserved past: how enviable!

But people do not necessarily live here because of Shakespeare’s plays (which you will be, as I have found, hard-pressed to find tickets to) or because of the Parliament building (unless you are in a seat of honor).  People live here because of the employment opportunity, because pounds are worth twice of dollars and more than twice for other currencies, because the schools are prestigious, because there are buses and trains, because you can drink before 21.  Successful, progressive, technological.  These are words used to describe London just as much as the words historical, ancient, preserved.  A dynamic future: this is enviable, too.

So this is what I need to be.  I need to be London.  And why not?  If Paulo Coelho can turn his boy into the wind, can I not turn into a city? 

And anyway, apart from its apparent beauty, there are more languages spoken here than any other city on earth (says the posters in the London underground).  London knows how to revere its parent structures, look back on its past, and make sure the foundation of its beauty (which is, arguably, its history) is intact – this, I need to do.  At the same time, it also takes care of its people (with universal healthcare and all other such perks), attempts at good economic judgement, and takes the effort to be more environmental – this, I also need to do.  To have roots and wings: that is London.  That needs to be me.

~ by Jean Louise on 30 September 2008.