overlap

I know this is a long way from home, but the focus on security arrangements is also something else. You can't go inside anywhere - shops, office building, the hotel - without having your bag searched, which I guess is fair enough. Round every corner is another armed security guard, some with what look like shotguns hanging round their necks but I'm not planning on getting close enough to ask.

There's some sort of incongruity with that against the opulence of the hotel, where there's hot and cold running 'good morning, sir', 'have a great day sir', 'how are you today, sir?' everywhere you go. Just when you think you've run the gauntlet of the lobby staff, it's 'good morning sir' from the security guard in the car park, and then again from the security guard with the very serious dog. And then I end up in the lift with one of our transatlantic cousins who joins in and wishes them 'have a great day' back. This may be a certain kind of normal if you come to this sort of place anywhere, I don't know, but when I'm rather more used to the 'what-choo-lookin'-at' style of address, well it's a very noticeable difference.

Maybe it's a contrast, or maybe they actually belong together and I've just never considered it that way, but among all the security paranoia I can also see signs for Vuitton, Prada, Gucci and Vulgari [sic!] from my hotel window. In any case it doesn't feel like a natural combination to me.

The mix of utterly banjaxed body clock and the incentive to get the work done so I can get off to somewhere rather more interesting instead means I have so far seen very little beyond the hotel and the office, and the ten or thirty minute between the two - the variance is based on prevailing levels of heat and\or rain. I need to try to get a little further away, as time is short.

At the same time as my investment in this netbook is proving a great means of staying in touch, I've been wondering whether the easy online access to familiar places and people means I'm much less likely to be in touch with whatever's going on locally. By this time next week, I'll be in a different country again, with substantially reduced levels of luxury, and that may no longer be an issue as I am not going all the way out into tropical jungle to spend as many hours a day online as I normally do, and I'm not expecting that to be such a ready option there anyway.