home is where... your internet connection is
I remember 1992. We traveled to London, and it was the first time we have seen a McDonald's restaurant. It was unknown to us, countryside children. The teachers themselves organized one of the main meals to happen at a McDonalds, so we can give it a try! We knew it only from the screens, and right there were the cheeseburgers, the fries and the milkshakes.
And then, McDonalds spread all over the country, and another phenomena appeared amongst us, which we also knew previously only from film and news. If you traveled abroad, and felt homesick, you went to a McDonalds. It was the same everywhere in the world due to the strict franchise rules.
And now? I'm hitting the keyboard of my laptop, updating my LJ from the trusted IBM ThinkPad, while the quickbar fills in my username automatically from cache, just as all my favorite websites are in the history and appear as soon as I type the first letters of their URL.
It's only when I look up from the screen when I notice that I'm in a hotel room in Amsterdam, hundreds of kilometers from home. And when I type "ld.." in my browser, LD50 appears, as if I was home, and if I type "ne..", then nervous-cuts.livejournal.com is loaded.
It's not the McDonalds anymore, no Burger King nor Friday's. You get a connection, and you're wherever you wish to be. Just don't look up.
And then, McDonalds spread all over the country, and another phenomena appeared amongst us, which we also knew previously only from film and news. If you traveled abroad, and felt homesick, you went to a McDonalds. It was the same everywhere in the world due to the strict franchise rules.
And now? I'm hitting the keyboard of my laptop, updating my LJ from the trusted IBM ThinkPad, while the quickbar fills in my username automatically from cache, just as all my favorite websites are in the history and appear as soon as I type the first letters of their URL.
It's only when I look up from the screen when I notice that I'm in a hotel room in Amsterdam, hundreds of kilometers from home. And when I type "ld.." in my browser, LD50 appears, as if I was home, and if I type "ne..", then nervous-cuts.livejournal.com is loaded.
It's not the McDonalds anymore, no Burger King nor Friday's. You get a connection, and you're wherever you wish to be. Just don't look up.