Our discussion on time last class was very interesting, though I'll admit that I couldn't help thinking about how selfish we are about when we want time to be treated monochronically or polychronically (particularly in doctor's offices). I was especially interested in how we look at time as a tangible commodity, as if it is something that we can order and control and divide and allot, when the fact of the matter is that time will continue on its merry way, whether we are able to organize ourselves and our lives in a way that will allow us to go to bed at night feeling that we accomplished what we set out to accomplish, or not.
In light of this, how am I going to organize my life to maximize the weeks I have in London? How many hours will I dedicate to libraries, to writing, to museums, to entertainment, to exploring the city and London culture? What's reasonable to expect? What's reasonable to expect in terms of pre-departure planning?
The discussion on time also led me to think about different variants of monochronic or polychronic time. Don't people in different areas do monochronicity differently? I assume they would, and that makes me wonder how American monochronicity might be different from English monochronicity, and how would I figure it out? How do you notice differences in how people think of time? My non-anthropologist brain is struggling right now trying to figure out where one would even begin!
In exploring various London-related things, I found a small gem of a blog today called Tired of London, Tired of Life. The blogger posts a new thing to do in London every single day, and has been doing this since 2008, which is pretty impressive. Although I'm certain that I'll already be swamped with the huge number of touristy things there are to do, and the desire to simply explore, this may end up being a great resource for finding cool little things to do. Besides that, most of them appear to be free. Another useful-looking website is Londonist—even more things to see and explore!
My biggest concern right now: How on earth will I ever have the time to do everything I want to do??
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