Globalization

It's been a whirlwind tour through 3 countries and 6 cities on the cruise, and I think the thing that has left the deepest impression for me on this cruise is the issue of globalization. The countries that we visited on the cruise were very different culturally from what I have been exposed to for most of my life. And yet, I was continually struck by how similar the shops were, the brands they had, even the fashions they were carrying. About the only concession that the shops were making to being in the Middle East were that the skirts carried in them tended to be long, but that was about it.

One of the most vivid illustrations of this growing globalization came to me while seated in a Starbucks in Abu Dhabi. Sitting across the aisle from us was this Arab man, dressed in full Arab headdress, wearing dark sunglasses, reading an English newspaper and sipping a latte. As if that wasn't enough of an illustration of how the world is intermingling and growing smaller, when we got up to leave, I found a coin on the couch that I had been sitting on. Expecting it to be either a HK coin that had somehow slipped out of my pocket, or an UAE coin that somebody else had dropped, I picked it up and was astonished to see... a 5p UK coin.

Now *that*'s globalization for you.