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Mirror World…

Someone, probably William Gibson speaking through Cayce Pollard, wrote about the Mirror World of travel. The notion that it is not the big differences that lend to a sense of unease, but the myriad small and barely noticeable differences. Like the shape of electrical outlets.

An odd one for us, that we’re still getting used to. In the UK they drive on the left. But expect people standing on the escalators to be standing on the right. On the other hand there’s a general convention to go up and down the left side of stairs. And it’s ok to take dogs on the escalators, as long as you carry them.

But the one that is driving me absolutely mad, as I’m in and out of job interviews that involve coding tests performed at a computer is that the standard over here is for the “@” to not be Shift-2, but instead to be over where I’m used to finding the double quote, i.e. one right-ward twitch of my little finger. For no readily apparent reason, the two are reversed. Which makes touch-typing code very annoying.

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