The expression on the waiters face suggested that I had spoken in a foreign language. It was 9.30 in the morning and I will admit that sometimes my London accent can be difficult to understand but all I had done was enquire as to the availability of HP Sauce to go with my breakfast. Granted I was also sitting in a restaurant in Boston, Massachusetts and not in a greasy spoon in North London but I expected that brown sauce was a universal condiment.

This is obviously not the case.

Instead I was offered something called A1 Steak Sauce, which I was assured, was the same thing. I was unconvinced of this for two reasons. Firstly he had no idea what HP Sauce was so for him to offer something similar would have been an near impossibility, and secondly the presence of the word “Steak” in the title implied that it was more readily applied at a bbq rather than with sausage and bacon.

However, I am always willing to open myself up to new experiences and so I agreed to try it. Pouring a small amount onto the plate, I then smeared some sauce on to the bacon (which incidentally was not what I would consider to be acceptable in an English breakfast, as it seemed to be burnt to a crisp and brittle to the touch). To cut a long story short, A1 Steak Sauce is not the same as HP. A1 Steak Sauce is about as similar to HP Sauce as a tree is to a chicken.

The chance to live and work in another culture has always been appealing to me. I have spent some time in New Zealand, and have left England for a new life in the USA but the HP Sauce affair led me to consider things that I would miss about London. Family and friends aside, it seemed that things like the tube system, my season ticket at Tottenham Hotspur, the ready availability of chicken tikka masala or a decent shepherd’s pie and the chance to watch television without adverts every three minutes would leave a big hole in my life.

And I am certainly not alone in wanting to have my home comforts. Without wishing to name and shame anyone I am friends with, there is a professor who has lived in the UK for a number of years and spends “excess pounds on overpriced, imported American food” that she can’t live without and admits that she brings back “two suitcases full of cereal, brownie mixes and other tripe every visit.” I know someone who on one visit home to Bermuda was charged over $150 in excess luggage due to the amount of Campbells Chicken Noodle Soup in her suitcase.

These are just two examples of what we miss when we leave our “comfort zones” and only relate to food. What is interesting is that the chance to spend some time in another culture actually makes the appreciation of their country more intense in both a positive and negative way. A friend of mine from New Zealand who has lived in England and is currently in Fiji admits that “Something which surprised me when I lived in the UK was that it made me realise what it meant to be a New Zealander. The experience of living away from NZ sharpened my sense of identity.” He had never thought about it previously and was surprised by his sense of patriotism.

Tricia Nesti from New Hampshire spent a semester in London in 2007 and admits that she “still looks the other way when crossing the street” and that “the easy access to public transportation and the ability to go from country to country in Europe” meant that she actually had a desire to not go home. She also gained a historical perspective of Europe, adding that “here (the USA) old is 150 years. When I visited Cambridge, I stayed in a room that was 300 years old” but it was the discovery that we apparently have different cream cheese that really blew her mind. She is now preparing to move to Nottingham for two years but her brief flirtation with the UK means that she won’t be going there unprepared for the differences.

Of course there are some individuals who travel to the UK that don’t quite appreciate everything that London has to offer. Brian Fawcett from St Louis missed “Americans, constant electronic stimulation, people with a sense of humor or any knowledge of comedy, bbq and ranch sauce, driving, food that has taste, real sports bars, good T.V. and the culture.” This could explain why so many of the US expats in the capital of the UK migrate to the Sports Cafe in the West End of London on a Tuesday. Ten buffalo wings for one pound and pints of weak, gassy lager for the same price whilst being able to watch baseball can help the feelings of homesickness that living in another country brings out.

Ultimately we now live in a world where supposed globalization has allowed a homogenous culture to develop. There are constant complaints that everything is the same and that individual identity has been replaced by corporate logos. Food companies such as Subway, Starbucks and, of course, McDonalds have become symbols of the availability of the same product in whatever country you visit or reside in. Everywhere you look the Nike ‘Swoosh’ seems to be the clothing of choice, television stations show the same programmes (is there anywhere in the World that doesn’t know who Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe and Joey are?) and sports teams such as Manchester United and the New York Yankees are able to sell their merchandise to people who have never seen them play in the flesh.

The question is whether the world is shrinking or whether the increased availability of exported and imported cultures merely satisfies the human desire for familiarity. If you have made the decision to live abroad, there will obviously be differences to what you have become used to, but that just makes the decision to leave more exciting. If everything was really the same, there would be no point in leaving home but your experience of life would be fairly limited.

That is the reason why this Londoner has decided to come to the USA. I may struggle to find a decent brown sauce but I will be able to watch baseball at Fenway Park, eat at The Cheesecake Factory and watch movies at least three months before my friends in the UK. I am also fortunate that I have arrived at a time of social change and economic uncertainty as nothing focuses the mind more than adapting to a whole new way of thinking about things previously taken for granted!

And thanks to the vision of Rupert Murdoch, I will not miss a single game of football. What am I thinking....it’s called soccer.