Weekend in London

I usually publish my weekly blog post on Mondays, but this week it's late because of a very enjoyable weekend in London.  The principal purpose of my visit was to meet my cousin's son, Alan, who is visiting the UK from Australia on a temporary work assignment.  I checked the correct terminology for the relationship between me and Alan and apparently he is my 'first cousin once removed'!  Well that really is a mouthful, isn't it?!  So as far as I'm concerned, my namesake is simply my cousin.  Now I've written about memes (copied behaviour) and genes (inherited characteristics) before -http://alansandal.blogspot.com.tr/2012_08_01_archive.html.  In particular, the rapid transmission of memetic behaviour, rather like a virus, compared with the generational and therefore slow transfer of genes.

My previous meeting with Alan was during a visit to Australia twenty years ago, when he was only 11 years old.  So any copied (memetic) behaviour between us is highly unlikely.  But what about the genetic relationship?  We both knew what each other looked like from a few Facebook discussions, so when we met at a Starbucks we instantly recognised each other.  From then on and I hope Alan will agree, the encounter was really very enjoyable.  We spent several hours together, having coffee, walking, dining, more walking, all with plenty of talking, and it was as though we were just continuing from where we were 'the other day', which of course we weren't but I can't think of another way of describing it.

Did it have anything to do with the genes or was it just the fact that we are two guys who both have engineering backgrounds and who seem to share similar views on a range of topics?  Obviously the extended family was included in the conversation but not very much.  The relationship had all the characteristics of being very mature, i.e. one that had been developed over a number of years and yet that clearly wasn't the case.  I didn't detect any pregnant pauses in the conversation and there was certainly no chatter just for the sake of it.

I still can't make my mind up as to whether the reason for the success of this truly memorable encounter was all in the genes but whatever, thank you Alan for a great time and I look forward to meeting you again, hopefully in the not too distant future, somewhere in the world!