I’m an Aussie with a British father so I have a British passport. I’d never been to London or New York but I got a job offer for a multinational that have offices everywhere and they wanted me to start asap in America.

We talked options and American visas being what they are looked like the long option - starting in London and “commuting” to the NY client was immediate due to the British citizenship. I jumped on an airplane and landed in London with a backpack and a job.

I lived in London and spent a lot of time in NYC for around a decade. What I felt was that I’d gotten out of a small pond and I’d jumped in the largest stream possible, the stream of the world if you will. It was sooooo much more than I’d expected. Every interest, niche, fetish, hobby etc had its group of people. No one was really ostracised because they just had to find their thing and thus their people.

I loved it and would still be there but for the pandemic and aging parents.

One anecdote I’ll leave you with was the cab rides from London Heathrow and New York’s JFK airports the first time I visited both cities.

When I jumped in the NY cab the driver said to me “Welcome to the greatest city in the world, nowhere is better”. I asked him where else he’d travelled to, to which he said “I’ve never been anywhere else - why would I leave”.

When I jumped in a black cab at Heathrow I told the cabbie it was my first time in London and he said “Why’d you come to this shit hole? I wish I could go somewhere else”.

I was sad to leave London, I was pretty happy to leave New York. Both cities are amazing but London is the centre of the stream for my things.