C'mon, you can admit it to me, there's no one else here... you expected "the Europeans" to be fascinated by your American-ness, and falling over themselves to be your "friend", didn't you?!

And so now you feel a little bit foolish about that expectation. It burns you every time you go outside and are roundly ignored -- exactly as you would be in any city in the US of A.

And so you don't want to feel that uncomfortable feeling, and so you hide yourself away, feeling -- unreasonably now that you know it was a silly expectation -- judged and found "boring" by your host culture.

Know what? The dirty little secret is that you ARE boring. Exactly as boring as you were at home. Except at home, miracle of miracles, you had people who actually liked you!

Why did they like you? Because you had shared experiences, and a shared culture to filter those experiences with. It's as simple as that. This is the key to everything.

The single and only way to have people "like you" -- and to start to have the kind of fun you wanted when you signed up for this -- is to do all the painfully hard work of having shared experiences with people in this new culture.

There's no shortcut. Simply "being American" is, as ever, not enough. It's OK that you thought it was. It's a rookie mistake, but a common one. People make that mistake in _both_ directions...

If you're "new" to compact fluorescents, then whatever you do, DON'T replace all your standard light bulbs at once. That's a recipe for discovering that you "don't like" fluoros, and backsliding to wasteful old incandescents.

Rather, make a plan, and replace your old bulbs slowly, over a month or so. Say your house has 10 rooms (3 bed, 2 bath, kit, din, lng, garage, hallway). If you think about it, that's actually 10 different "kinds" of light that you need, reflected by the fact that, in all probability, you have already installed a variety of light fittings putting out a variety of watts, in all those places. From the naked bulb in the garage, to the 6 overbench downs in the kitchen.

So you need to find the right compact fluoros to replace your current lighting, WITHOUT losing the quality of light you've spent at least some effort to build.

So switch a couple of rooms to fluoros, using a few different "kinds". Do they work? No? Switch them around.

Find what works, and then do the rest of the house. Seek not just replacement, but actually IMPROVE the quality of light in each room before going on to the next.

That way, your transition will be gradual, and you'll actually enjoy the quality of light in your home, rather than just annoying yourself and then backsliding to incandescents, like so many have done.

In general, a good primer on the subject. I look forward to next week's addition.

But two sentences jumped out. Firstly:

Commercial buildings emit a far higher percentage of climate-changing pollutants than commercial planes, yet there is little outcry and few organized movements to green them up.

The last half of that is just not true at all. For people interested in buildings, engineering, and architecture, the last decade has seen an incredibly productive debate develop, resulting in awesome advances like low-emissivity ("low-e") glass for office towers. Many stunning examples of "green" proof-of-concept buildings were built in the late 90s -- and much of that technology is now filtering down, even into cheaply built identikit "glass brick" style commercial buildings. It's simple economics: business owners want to save on costs, and saving on warming and cooling is simply too easy, precisely because there was an "outcry" and because organized movements in the appropriate industries stepped in.

With cars it's similar. Americans have staggeringly gluttonous driving habits, yet only rarely are we made to feel guilty about them.

Again, the last half of that is just not true. I'm in my 30s, I read the automotive press, and I can't remember reading a "review" of a new car in any magazine or newspaper that didn't include "mileage" somewhere in the "good, bad, ugly" summary, depending on the car's performance in that area. Even for out-and-out sports cars, I can't remember a review that didn't at the very least state: "Of course, you'll bleed money at the pump." In the last decade most have gone on to make the environmental connection as well.

I happened to be in a big box retailer this afternoon, and make no mistake -- your next TV will be HD. It will also be widescreen.

Not because that's what you'll want. But simply because that's all there is to buy.

And the first time you play one of your "regular" DVDs on it -- and see the big black bars at the sides (because it isn't widescreen) and see how grainy the image looks (because your new flat screen has at least 10 more inches than your old TV did) -- you'll want High Definition.

480p is _barely acceptable_ on any screen bigger than 40 inches.

Now, if you actually decide to get a _good_ new screen -- 45+ inches and 1080p -- then HD will knock your socks off.

People who say they "can't tell the difference" are either sitting too far away from a CRT, or putting both SD and HD signals through a projector that's not capable of displaying the higher resolution.

Your new TV will be flat. It will be widescreen. It will almost certainly be 40+ inches. And you WILL be able to see the difference.