Things I'm missing most today

• Wholegrain food. I wouldn't mind eating rice every day if it was brown. But I have only ever been able to find white rice, white bread, and white pasta, none of which I usually touch at home. I need fibre! Perhaps we need to be taking some vitamin supplements. The food they give us isn't unhealthy, but it is light on fresh fruit and veg, unless one slice of tinned pineapple a day does it for you.

• The quaint English habit of saying 'excuse me' when you want to get passed someone; the custom here is to simply fix one eye on your target and then just shoulder-barge your way through without a word.

• Being able to keep books looking nice. Unless I keep the air-con on permenantly, the humidity causes anything made of paper to become damp and curl up in a matter of days. To keep them flat, I'm having to keep my drawing pad and scrapbook under my hotplate whenever I'm not using them.

• Stainless steel.

• The night sky. Here's it's permently shrouded by smog. I haven't seen the moon since we arrived. I haven't seen a single star.

• British 'wildlife'. The wasps we have at home are halmless compared to the critters here. I've been bitten again today (though again my fault as went hiking without repellent), and lat night we saw our first cockroach. It looked dead, so we were just about to give it a poke, as you do, when it suddenly and violently came back to life and fluttered its wings at us as we ran away.