So I spent the past 4 days in England — sick with a cold from not sleeping on the plane flight over — but enjoying myself none the less, and on my road to recovery.

England is a huge melting pot, culturally — as much as New York City, for sure.

And while it’s not unusual seeing different shapes, sizes, and colors of people speaking different languages, it is VERY unusual HEARING all these folks from completely different cultures — all speaking English, and all speaking with British accents.

For example, yesterday I sat on the plane with a black man who looked like former NBA Basketballer Charles Barkley. The man had such a thick Scottish accent I had to pay very close attention to what he was saying to understand him.

The day before, I was eating lunch in a town called Harpenden (at a place called The Slug And Lettuce) and I overheard an Asian man talking on his cell phone — he had a strong London Cockney accent.

When you hear people who look a certain way, speaking with very strong accents you’ve never seen them use before, there’s a bit of a disconnect in your ability to digest what’s going on. It’s like the words and music don’t match, and there’s a delay in your processing of it all.

Of course, no matter where you are, people are people, and so if you can relate to them, and especially if you can make them laugh using clever wit and self-deprecating humor, it takes no time at all to establish rapport.

This is universal the world over — even in places where people can’t speak English. Yesterday I arrived in Portugal, where almost no one speaks English outside of the big cities. In Portugal you hear French, Portuguese, Spanish and lots of other languages I couldn’t begin to identify.

Portugal is unusual in that it is so well-designed and modern as far as their roads, buildings, architecture and infrastructure goes, you may as well be in Miami or New York — but then you’ll be driving around a small town and you’ll have to pull your car over and sit and wait until the local shepherd gets his flock of sheep across the road. I actually got some great pictures of this, including a picture of a newborn sheep, just moments after it was delivered. I may even be able to replace the picture on the back of my offline newsletter, in the “Tales From The Back End” column, with one of these snapshots I took yesterday.

The world’s a pretty interesting place — all you need to do is get out and kick the tires around a bit.

Now go sell something, Craig Garber

P.S. This month’s Seductive Selling Newsletter was mailed out last week – get your copy TODAY and receive two free sales copy and marketing critiques, TOTALLY risk-free: http://www.kingofcopy.com/ssnl