I've now been in Shanghai for almost seven weeks and I can feel my Britishness starting to wear off. The years of education that made me stand on the right side of the escalator on the way out of the Metro have been forgotten. I have just realized I can stand any side I like and no-one cares.

What a feeling of liberation! I can even stand in the middle if I want to. I no longer have to wait for everyone to get off the train before I get on. In fact, I've found that it is actually a very bad idea to wait for people to get off. If I do that, by the time the doors of the train close, I have usually been carried half way up the escalator by the flood of people getting off. So now, I put my head down, my elbows out and charge into the train with everyone else.

Having mastered the whole "survival on the Metro" tactic, my return to London should be entertaining. Well, that is until I am lynched by my fellow passengers for not obeying the unwritten rules of travel on the London Underground. I think the novelty may wear off after that.

Perhaps the biggest struggle for me though, is abandoning queuing. It goes against everything that I have been brought up with.

We British are a nation of queuers. I think it may be in our genes. Americans "stand in line", but, I'm sorry, a line is just not quite the same thing as a queue.

There is nothing more entertaining that watching a British traveller trying to cope in a country that doesn't queue. It's like David and Victoria Beckham on a shopping trip in the Gobi Desert. And, yes, that was me when I first got here.

Shanghai is a tough test. I have been missing in action for days, trying to get a taxi. I've lost hours at work, stuck in the downstairs lobby, trying to get into a lift.

When I arrived, I didn't object when people pushed in front of me to pay at the supermarket or to buy a ticket. Of course, it offended my queuing sensibilities, but I am a Brit. I am far too polite to actually say anything.

Or I was. I've now realized that my fruit could still be fresh by the time I get home from the supermarket and I could get into the office before everyone else goes home if I stand up for myself and show a little spine. To start with, I was quite offended by people pushing in front of me as if I didn't exist. Now I realize that there is no rudeness intended. It's just the way life is here. (But carrying a bulky rucksack is a useful way to remind people that you do exist, as one bruised man in my local supermarket found to his cost).

I learned the hard way with taxis too. Because I was waiting at a particular spot first did not mean that I was entitled to the first empty taxi that came along. Oh no! If you're not prepared to put up a fight, you can spend days on a street corner waiting for a taxi.

Being fiercely competitive by nature, I now realize that this is a game I can be good at. No tactic is too daring (it may be a moving taxi, but it's still empty, right?) and no move too devious (it doesn't matter who opens the door first, it's who actually gets in first that matters).

So be warned: don't ever try to steal my taxi. Now I'm losing my Britishness, I won't give up without a real fight!

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