I’ve been in Paris for almost five weeks now. And not for a single day was I without an Internet hookup. Actually, I spent several hours most of the past 30-some days looking at this computer. Yes, while in Paris. I know that’s ill but it’s the truth. OK, here’s my excuse: I do two blogs a day now. Yes. And one of them takes a lot of work.

Anyway, I am rediscovering something I learned in Hong Kong, when I did four months there with the International Herald Tribune from October last year to January of this year.

To wit:

If you are out of your home country, you will soon be out of touch with your home country sports.

Seems weird, doesn’t it? In the electronic age. I’ve been a SoCal sports fan forever, but …

But, you lose track when you’re the other side of an ocean. You just do. Even when you’re trying hard not to.

It’s about the environment. As I believe I wrote when I was in Hong Kong, almost no place on earth has the same sports interests as do Americans.

(OK, nobody does.)

Thus, you walk around, you read newspaper headlines at newsstands (yes, they still have newspapers and newsstands here; it’s deliciously retro), you hear conversations, you even see a half-hour of Sky News or the BBC … and never once are you going to pick up a single piece of information about … baseball … the NFL … college football.

Not one.

Every single fact you know must be gleaned through this infernal machine. And it answers only those questions I think to ask.

Do I want to read a Dodgers game story on latimes.com? Well, I have to go do it.

Meanwhile, I can’t see highlights on ESPN while sitting in front of the TV back home while actually reading a book … I don’t hear Brett Favre news while sitting in a car (OK,  a cab) idling at a red light …

There is zero outside sources for news, when you’re in another country. That background noise of life? It’s not just noise, when you’re at home.  It’s information oozing all around you, and you can pick up the basics of all sorts of stories just by going to the store/walking down the street/surfing through the cable TV lineup. Oh, look, the Angels are still playing.

So … it now seems to me inevitable … when you’re out of the country, you’re soon out of touch with the sports you thought you always would care about. Would have to care about.

When I was in Hong Kong, I thought maybe it was mostly about Hong Kong. Or could be. Hey, it’s China. The only team sports they have real interest in, at least in Hong Kong, is soccer (and generally only English Premier League soccer) … and a tiny bit of basketball. That is, if Yao Ming is playing.

But it’s no better in Paris. Where the sports interests are quite European. I’d rank the top 10 here: Soccer, soccer, soccer, tennis, soccer, rugby, soccer, cycling, petanque (don’t ask) and soccer.

I get no reinforcement on the States-side sports scene. I have no clear idea of what is going on back home … and that’s with me trying. Imagine if I weren’t? Imagine if I were like a normal person spending five weeks in Paris and actually went outside most of the day and wasn’t checking ball scores into the wee hours? Well, I’d know nothing at all. I’d think Manny Ramirez was still having a great season and Matt Kemp was just a prospect.

So, anyway … if your company sends you overseas, if the military ships you to Afghanistan … if you decide to sit out a stretch of unemployment in Paris … You Will Lose Touch.

I will be back in SoCal next week, inshallah, and I imagine a lot of this will snap back to me. But not before I miss USC’s and UCLA’s football openers, the Dodgers and Angels for a full month and goodness-knows-what the Lakers and Clippers might have been up to. It’s not as if I have the slightest idea.