Five Things I Miss About America

I’ve lived in the UK now for about three years and it’s been such a great experience to get the learn the ins and outs of another culture.  I recognize it’s not realistic but wouldn’t it be interesting if everyone had to live a portion of their life in another country?  It gives you such a different perspective on this great big world we live in and share.

But, as much as I love living in England, there are times when I miss America.  I miss my friends and family every day but some days I encounter something and think jeez, they sure do that better in America.  Take customer service and what I would call general convenience.  The UK has a reputation for bad customer service and the television is full of shows like Watchdog, Rogue Traders, and Secret Shopper that exploit this.  From my own personal experience, I find service is hit or miss.  Sometimes it’s good but then sometimes you get a waitress like I had at dinner the other night.  She was so abrupt and rude that my friends and I were actually afraid of her by the end of the meal.  And, we left her a tip that reflected this and then ran for our lives.  Certainly the tipping culture in the US vs the UK is one of the fundamental differences in wait staff’s motivation to be cheery and helpful.

Now that I have a child, there also are certain American conveniences that I miss more than ever.  Everything seems just a bit harder when you have a toddler in tow and it frustrates me when I reflect on things from American life that I took for granted.  Such as:

1. Grocery baggers – How I long for the days when some lovely retired gentleman or teenager working after school would pack my groceries in bags almost as fast as the checkout clerk would scan them.  This is a seemingly foreign concept here so I bag my own groceries.  And, trying to get out of the grocery store with a toddler is not made more enjoyable when the checkout clerk just stares at you struggle to open the bags.  Mate, if you would just stop staring at me and help we could all get this over with a lot faster!
2. Pay at the pump – Pay at the pump has been ubiquitous in the US for so many years, I can’t even recall the last time I paid for fuel by interacting with a human.  But here in the UK most fuel stations still make you to go inside and wait in line to pay a real human being.  Why?  There is proven technology that could get more customers in and out faster.  I see more stations implementing pay at the pump but it seems to be merely an after thought.  In a petrol station of 10 pumps only 2 will have pay at the pump. Why even bother?  I feel the need to plan my trips to the fuel station around times when I don’t have the Little Monkey with me.  Call me crazy, but I’m not going to leave him in the car by himself while I walk into the shop and pay.  And, it’s just a plain hassle to get him out of the car only to put him right back in.
3. Drive through ATM/Cashpoint – Maybe this is a side effect of the compactness of the UK and the fact that most ATMs you come across will be on the high street in a city or town center and not in a suburb.  For me this is just another excuse not to carry cash around.
4. Shopping late on Sunday – In a country generally less religious than my southern American roots, I struggle to understand the rationale behind major grocery stores closing at 4:00 on Sundays.  Apparently opening on Sunday at all has only even been allowed since 1994. I realize we can plan around this but frankly we’re just not very good at that.  More often than not we find ourselves at 3:30 on Sunday afternoon saying “crap, what’s for dinner” and rushing off to the store.  What irks me the most however is the fact that some large chains have big brightly lit signs announcing “Open 24 hrs.”  Clearly their understanding of the number of hours required to make up 24 in a day is different from mine.
5. Drive through Starbucks – enough said. The ultimate convenience.

Now, there are things I don’t miss about America and things I like better in the UK so just to be fair and balanced maybe I’ll get around to post about that.  But, for now I’ll just continue to miss these little conveniences that made simple tasks just a bit easier.

A Pox on You NHS

February 2011 will now be remembered as the month Little Monkey got chickenpox.  Suspicious spots were evident in Tuesday night’s bath and had multiplied by morning.  A quick trip to the GP confirmed my diagnosis.  This of course made Little Monkey persona non grata at nursery until he’s no longer contagious, an undetermined amount of time.  The GP went on to tell me it could take about a month for everything to clear up completely [imagine horrified look on my face]. 

Traffic Jam

Where else but England would you get stuck behind both a cyclist and a horse during the nursery run? In the rain.

610 Miles to Empty

Growing up in America, I’ve been largely unfamiliar with diesel cars.  Diesel was something you filled up with once in a blue moon when you rented a U-Haul to move house.  It was the rare filling station indeed where you’d find a diesel pump.  Sensible given that less than 5% of cars on the road in the US are diesel.

What’s the Latest 411?

Happy 2011 everyone!  At the end of October I finally completed the long and tedious process of getting my UK visa updated.  There was a dizzying array of documentation that I needed to collect followed by a visit to the UK immigration office in Croydon.   For those of you not intimately familiar with UK geography, this is just outside London and is an area that I suggest is seldom seen by tourists.  And, for good reason I might add. 

National Gallery Dinner

I spent the evening of September 30th at the National Gallery in London that was so amazing I felt it deserved its own post (although a little late…).  The event was a customer dinner sponsored by HP.  HP actually has a special relationship with the National Gallery in which they support the new capabilities of the Gallery to provide visitors with prints of their favorite pieces of art.

Country Living

I’m already regularly in turtlenecks now so I must be in England.  So, yes, you folks back in Virginia, I am jealous of your summertime weather.  I also assume that I will figure this blog thing out eventually but have not made it a habit yet (obviously) and it’s one of those things that gets pushed to the bottom of the list.  So, what’s been going on?

Summer? What Summer?

It’s been a while since I posted an update but there has been a ton going on.  The week of the 11th had me in Manchester, London, Windsor, & Brentford.  I still take the train into the city as there is nowhere to park you have to pay a congestion charge, etc.  The train is just easier.  I have to say it is surreal to go to meetings in central London.  Taking a cab from the train station to my meetings we passed all the tourist highlights, Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park,

Roundabouts!

Phew!  What an adventure learning to drive has been.  I’ve jumped right into the deep end on this challenge though, pretty much had to.  I finally got a rental car straight for the short term until I can find a car to buy.  I have affectionately called my rental, a bright blue Nissan Note, “Blue Thunder.”  It’s getting me where I need to go right now but is certainly a few steps down from the Audi.  It is small though which is a very good thing.  Man, there are some small roads and parking places! 

First Two Weeks in the UK

Well I’ve survived my first two weeks in England.  It’s been quite a busy time and I’m thankful that I was able to have that small break before I start work.  When you change absolutely everything in your life, even the smallest tasks become difficult.  I don’t even know my phone number!  I’ve got a temporary UK phone that I’m using and have to keep the number written on a pad of paper.