Things we’ve noticed so far...
- It’s bloody expensive. In
fact, London was recently ranked as
the most expensive city in Europe, and is considerably more costly than
New York (the most expensive city in North America). But if you
pretend that prices are in dollars (rather than pounds), it’s
tolerable. Just remember to pretend that you only have half the
bank
balance you have in dollars.
- "Apartments" are "flats",
"tires" are "tyres", "call me at 555-5555"
is "ring me on 555-5555-5555", "fries" are "chips" and "chips" are
"crisps", "mail" is "post" (but it's still "e-mail"), a "hardware
store" is an "ironmonger" (seriously -- I've seen a few), a "line" is a
"queue", "you" is pronounced something like "yoiuew", "tunnels" (for
walking) are "subways" and "subways" are "the underground" or "the
tube", "watch your step" is "mind the gap" (they even have that on
T-shirts with the underground logo on), and of course "elevators" are
"lifts" and "soccer" is "football".
- People can understand our accents just fine, but I have had to ask a
lot of people to repeat things a couple of times. It seems many
syllables are optional here.
- Kettles boil in about 10 seconds (they’re rather serious about tea
over here).
- It’s quite clean, and there are often pleasant smells as you walk
down the street (e.g., past a soap or candle shop). In Queens,
you often had to hold your breath (or you could breathe in
intentionally
and play "name that stench").
- A lot of people smoke. The non-smoking sections of restaurants
(remember those?) are often way at the back.
- People can drink beer in public, and you often see beer cans in
parks. I guess since the bars close at 11 PM here, they need
other
places to consume.
- Very small “cars” (some look like toys) are common. No
SUVs. A few Ford cars (no GM or Chrysler), but mostly Peugeot and
Renault (France), BMW, Mercedes, and Volkswagen (Germany), Volvo
(Sweden), and other European cars. (Steve -- there are lots of
Honda
and Kawasaki motorcycles here, but also a lot of BMW, Triumph, Ducati,
and other kinds you don't see so much at home... and not a single
Harley so far).
- The bad teeth stereotype is not entirely untrue, at least for the
older generation.
- A lot of England has been Americanized. There are
Starbucks, Pizza Hut, McDonalds, Burger King, and a good number of
other US chains everywhere. No "Canadian Tyre" that I have seen
yet,
though. People seem to wear a fair number of USA (and especially
New York) shirts, so I guess it's a considered a bit cool to be
Americanish here. Still, I've got a maple leaf on everything I
own just in case.
- Light switches go up for off, down for on. The voltage is twice
as high. Each outlet has
its own off switch. The
plugs are huge (you could go surfing on one of the power bars
here).
- Most places have a separate hot and cold faucet in the sink.
From what I gather, this is because there are no standards for distance
between pipes here, so you can't often buy a combined faucet that fits
(at home, there are two sizes only). In any case, it's something
to see when somebody tries to wash
her face without freezing or scalding herself. The main strategy
seems to be to go back and forth as fast as possible so that it
averages out (that, or to fill up the sink every time). Also, the
toilets are silly. They're designed to flush two ways: a quick
one and a full one (presumably the former is meant to conserve
water). But the quick one does nothing, and it's not always easy
to make it do the full one (usually you have to flush twice and hold
the handle down on the second one -- sometimes you try three or four
times). Net result = waste of water.
- Units of measurement are not consistent. Distances are
typically in miles, but volumes are in litres. Fair enough, since
we use kilometers and litres, but give our heights in feet and weights
in pounds. But here, people actually give their weight in
"stones"! (1 stone = 14
lbs.).
- Surveillance cameras are everywhere. In every store and on
every major street. I don't know who's watching all this CCTV,
but he must have one heck of a popcorn bill at the end of the month.
- Churches and cemeteries have a lot of really old graves. Like,
"Archbishop So-And-So, died 1232" or something. Pretty
impressive, considering that the Earth was only created in 4004 BC!
- People drive on the left side of the road, which is dangerous if
you’re a pedestrian from North America, since it seems that cars (which
inevitably come from the “wrong” direction) have the right of way
here. In major centres, they have "look left" and "look right"
painted on the road in front of the sidewalks -- apparently there have
been a few casualties in the past. I've heard a few explanations
for the left-side-driving thing (remember, cars were invented in the
US, so the right side was the original side for automobiles)...
something to do with
knights carrying their swords in their right hands... or something
about the
whip hand in carriages being on the right... or possibly the Yanks just
wanting to do everything differently, so they started driving on the
right with their carriages... none of it makes much
sense to me, and in any case I say "whatever -- they
still could have made the switch" (almost all the rest of Europe drives
on the right). In Newfoundland, they had to
change in 1949 when they became a Canadian province instead of a
British
colony. Of course, there they did it gradually, starting
with the trucks... (that's a joke, folks).
- People say "yeah" way more than we say "eh".
- There is an automated message at the train station ready to apologize
for whatever delay may be occurring. During the (very brief)
blackout at the end of August, it got to at least "level 4" apology
("I'm extremely sorry for the severe delay to this service").
This raises two philosophical questions: 1) Can a computer really be
sorry?, and 2) Why didn't they spend the money making the trains better
instead??
- Everyone has a cell phone. I guess that's pretty much universal
now, but here the inane conversations are done with an English accent.
- Page 3 girls are topless.
- Even the real newspapers can't resist having celebrity gossip in them
(what we would normally only find in tabloids).
- Newspapers love the word
"chaos". I
read one story about how "chaos ensued" when a train skipped a couple
of
stops because it was running late. And don't forget "London snow
chaos"
as the headline during the "storm" last winter. Second to this is
"nightmare", as in "London blackout nightmare" (40 minutes long, only
in one part of the city) or "Nightmare commute as train fails to stop"
(I thought that meant it had crashed -- nope, just some angry commuters
were late getting home that evening).
- Those red phone booths (like on
Dr. Who) still exist. As far as
I
can tell, they don't go back in time though (and in fact, the rates
they charge seem like they must be from the future). Pay phones
cost
20p
(= 50 cents) just
to start, and then will cut you off after 3 minutes if you don't put in
more coins.
- Currency (photo here): The 5 pence (5p)
coin is smaller than our dime (and, I
found out, is not accepted by pay phones), while the 20p is smaller
than our nickel. The 10p is at least the size of our quarter, and
the
50p is even bigger. The other coins are for 1 pound (small and
thick) and 2 pounds (same diameter but thicker than a twoonie, with the
same two
colours of metal, though in reverse order), as well as
pennies (1p) and tuppence (2p -- same size as a loonie and certainly
the
most useless huge hunk of copper
ever invented). Altogether, it makes for way too much change to
carry. On the upside, if you get coins from different mintings
(say, 1985, 1995,
and 2001), you can line them up and watch the Queen get older (and her
head get bigger). Oh, and Charles Darwin is on the 10 pound
note.
- Medieval people were very short (as you'll notice right away if you
see armour or a grave monument from that period). Apparently the
British still think of themselves in the same dimensions, since they
have not updated the amount of leg room available on buses and trains
to accommodate modern proportions. This somewhat distorted body
image may also explain why so many young women proudly walk around with
big bellies sticking out the bottom of their T-shirts, as though they
think it's sexy to have a ponch (note: it isn't, unless you're a man).
- The class system still
exists. Every form you fill out has a
space for "title" (which I don't mind!). And when Sally asked our
property manager about garbage pick up, she was told "You can just put
it out in Marks & Spencer bags -- Oh, or Tesco". (Marks &
Spencer sells fancy expensive groceries as well as clothes here; Tesco
is only half a step up from No Frills).