Tea Time

You guys, British people love tea. I don't just mean they enjoy a nice cuppa' every now and then. They REALLY love tea. Someone once told me that the British Empire was founded over a cup of tea and I laughed. Now I believe them.

In England, NOTHING gets done unless there is tea involved. I don't just mean during. I mean before, after AND during. And it's not just any tea, there is tea ettiquette. So here are some general rules I've learned:

1. If you are alone, make tea.
2. If you have people over, make tea.
3. If you feel sleepy, make tea.
4. If you're going out, make one last cup of tea.
5. If you're angry, make tea.
6. In general, just make tea.

This essential set of rules became immediately evident when we moved in. Jet lagged and bleary-eyed, we were being shown our new flat by our landlady. It's furnished, but a lot of the every day small things were left up to us. Except the kettle. Heaven forbid there would be no kettle. And, just in case the one we were given broke, there's an extra in the closet. Just in case. Additionally, our fridge was completely empty, of course, except for a perfectly tiny jug of 2% milk waiting to cool off a perfectly steamy cup of tea. It's like they subliminally try to make you drink tea. Some "Brits for tea" lobby. And the worst part was, IT WORKS. My first day in London and feeling like death, all I really wanted was a big cup of tea.

One week and approximately 3857324 cups of tea later, it was time for internet man to come and get us connected. That's when I learned that when someone comes in to your home, make them tea (see rule #2). Ok, fine. It's just pouring some hot water over a little sachet, right? NO. I learned that people are pretty particular when it comes to their perfect cup of tea. Water boiling or just off the boil (but most definitely not just 'hot')? 1-2 minutes or 3-5 minutes? Milk before water or water before milk? Splash, dash or glug of milk? Sugar? How much sugar? THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS! I DON'T KNOW ALL OF THE THINGS! Needless to say, I didn't offer internet man any tea. Mainly because the idea of offending someone with a bad cup of tea was far worse than not offering it in the first place.

At work, any lecture or event is ALWAYS followed by 'tea and cake and/or biscuits'. And people come for the tea (not even the biscuits!). People even come for the tea and NOT the lecture. This has happened with some regularity around the office lately, so much so that we have been getting emails with increasing frequency to the tune of "THE TEA IN THE ATRUIM IS NOT FOR YOU. Many thanks, cheers, all the best." (Because heaven forbid an email should actually sound angry). Also, the worst part about these little receptions is the false advertising. A lot of the emails will read "come to talk X today at 2:30pm. Tea and cake to follow." So you go to the talk, get psyched for the cake, AND THEN THERE IS NO CAKE. Someone should be fired. Isn't cake the most important part of, well, anything? No, tea. Tea is the most important part of everything.

N H Yes?

Long, inconclusive post alert. The UK has free healthcare. Free. Like $0 (or I guess £) to see a doctor. Nothing. No co-pays, no enrollment, no insurance, no broken ACA websites. You just go to a doctor, and then you get medical help. Completely and totally free. Oh, minus the £7-something surcharge for any prescription. £7. But no-cost comes with a cost. People say time is money, and the NHS often leaves people waiting weeks, usually months to see a doctor. Now this is all relative, as they say the system is based on triage, so the more serious cases get seen faster. However, working in a mental hospital that sees some of the most severe psychiatric cases in the country and hearing the patients be told that it could be 4-6 months before they get treatment is...weird. So that begs the question, do people in the US pay for efficiency and resources? Consider: does having the choice of what health insurance you buy mean you're choosing the practices with the shorter waiting lists? The better doctors? Insurance doesn't influence that. What insurance does influence is the doctors' incentives to withhold-or worse, prescribe-certain treatments. Wee, this means I can hop from doctor to doctor, racking up enough high-dose painkillers to open a pharmacy. Do I get better? Probably not. The one thing I can fault the NHS for is the cutthroat nature it inspires for receiving treatment. Perhaps this is out of necessity, but I have seen doctors lie and families move house, just to improve a child's chances of receiving funding for treatment. Reason being that without NHS funding, the out of pocket cost of said treatment is simply not feasible. Which brings me back to the original question of US health insurance. When I was unemployed for a month, I paid out of pocket for health insurance because the alternative of covering the full costs if god forbid something happened in that month would bankrupt me. So rather than risk that, I paid $480-during a month of no income-for the security that if something did happen, I'd just have a measly $10 co-pay. Now, let me reiterate that the comparable alternative over here is FREE HEALTHCARE. Pay a lot or pay $500 vs. pay a lot or pay NOTHING. And oh yeah, there's this thing here called Bupa, also known as private health insurance. It's still cheaper than the US. Sung to an entirely different tune, I went to see the NHS occupational health team at my hospital, and they were out of band aids. THEY WERE OUT OF BANDAIDS. I thought like rule #1 of a doctors office is always have band aids? Then again, I did get offered a free vaccine. After I corrected the nurse that she was in fact looking at the wrong patient's chart on the computer. And reminding her that I was there to have said vaccination rather than just a TB skin test. And getting my hepB jab on unsteralised skin...maybe I have been spending too much time working in an OCD clinic. Anyway, the jury's still out for debate, but so far, I think the NHS gets a big N-H-YES. Also people here make fun of American healthcare like a LOT. So maybe I'm just embarrassed. Aren't we supposed to have the best, like, everything? Isn't England full of like, Socialists...and stuff?

The co$t of £iving

People ask me all the time if moving to the UK has been a culture shock. In short, no. But I will say the biggest shock has to be the cost of living. I knew that London was notoriously expensive, but holy toledo. This is on a whole new level. In fact, this just in: London is now the most expensive city in the world, Hooray! Considering I've ticked off 3 of the 20 cities on that list, I'd like to think that's pretty good going? Or that maybe I have a penchant for luxury living? Or maybe that I'm just really bad at picking where to live. Regardless, London is pretty insane. And that just becomes compounded when I really need to buy those all-American comforts to seal the deal on a 'home-away-from-home'. Take Lucky Charms for example. Spotted a box of those bad boys at a specialty shop (just off the road where I spotted 2 Bentleys, a Rolls-Royce AND a Ferrari. Yes that's ONE block) for £7.95. At today's exchange rate, that's a cool $13.05 for your daily a.m. sugar rush. But all joking aside, even the simplest pleasures like going out to eat on a Friday night are having to be taken into consideration when deciding whether I will be able to get a bus to work rather than running because I don't want to top up my Oyster card yet again. I have actually begun running from work (literally, not figuratively) quite regularly these days. Run-commuting is all the rage here, people running around like little hi-vis fluorescent bumble bees zipping down the sidewalks in the mornings and evenings. Handy really, considering this takes out the need to join a gym. Think positive! And rent? Don't even go there. Actually, I won't go there. I'll just leave it at a figure I saw the other day saying something like 100% of everyone in London pays 150% of their monthly income towards rent(actually, I think it was 59% of Londoners' income goes to rent-although this figure jumps to 91.4% near the borough of Westminster, about a 10 min walk from us). Anyway, I keep telling myself (quite convincingly) that, amidst all of the financial woes of life in London, it's totally, totally worth it.

This is a block in Sloane Square, where the obscenely priced market is located and also where some of London's most expensive real estate is (unfortunately, it's mostly just the real estate and not the people. Most of the properties are investments from overseas. See: London's housing problem.) But isn't it just so lovely?

Hello, 2014

It's 2014 and that means New Year's resolutions. Since I'm pretty crap at keeping them, I decided to make my resolution somewhat more attainable this year and start a blog. Aside from the fact that I moved to London 4 months ago, I have yet to document basically anything. So here goes. I'll be posting pictures, rants, rambles and life lessons here for friends and family to read about, laugh at, mock, ignore. Anyway, here it is, Across the Pond Round 2!