An American in England

A few hours after she got here, she realised that I wasn't exaggerating at all.

Be prepared to experience fundamental basic incompetance on a scale that you have never even dreamed of, in EVERYTHING. Beurocracy (sp?) which will make your head spin with the sheer stupidity of it all. Even to get something so simple as a bank account or a telephone line ... imagine your worst DMV experiences combined with an income tax audit, and that's not even CLOSE to the amount of hassle you will experience.

NOTHING works the way that it should from public transportation to builders. Attempts to change or complain about any incompetance will be met with blank indifference at best and suspicion at worst.

However, the food is a lot better than you have been led to believe. The music, however, is not. English music, in England, lacking the anglophile filters, is mostly appalling. ::ducks::

Oh, and if you live in London, you can never overestimate how expensive things will be. Take New York prices (generally 150% of the rest of the US) and then stick pound signs in front of the amount without bothering to convert. That is the price that things will be.

Oh, and the phone service here. Intolerable. You might as well just get used to the fact that you will have an expensive mobile which will go everywhere with you, and you will be GRATEFUL for it, because at least it is more reliable/cheaper than a BT landline. The joy of text messaging will make up for any residual annoyance.

Is there anything I haven't griped about yet? Oh, I'm sure there will be more...

Banks may be officious but there is no per transaction/per cheque charge like you get in the US. But beware of voicemail trees and really long hold times combined with call-centre stupidity at the other end.

Also it sounds as though you may be going to work for people I have known for a long time, who are nice, who will plug you into a great social life that will save you an entire entertainment budget. Initials HoN by any chance?

Since then, the opening hours of many shops have increased considerably. So I say, hey, we're crap, but we're sorting ourselves out, just bear with us....

And EVERYTHING shuts on Sundays! Even Jewish shops! This is silly!

Food is more expensive in London than in NYC. Yes it is. Maybe this is cause I lived in Queens, not Manhattan, but it's absurd. They say it's cause this is an island, so everything gets shipping costs added on. Even things that are made in Britain! I swear, there's a "get it inside the M25 tax".

But this is London-centric griping, well, and you haven't told us where in England you plan on living yet, Mel! Us griping about London if you plan on living in Oxford or somewhere else in Zone is as silly as griping about NYC if you plan on living in Ohio.

Er, ignore me, if I spend any longer in this place I will turn into dave q (except without the talent and so on, obviously).

well if you're talking abt the indie 'scene' then sure...roses can't grow out of rocks (or somefink). however, free improvisation is here and Melissa this is a good place if you want to watch the stuff.

rent is expensive, you've got to look around. The trains are quite bad. the underground is fine (in my experience).

The food is OK but not as wonderful as Toronto.

but as i said, if you want music then london is definetely OK, and you get excellent record shops here.

Um, you are. When I was in England it was exactly like America pretty much, only the English are much better at dealing with the bureaucracy and incompetence because they don't have the sense of entitlement Americans do so they can laugh about it instead of going into a blind infantile rage.

Music, the same. Public transport, big win for England (you can say "I took the bus" without the "I have leprosy" overtones that phrase has in 99% of the US). Food, big win for America (Sorry, English food sucks... would you like more butter and cream with your offal and blood?). Prices not comparable, depends where you live. I wasn't aware America has some kind of big win for landline phone service either... what makes anyone say this? We had Caller ID first? Is there a secret phone company somewhere in America that isn't hilariously awful?

Big differences? Accents, some vocabulary. You can smoke in restaurants. Things close early, but that's rapidly changing. If you get culture shock moving to England, you better not ever try visiting a real foreign country as you will die within seconds of arriving.

Sounds like Philadelphia. (But then Philadelphia isn't London.)

also a lot of shoppping centres are open late at least once a week. my local mall is open until 8pm on thursdays.

Bbbbut that's NICE!

still having a great time though. heh.

This reason alone means I could never move there.

Anyway, to the other questions... I'd like to live not *too* far from London. I wouldn't mind living outside of it. When I went last year, the only places I stayed were London around Westminster, Reading, and Oxford. Also went a bit around Didcot and Avebury and a few other places and small towns. I liked them all. Didn't feel *too* out of place. It was expensive though, definitely. I think I managed to spend £200 on food and drink alone in the 8 days I was there.

If you are thinking of going to work for them I would recommend living near the office, it's good for transport links even late at night, living between Olympia and Brook Green just south of there is pretty verdant, and Shepherd's Bush has plentiful sources of cheap food, great charity shops, a 24-hour shop or five, a very mixed community, and a load of nutters on Bush Green. Oh, and a shitload of Antipodeans.

roses can't grow out of rocks (or somefink).

(Insert Stone Roses joke here)

Will do!

About everything closing early in England... Yes, that was surprising. I was at the Oracle in Reading and there was a sign on the doors that said "New later hours! Now open till 8!" I live in a small conservative town with no night life to speak of and NOTHING here closes earlier than 9 except on Sundays. Grocery stores and drugstores are open until midnight... And people from larger towns are always commenting on the fact that everything closes early here.

If it's as bad as you make out it is what the hell are you doing staying here anyway?

Melissa needs to go to the UK for that? All she needs to do is go to a state university (you're not thinking about going to Rutgers or SUNY, are you Melissa?) or dealing with the municipal administrative slugs of any given city (nothing in this world is dumber or nastier than a New York City or a Philadelphia municipal bureaucrat, I swear these motherfuckers must've got their training at the Leonid Brezhnev School of Management and Customer Service).

That would be the best possible training for the UK, based on what I've read thus far.

To answer several recurring threads. Yes, I have lived in NYC. I have been through the seven levels or beurocratic hell that is the INS in NYC. And NOTHING prepared me for the levels of incompetence that I experienced with BT.

Yes, my American sense of entitlement. My sense of entitlement that if I PAY for goods and services, that those goods and services will be rendered. That I should NOT pay for goods or services never requested nor delivered. I KNOW that "Customer Service" is a totally ALIEN concept to the British, BUT ... if I have spent two hours in a phone queue, when I finally speak to a customer service rep, and they say "Goodness me, yes, we have made a mistake, I'll fix that right away." ... I DON'T think that it is unreasonable to expect that that mistake should ACTUALLY be fixed within oh, about SIX MONTHS or so.

If *THAT* is too much for my exaggerated American sense of entitlement, well, I'M SORRY.

There: another Britishism you will get used to. "I'm Sorry" = AGGRESSIVE PASSIVISM that means "you fucking inconsiderate cunt, I'm sorry that my foot was in the way of your car as you hurtled across the pavement."

But you know, if you want to take advice from "travellers" (Ooh, I stayed in a hostel for three months there, I know ALL about the culture) then go right ahead.

I really wonder what I'm doing in London a lot of the time. Especially when a night bus dumps me in the middle of nowhere (sorry, Tottenham) for no apparent reason. (I'm never leaving Zone 1 again. I'm just not doing it.)

Hard to beat Kate's rationale for the alleged "sense of entitlement" that allegedly motivates us Yanks to go ballistic over bureaucratic incompetence. Though I should add that (I think) she left NYC before local phone service was switched over to Verizon, whose bureaucrats may very well be every bit as incompetent, stupid and lazy as anything working at British Telecom.

As fer the INS -- that's a level of bureaucratic hell that even Kafka couldn't imagine. If there's any sort of bureaucrat worse than them (outside the Brezhnev-era USSR), then I'm staying put in the USA for ever. Though NYC bureaucrats are state (as opposed to federal) bureaucrats, which means that they're even dumber and lazier. To put it another way that Kate might understand -- where do you think the BO-tards go to work after they graduate?

This rationale works equally well in ANY service industry. In fact, any industry at all. If you shop at Shop X, then YOUR money, as customer, is paying the shop clerk's salary as effectively as your tax dollars are paying the civil servant's. In fact, even more directly.

However, I suppose in for-profit circumstances, the poor moron's salary is sapped by shareholders and profits, so at least they have an excuse to be bitter and surly to the hand that feeds them.

(Except they close earlier too).

(Aside from the S Bar of course but that's territorially part of Spain under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht)

but on the plus side i wz woken at 8.30 on friday morning by an impromptu fireworks party in the square!! yay for fireworks in daylight...

(Aside from the S Bar of course but that's territorially part of Spain under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht)

S Club 7 have their own pub? R0x0r!

(alternately: Las Ketchup have their own pub? R0x0r!)

For the breasts, Billy?

I know why you get poor service everywhere and it has nothing to do with whimsical cross-cultural comparisons.

if we're talking london, thats varied enough. i can see why chris says what he says, and kate says what she says. london at weekends is different depending where you are. eg, zone 1, the central area, much of this is closed at the weekend (east of covent garden and holborn), clerkenwell, farringdon, old street etc are just dead zones at the weekend, whereas chris's walthamstow (or finsbury park or holloway) will be open pretty much all the time, as they're more residential, people are always shopping!

it certainly opens later than, say, Boston!

rent in london will be as suzy says, somewhere between 300-500 for a houseshare (you will get somewhere fine for this), although it can be cheaper if you are a little further out. outside of the south east rent will decrease dramatically

if you are not doing london, its best to go somewhere far from london (this is relative anyway, because in US terms, everywhere is near london) - nottingham, newcastle, leeds, manchester are probably best as far as the cities go

oh, i just realised you're going to be working in london, so forget the last paragraph!

bloody hell Kate, are you trying to wind me up on purpose?? As someone who spent two years as someone on the other end of the phone in a customer service department this sentence is so totally wrong.

Anyway... you should have seen how long it took me to get used to the American concept of customer service when I moved to the States. I used to do this childish but fun impression of American shop clerks as obsequious and scary and terrifying as horror movie mad scientists' assistants, rubbing their hands together and chasing you round shops threatening "Can I heeeeeeeeeelp you?" No! I don't want any help! Leave me alone! I'm just looking!

customer: thank you,
shopman: no problem, thank you, have a nice day
customer: thanks, have a nice day
shopman: i appreciate that

it was like a competition. i realised that 'have a nice day' isnt a nicety, and it isnt insincere as brits like to imagine, its an order, and instruction

incidentally, in america, no one wanted to help at all, i was amazed by the number of people that just washed their hands of it, even though i was a customer!

I would totally disagree with this statement.

I have to comment on this, there are no signs, nobody warns you! Where I come from you just get on the escalator with everyone else, if somebody wants past they say excuse me and you move - what's the problem? Why do you get so upset about it? I made the mistake of stepping onto an escalator in London with a suitcase, in the 0.5 seconds it took me to move it in front of me I was subjected to a torrent of abuse (and I mean abuse, can't even repeat it) like I have never experienced in my life, ridiculous. I was new and getting my bearings, wasn't like I did it on purpose!!!!!!

er, sorry for violent fantasy, yo, too much gangsta rap this weekend.

Kate is being melodramatic about shop opening hours. Yes, compared to the US I am sure they're shit. But it's an unhelpful exaggeration to say 'everything closes at 6pm'. High Street shops do, yes (except for late opening night, usually Thursday) but if you're talking about supermarkets or corner shops that stock basic food, drink, magazines etc. there is usually one open till about 11 in most inner city areas. Plus there are 24 hour garages. And plenty of areas do much better than this (eg. Harringay's Turkish community seems to support any number of 24 hour grocers).

I've never experienced my telephone line being out of order. BT can be shit at connecting new lines though.

Anyway, sod all this and the service culture debate. THE ONLY, the MOST IMPORTANT thing to know. EVER. is that... in this country NO TACO BELL. AT ALL

(this = TRUE!)

These are the sorts of things that they really SHOULD have in those UK/US dialect phrasebooks, not gas=petrol and pants!=trousers and rubbers!=erasers.

Is London Transit just on a campaign to DESTROY MY MIND?!?!?

At intervals we passed a wretched cabin, with a thatched roof, and about it small fields and garden patches in an indifferent state of cultivation. There were people, too; brawny men, with long, coarse, uncombed hair that hung down over their faces and made them look like animals. They and the women, as a rule, wore a coarse tow-linen robe that came well below the knee, and a rude sort of sandal, and many wore an iron collar. The small boys and girls were always naked; but nobody seemed to know it. All of these people stared at me, talked about me, ran into the huts and fetched out their families to gape at me; but nobody ever noticed that other fellow, except to make him humble salutation and get no response for their pains.

In the town were some substantial windowless houses of stone scattered among a wilderness of thatched cabins; the streets were mere crooked alleys, and unpaved; troops of dogs and nude children played in the sun and made life and noise; hogs roamed and rooted contentedly about, and one of them lay in a reeking wallow in the middle of the main thoroughfare and suckled her family.

Dirty dronerock boys! Ah, we're in Hoxton, aren't we?