Burlaki on the Hudson

For the 4th of July, occasional British restaurants – and especially pubs – promote special deals, and even some shops end up having “Independence Day” sales. Nothing major, fairly sporadic, but it sticks out precisely because it is so uncommon.

And it always makes me wonder: You guys realize independence from who is being celebrated in America on this day, right?

Maybe, all of those places that advertise their 4th of July deals are owned by expats, and I’m just not aware of it…

That's England

Busy at work, plus various relocation-related errands, phone calls and what-not. Less than frequent blogging, as the result.

The temperatures have been pretty high in London the last week or so. Not too hot. Warm-to-hot, cooling down nicely overnight. But in a house without any air conditioning, it gets quite noticeable in the afternoon, stuffy, especially on the upper floor. I seem to remember days like these here or there during summers past, but somehow not so many in a row. It must be the impending move to the States that has me pining for the wonders of A/C.

Becky, meanwhile, is out of the house one more time, this occasion being an immersion French study trip to, well, France. She already called us from there and left a message in French. So, I suppose I’m getting my money worth out of it…

We ascertained through various conversations with fellow parents that our daughter is likely the only student at the school to have participated in all various overseas trips this year: Iceland, China, France. Since all trips were at an additional cost to tuition, the misguided implication of our financial wealth available to be spent on our offspring gave us a definite boost in those parents’ eyes.

I suddenly stumbled upon a recently-added TV channel called “ESPN America” in my SkyTV lineup. It has Yankees on! I watched Mariano’s 500th save in a replay, and almost stayed up to watch the Mariners game last night… Common sense won, but I am cancelling the service in a week’s time, just when I discovered it… It would be a pity if not for the fact that there is much more Yankees where I’m going to. Not so much football, though.

A curious bit of British trivia that did not get much of direct mention in the past (although, I indirectly alluded to it in this old post). What happens when a police officer stops you and demands to see your documents, and you for some reason do not have either your license or your car registration, or both, on you? In the States, you’ll get an assortment of fines, if not arrested if the officer is too zealous. In England, as long as you have any form of identification on you – say, a credit card, – you are ok. The police officer will use any document that you can produce to check the database, verify that you are licensed to drive, verify your car ownership, and, of course, cite you for whenever offense you were stopped while committing. But you will not get separately fined for “driving without a license”.

On the one hand, such accommodation begets indiscipline. An acquaintance of ours was recently in a small car accident, and she had her purse with her, but neither her license nor the car registration paper. I am quite positive that she never bothers to check whether she has those documents with her.

On the other hand, a legislated fine for not carrying a specific document along in an age when your privilege to drive and your ownership of the specific vehicle can be easily verified on the fly is something that grates on my libertarian sensibilities. Or, maybe, having your information available for a police officer to check is a step towards complete control of the state over its citizens; Britain, with ubiquitous CCTV cameras and the national identity scheme, is quite far advanced on the path towards entrenched police state…

Finally, another acquaintance recently obtained a doctor’s recommendation to stay away from work because of fatigue. Four paid weeks of convalescence. The job will be his when he comes back. Can this ever happen in America? I’m sure a sabbatical can be arranged by a mutual agreement between a valued employee and an accommodating employer, but in general, I can’t imagine someone having the balls to unilaterally take time off for being fatigued and not paying some quick consequences with their job.

Maybe I’m a closet workaholic with little imagination.

Chronicles, That's England

America nowadays is likely the country with the world’s most stringent border checks for foreigners. But I’ve been a US citizen since mid-90′s, so I never had to experience the long queues and the indignity of fingerprinting and all. You occasionally end up in a fairly long queue for US citizens as well, but they at least have a tendency to move comparatively briskly, based on my visual observations.

The only country that I’ve repeatedly entered as a foreigner is, unsurprisingly, the United Kingdom. And, as my rotten luck would have it, it is likely the country with the world’s second most-stringent border checks. There are landing cards, one per person, that the border agent has to write upon and stamp; there is requisite passport scanning and stamping; the agent invariably chats you up, sometimes asking formal questions (where do you live? what do you do? are you still with the same company that sponsored your work permit?) or sometimes just engaging you in a non-committal chit-chat. I understand the need, I do not bemoan the thoroughness, I actually do feel safer knowing that it is not easy for a persona non grata to enter the country where I make my home.

What I have a problem with is the accommodation, or lack thereof.

There are normally a handful to a dozen of agents in any given airport border control hall dealing with long queues of disembarked passengers. Those assigned to the UK/EU desks keep their lines moving by giving a quick look-over to each passport and waving people through. Those at the non-EU desks are the ones who need to be very thorough and deliberate. Of course, every other passenger that they see either does not speak any English or has a red flag among his visa stamps or, for any number of reasons, behaves in a way that suggests the need for in-depth interrogation.

All the way while I’m stuck in the queue.

In a large stuffy room that is not properly air-conditioned.

With a tired 8-year-old who has to go to the bathroom.

Next to a bunch of nice folks whose views on personal hygiene are incompatible with my sensibilities.

You see, there are no “non-EU permanent resident” desks, which would be similar to what I remember a standard “Green Card holders” lane in the US airports. Instead, it does not matter to the border agency that I make my home here in the UK. When I show up at the border with my US passport, I don’t get to differentiate myself from other non-EU citizens who happen to be visitors to Britain.

Hey, I pay taxes in this country. You might even guess without me expressly pointing it out – but I’ll do that anyway – that what I pay in taxes is considerably above what the average UK citizen pays. Why don’t I deserve the courtesy of having a speedier procedure for entry!?

Ah, but there is one way to expedite your entry into the country if you are a permanent resident with non-EU credentials. It is called IRIS and I first mentioned it two years ago. When you are registered and the system is operational, it literally takes 20-30 seconds for your retina scan to confirm your identity and grant you entry to the UK. There aren’t long queues either.

Except, children are not eligible to register for IRIS, due to some nonsense about ensuring that “every child’s welfare is considered by a human agent at the point of crossing”. I travel for leisure a lot more than I travel for business. When I travel for leisure, I have my kids in tow. I don’t have any choice but to get into the stupid queue.

I realize it sounds like such a trivial thing, but with our relatively frequent escapades abroad, crossing UK border has become one of the things I hate the most about living in England. I’ve flown into a dozen European countries – some, like Italy or Spain, many times over – and I’m treated as a visitor at their borders better than I am treated as a resident at the UK ones. (Only once on our travels, in Poland, we were inexplicably subject to a lengthy copy-down-all-of-the-passport-information-by-hand border crossing procedure, but I’m willing to discount that as remnants of cold-war suspiciousness, and I lack enough of a sample in Eastern Europe to confirm or refute that generalization.)

I wish I lived on the continent instead. In any case, there is only one time in the foreseeable future that I will have to get into that queue again…

That's England

I have very healthy teeth, but my gums are a different matter. No matter how well and often I rinse with Listerine, floss, and use my fancy electric toothbrush, I get deposits around my teeth. I go in for a dental cleaning three-four times a year.

The first few times in London, I went to an office of a Russian dentist in a fairly remote part of the city from where we live. The dentist was a swell guy, but the dental hygienist in his office was a brusque Englishwoman whose work I did not enjoy. Sitting in her chair for 20-25 minutes was very much approximating a torture. At least, she cleaned my teeth quite well. The visits cost me £45 each, partially reimbursed by the private insurance from work.

I’ve gotten fed up with that lady eventually and went to a local to us private office instead, where the doctor and the hygienist were both a much more pleasant Englishwomen very gentle in their work. They were also thorough, cleaned my teeth extraordinarily well, and made the half-hour procedure as bearable as it can ever be. The visit cost me £90, about a sixth of which was later reimbursed by the private insurance.

This year, we made a decision to drop private insurance from our benefits. It cost us quite a lot in premium deductions, and all we had to show for it were minuscule reimbursements for a handful of visits a year.

For my first cleaning of the year, therefore, I was going to an NHS dentist. The visit there is not free, as some may surmise, but only costs £18. 90 versus 18 – there is a difference, especially in this economy.

Here is how it went:

Came in for an appointment five minutes before the scheduled time of 10:45am.

Sat in the waiting room for 40 minutes in an enjoyable company of several families from a certain slice of the society: The kids screamed and splashed their dribbling snot around, the mothers ignored them while exchanging local gossip, with an F-bomb heard twice in every sentence and at least three times in a sentence longer than 6 words…

Was called into the surgery room at 11:25.

Discussed my history and teeth-cleaning habits with the seemingly 18-year-old doctor and her assistant for a few minutes.

Walked out of the office at 11:35. In the intervening few minutes, the dentist looked at my teeth, recorded whatever measurements dentists record, performed some cleaning maneuvers for about 90 seconds, and sent me on my way with a “we removed some of the plaque – more frequent flossing would not hurt”.

I came home, looked in the mirror, and everything that I hope to not see after a dental cleaning is still right there.

Guess what are the chances of my return to an NHS dental office. I’d rather go and pay five times as much and get a reasonable service in return.

I hate socialized medicine.

That's England

Houses in England often have names in addition to street numbers. Sometimes, they have names in place of street numbers, with the mailing address simply saying something like “Barton House, Gloucester Road”.

This throwback practice is still very much in use in rural parts of the country, but even in central London, every respectable building is likely to have a name proudly displayed above the entrance or near its gates.

In our suburban neck of the woods, many streets are full of named houses. As I have been regularly strolling around the neighborhood streets of late, trying to justify the purchase of a pedometer, I inconspicuously took snapshots of some of the house signs with my pocket camera. Please feel free to click each picture to embiggenate.

    
    
    
    

Pictures, That's England

From an actual conversation in a medical office:

X-ray technician: Are you pregnant at all?
Natasha [after a pause]: No, not even a little.

This is one of those linguistic differences that we explored elsewhere. Brits insist on adding “at all” to questions very frequently, and that throws us off. We view that as a suggestion that there are degrees to which the answer can be positive or negative. With answers that do not leave any middle ground between a simple “yes” or “no”, it sounds comical to our ears.

Are you married at all? Do you have children at all? No, but my friend over there is slightly pregnant.

[update] I suddently realize that there is a vague inference from the above that Natasha may be having some medical issues. Not at all (hey, this is a case where I normally use that construct). The office was, in fact, dental, and the X-rays were part of a regular check-up.[/update]

That's England

I have been working on a big post for a couple of days, and it is nowhere near being ready yet. I can’t have two days in a row without posting something, so here is one of the random things that I find amusing.

Let’s forget for a second that the intent might be to warn people to protect their possessions. (While on some level I understand the preventive benefit of drawing people’s attention to something they may not be actively paying any mind to otherwise, I imagine thieving “operatives” going, “Damn! We’ve been exposed! We’d better move operations elsewhere”. And then, eventually, “Oh no! These signs are everywhere! We can’t do no business no more!”)

No! The important thing is that you should refrain from smoking. Because, you know, we are concerned about the health of thieves who operate in this area.

I heartily agree. Thieves are people too. How would you like breathing in somebody’s cigarette fumes while trying to pinch his or her wallet?!

Pictures, That's England

I first mentioned the phone-enabled parking charge payments in this article several months ago. Recently, while visiting friends in northwest London, I came across an entire area where all of the parking meters have been converted into the pay-by-phone operation.

  

I suppose in this day and age everyone – and their grandmother – has a mobile phone on them. And if someone who needs to park on that street does not, I’m sure that getting a parking ticket will provide enough of an incentive to get a mobile, if only for parking convenience. Mobile operators benefit too, to say nothing of drivers with no spare change in their pockets.

Pictures, That's England

Few of my readers may remember the little adventure I had with my UK tax return about a year ago. In that post, I mentioned that the self-assessment process for filing tax returns in Britain is easy and even expressed anticipation towards trying it on my own.

Well, Q.E.D.

It took a bit over two and a half hours to do everything that I needed, and most of that time can be explained away by me being somewhat tentative on my first try.

I more or less needed just three numbers, found on two forms that were sent to me at the end of the tax year in April: My gross earnings, total taxes withheld and the combined value of any taxable benefits. At the HMRC website, I then needed to provide my personal information, answer a couple of dozen Yes/No questions about what types of income I did or did not have during the year and what kinds of “reliefs” I expected to claim. After that, it was plugging the aforementioned numbers into a form, proceeding to happily review the amount of money I’m owed back, and clicking the Submit button.

Ok, it was a little bit more involved than that, primarily because as a not ordinarily resident I can exclude a portion of my salary earned while on business outside of the UK from the tax bill. Figuring out that one number took the lion’s share of the time spent on the return. But overall, the process approximated the idea of doing your taxes on the back of a napkin as close as anything else that I know.

Next year, it should take 15 minutes.

Expat Topic, That's England

Remember my posts about usage differences in English language? Here is a little illustration. As I was walking by this sign posted at a construction sight, I had to stop and spend a few moments to juggle the different meanings of the words in my head so they fit together.

It’s just one underground pedestrian passage that’s out of commission, not the whole subway system.

Pictures, That's England

In England, just as I remember in latter years in America with ads against insurance fraud, TV campaigns against benefit fraud do a pretty good job in sending the appropriate message. A benefit thief may not mend his ways outright upon seeing an ad like the one below, but seeing many of them is likely to sow some doubts in his brain.

But in this particular ad, I am primarily astonished to see a depiction of what seems to be a neighbor dialing the fraud hotline to turn the purported thief in. It is a duty of a good citizen to report a crime, no doubt, but this particular scene leaves a lot to be guessed what the actual crime is (I bet that unless you are a recipient of these “benefits for living alone”, you’re as baffled as I am in regards to the nature of the problem), and there is a clear connotation of the neighbor alerting the authorities based on her personal conjectures.

I am fortunate not to have lived through that myself, but I am very familiar with the histories of the Soviet-block informer societies, and I am shocked to see this apparent suggestion to snitch. Then again, a Brit colleague of mine once noted with a modicum of self-deprecation that the British are largely expected to tell on one another. It must be working, if you believe the “600 calls” claim.

That's England

Remember, I wrote in the past about the recycling scheme instituted by the Greenwich council? Basically, the dry recyclables go into the blue-cover bin, the food waste and the garden refuse into the green-cover bin, and the rest goes into a large garbage bag (soon to be replaced with a black-cover bin). Not very taxing for an average resident, after all.

Many people, of course, are either unwilling or unable to follow these rules. What happens to the offenders and their garbage? Surprisingly, the often quick-to-fine – or even prosecute, as linked from that old post, – authorities thus far resort to a gentle reminder, which isn’t in the least threatening. I’ve seen quite a lot of these notices around.

  

click images to enlarge

Pictures, That's England

It’s been a bit over a year since England curbed smoking in public places. For those of us who cannot stand the smoke, life has become considerably more pleasant, especially when it comes to dining out. The unfortunate souls who can’t exist without cigarettes, conversely, have been having much harder time indulging in their habit. Obviously, almost all of the smoking is now done in the open air, but even that is supposed to be limited to specifically designated zones. Here is a brief photo-essay of how that works in Canary Wharf.

Let’s start with a picture of the Canada Square quiet oasis of a park.

The signs declaring the park a no-smoking zone are quite prominent, and there are more than half a dozen of them in various places (at least three are visible in this picture). Of course, there are always smokers who prefer to have their pleasure in the altogether fresh air, sign or not.

I admit that I have not yet worked up the nerve to come closer and unceremoniously take a picture of a stranger, so you’ll have to take my word that the people in the shot are having a smoke (although, the guy’s form is clearly that of shaking off ashes). You can also discern that there is a no-smoking sign within a few meters of these guys.

The signs are all positioned inside the park area. Obviously, that means that staying on the sidewalk immediately next to the park puts a smoker outside of the limits of prohibition. Here is the lunch-time Smokers Row.

There is an area on the street known as North Colonnade, which is explicitly set aside for smokers.

  

These last two pictures were taken in the early hours of the day, but don’t let that mislead you. There are rarely people in this place ever. Could be the resentment of being confined to a red-paint-boundary box. Could be the fact that this happens to be by far the most wind-swept spot in the entire Wharf.

One of these days I’ll figure out how to make a picture of the wind to illustrate.

Pictures, That's England

Natasha arranged for a vision check-up for Becky a few days ago. We haven’t been to that NHS office before, and Natasha turned out to be overly optimistic about the ease of finding a parking spot near the office. By the time she had parked some distance away and walked with Becky into the reception, it was 7 minutes after the appointment time.

“We cannot take you now”, they were told, “since you are late, starting the appointment right now will push the subsequent appointments back, and we cannot have that.”

Natasha tried to reason with them, but to no avail. She and Becky turned around and left, and I suppose that she will look for another provider when she re-schedules.

Can a medical office ever be so efficient as to spend exactly the allotted time on each appointment? Can a patient who is a few minutes late really screw up the entire remaining schedule? For that matter, can anyone remember ever being ushered into the doctor’s office exactly on time of the appointment? I, for one, knew a couple of doctors who came close, but I’m pretty sure that 5-10 minutes later than scheduled is customary.

I think the key here is that an NHS office will likely bill the government and get paid for this visit regardless of whether the services have been provided. A private doctor, conversely, would not want to lose a source of income over a few minutes of inadvertent tardiness.

Beware of being late for NHS appointments!

That's England

Something that we see in England considerably more often than in the States: People driving around in vintage cars. And I don’t mean “vintage” as in 1968 Corvette or something, no offense intended. I mean as in 1929 Bugatti.

There are also people who drive around in racing cars – and even DIY cars – which I am often ignorant enough to mistake for a vintage roadster.

Unfortunately, I never managed to take a shot of any of those, on account of not having a camera with me. But now I do. So, here it is, a Tiger Racing specimen, parked on a street in Rochester.

I’ll surely have an opportunity to get a shot of a true vintage car in the near future.

Pictures, That's England

There was still one question from Jeri – who graciously saved me from an embarrassment of having an “ask me a question” day without hearing a single question – that I neglected to address thus far.

What were the hardest cultural adjustments for you and your family when you moved to the UK?

The quick answer for this is I don’t think that British and Americans are drastically different culturally. Nor were we entirely new to some of the European features of living when we came over. There was hardly anything that can be pinpointed as a big cultural adjustment.

There were plenty of things that I would call everyday trifles that were – and still are – inconvenient to bear with. I explored quite a few of them in the past, in articles filed under That’s England category, starting with the things we take for granted in the US. They bother us occasionally – or provide reasons for ridicule. We learned to accept them and pay them little mind.

A few examples are below the fold.
Read more…

European living, That's England

It’s been close to a year since I posted a brief sampler of the linguistic differences between British and American English language variants. I had a clear intent to parlay that article into a potentially fun series. But in the intervening time, I suppose, I lost my ear when it comes to noticing divergences in everyday vocabularies. As a result, off the top of my head I could not think of many additions to my initial list.

That may be partly due to the self-imposed scope. I wanted to include only the terms that are used frequently or, at least, define objects that have a common place in everyday life. I also wanted to look for instances where an American word would be likely misunderstood if used, either because it has a different meaning in British English or is entirely uncommon on this side of the pond.

A beauty like knackered (suggested by the fellow expat Geo) does not exactly fit into these boundaries. It is a word that you’d never hear in the States, but it is considered a slang in England, never replacing exhausted in polite circles. A fun little titchy, which Becky increasingly uses in her teen-speak, is similarly too much of a colloquialism – my preferred American translation of it would be teeny-tiny – to qualify as part of formal vocabulary. And terms such as boot fair, hen night or stag party are too situational to be frequently used.

Well, I’m guessing Posh frock! could be a frequent exclamation in families with girls on shopping sprees, but in this era, girls rarely don dresses, no matter how nice.

Long story short, I realized that the best I can do is mention here the handful of words that were omitted from the original list. The short register has been lying on my desk for months. Maybe, as soon as I post it, new examples will spring to mind, giving me an excuse for another post on the topic.

The most inexplicable omission from the list was the word mate. In the States, I primarily associate this word with the process of procreation, and “I’m meeting my mates tonight” would sound rather risque to an average ear. In England, the plural mates almost exclusively replaces friends – even Becky rarely uses the latter anymore. What’s more, the singular mate is used everywhere as a form of address between men who are otherwise not acquainted with one another but need to engage in a brief transaction, be it over a counter of a sandwich shop (“Do you want a gherkin on that, mate?”) or on a packed train (“Sorry, mate, I’m trying to get off”). When I manage to insert that in my own speech, I’ll know I’ve become anglicized. (Insidentally, a gherkin is what we Americans know as a pickle.)

In schools, what we are used to call grades (as in “My daughter is in 8th grade”) are called Years. A group of students that takes most of the classes together is called a form, whereas I think in the States they would still be termed a class. A principal is branded a head teacher.

The cars in England each possess a bonnet and a boot, rather than hoods and trunks. We were almost detained on our first trip via Eurotunnel, when the customs officer politely asked me to “lift the bonnet” and met an expression of utter incomprehension in return.

And one of the favorites of a couple of my American friends here is pissed, which means wasted as in drunk. Believe me, in England, it’s a commonly used part of everyday vocabulary.

That's England

I have not mentioned the concept of the call limit in the past, and yesterday we unwittingly ran afoul of it.

In a nutshell, when a landline phone service is being established in the UK, the phone company determines the monetary limit that the customer should stay under during any given billing cycle. Exceed the limit – and your outgoing calls are summarily blocked unless you pay down the balance with a credit card (if you are so inclined, you can wait to pay your bill in the normal fashion at the end of the cycle, but you will only be able to receive calls during this time).
Read more…

Customerography, That's England

Sometimes, a small and fairly inconsequential thing happens, which makes me think: “Hey, I can’t imagine this being handled so efficiently and positively for me in America”.

Natasha received a parking violation ticket a couple of weeks ago. That was before our recent discovery of mobile-phone-enabled payments, but it occurred on a trip to the nearby market, and she never leaves on such trips without enough coins to pay the parking fee. She did procure the appropriate sticker and attached it to the inside of windshield as required.

When she returned to the car a couple of hours later, she found a violation notice attached to the windshield on the outside. The parking sticker was lying face-down on the dashboard. It must have fell off. The text of the notice referred to “failure to pay or to properly display the proof of payment”. The penalty did not distinguish between the two: £50 if paid within 14 days or £100 thereafter…

Read more…

Chronicles, That's England

Contrary to my recent rant about cell phones, they do come in handy in more than obvious ways.

For instance, more and more parking lots around England allow you to pay your parking fee by calling an automated processing service, so you no longer find yourself in a pickle when you do not have enough coins to feed the ticket machine.

Read more…

Chronicles, That's England