- The cats are wonderful. So friendly and sweet, well worth the effort to drive all the way to Poland to get them.
- Thanksgivinged Stateside instead of Christmas. Just about the same as Christmas, only with cheaper airfare - great northeast runaround, family, friends, food.
- NYC seemed especially lively and refreshing. Society here just doesn't seem quite as... passionate? Alive?
- More things I'm starting to miss:
- Flavored coffee (you're lucky to find real, not instant, coffee here. French vanilla? Hazelnut? Forget it!),
- Pizza (real pizza, as I know it! from NYC, from MA, from CT, anything! From one of the zillion italian/greek restaurants of which there were like 10 within a 5 mile radius anywhere you go, back home. Pizza here seems to be either artisan flatbread-y personal pizza made at Italian restaurants (which is ok, sure, maybe more how real Italians make it, but not "real pizza as I know it") or sketchy off-target undercooked, over-doughy, questionably seasoned "pizza" from seedy looking shops that serve kebabs, halal fried chicken, and pizza. Or there is, of course, Pizza Hut and Dominoes. But it just doesn't do it for me.)
- Fettuccine Alfredo. Apparently it's some sort of made up American thing. You're hard pressed to find any trace of Alfredo sauce over here.
- Italian bakeries. You'd think being closer to Italy there would be more Italian bakeries here. I could name you five Italian bakeries that were close to where I lived in the States. I haven't even really come across one here.
December:
Hosted Christmas for our other Londoner friends who didn't go "back home" for Christmas. Or rather I cooked up a feast the 24th for one set of friends and then the 26th for another set of friends. Took two weeks off around Christmas-New Years, had a lovely busy, fulfilling, and relaxing family time with the Hubby and Kitties.
What is this?...
Our pink, feathery, sparkly, Hello Kittied, spider-topped Christmas tree.
January:
- I repeat, driving here is for the rich and privileged. So, you're telling me that after all that time and effort and money and anxiety of getting my UK driving license, the cost of my car insurance is still going to go UP when I need to renew it!? By a factor of two?? To equate to almost 3x what I was paying for car insurance in the US?? Ok, fiiiine, it may have had something to do with lightly tapping the parked big white van behind me in my parking garage when backing out one sleep-deprived morning. (way back almost a year ago). There were two guys in the car. No damage to my car, a dent across the back van doors on theirs. They made like they were all understanding, saying they wouldn't even bother reporting it, but it's a company car so they have to, the important thing is that everybody's ok. Next thing I know I get a letter saying they've filed a whiplash claim. Because, of course, people here are sooo frail and filing whiplash claims is a national pastime. As soon as someone even reports an accident, they get nasty buggers, solicitors, calling them up, encouraging them to file whiplash claims. It's a horrendous game in this country. And everyone's insurance suffers from it. And the sick part is that they won, they were paid out for personal injury. Because my car, of about 1/3 of the mass of their car, traveling approximately two car widths, going from parked to <5 mph *tapped* theirs and hurt the two builder oafs inside. (And you can bet I reported a detailed analysis of the incident as only a logical engineer can.) There is no logic nor common sense in this country!!! (If there was, you wouldn't find cleaning ladies at work polishing the floor, by the entryway, right at the time most people are leaving work! The ladies have to stop the machine, employees walk around it, over the power cord...). It all makes a person stop wanting to even try to be decent when the lowlifes win.
- Healthcare here is also a joke. Oh boy, free healthcare? Well, you get what you pay for. Calling up to make a doctors appointment is literally like trying to call into a radio station to win concert tickets. You can only really make an appointment a certain number of days in advance. "You want a Friday appointment? Ok, then, you'll have to call the office on Tuesday morning when we open at 8:30am to make an appointment because that's when we'll have the Friday appointments open for booking.". Which of course means you call and the line is busy busy busy with the other contestants, I mean patients, also trying to call in and book the ideal late appointments. And then you have to settle for a not so late appointment. Which means having to leave even earlier from work because of course you're assigned to this particular zone of doctors in your "catchment area" based on where you live, even though you live a good 30-40 minute drive away from where you work, and it would be much easier to get a doctor near work to just pop out to be able to see, but noo. There is no love for productive people who actually work full time 9-5 jobs for a living. And like I've said, there is no common sense here.
- Apparently I've developed high blood pressure. Well, maybe it was a fluke, maybe that's what I get for going in right after trying to get quotes for car insurance. Though I went again after that and still had a high reading. Doctors nerves? Don't know. Most likely it's that this country is so darn maddening, it's making me mental!! (though it's all still worth it, really...)
