dated : 20-may-2001

The first time I landed in the hustling London Heathrow Airport, I released a sigh of relief for it was no different than any busy US airport! But the trouble was I tried to relate airports with lifestyles, which was a mistake. My upbeat mood started to evaporate like water drops on red-hot charcoal when the designated car service didn't show up to pick me. Could all English people be this inefficient? I couldn't wait to find out. All ended well when I finally reached the office 8 hours after I landed at the airport! Next day when I was introduced to the colleagues, I was greeted by a "hey ya" (or is it a condensed version of how are you??), and I was (I still am) at loss of words to reciprocate. So, I wished them back by my usual American "Pretty good! How are you?" I am sure they couldn't make the head or tail out of it. While constantly being upset that each Great Britain Pound (GBP) I spend is making me poorer by a dollar and half, I was trying to blend into the English mainstream. That wasn't a cakewalk, though. The scary specter where you could drive on the right side of the road and crash into an oncoming truck isn't a pretty image while driving a car. (The British drive on the wrong side...oops.. the other side of the road). This same reluctance to drive and hence the inactivity was the genesis of this article. Yes, because I didn't have anything to do during evenings and over the weekends, I started observing the differences in the British and American lifestyles. The most confusing (can I dare blame the stupidity of one of the parties involved?) is the football-rugby-soccer mix-up. You will best understand my point from this little table:

British	American
football	soccer
rugby	football

How funny is that? Anyway, I am not a big sports fan, so I won't delve too much on this topic. Since I am not a hard-core alcoholic either, I will also let go off the difference between the English pint (pronounced pie-nt!) and the American beer. However, I am tempted to conclude that an average Brit consumes at least 5-6 times more pint than the beer consumed by his/her American counterpart!
Small but glaring differences started yelling back at me as days passed by: While I was searching for toll-free access numbers, I realized such numbers were called 'freephone' numbers. Reading and writing dates in the "dd-mm-yy" format was not very confusing as they did the same back in India. But I am sure that it would be confusing as hell to any other American. Like any other American male, I admire fancy cars and SUVs. The British drive small cars and there are hardly any huge gas-guzzling SUVs. But it is definitely debatable, whether they do it to conserve the gas and environment or because the petrol (the American gas is called "petrol" in Britain and is measured in liters instead of gallons) is ridiculously expensive.
Since driving, as explained before, was not my best means of transportation, I had to catch trains to run errands and to meet friends. When I was checking for the stations the train would stop, I came to know that a train "CALLS" at stations and not "STOPS"! What explanation do British have for this funny term? I will ask them when I blend in deeper into their lifestyle. While the slang term for money is "bucks" in America, it is "quid" in Britain. TV in America is "Telly" in Britain. The English alphabet "Z" is pronounced "ZEE" in America and "ZED" in England.
My narration will never be complete without bitching about the huge difference in costs of living between US and Britain. There is a charge for anything and everything in England. For example, they charge you a pound (1.5 dollars!) just to use a cart while shopping at stores. There is a 20 pence charge to pee in restrooms at a train station!! You will be billed 5 times the usual rate when you call a mobile phone. Even the local phone calls are not free. There is a "per-session" fee to use the facilities at the gym even after paying hundreds of pounds in membership fee. They charge huge 'quid' to borrow videos, cassettes and CDs at the public library (In California, we could borrow up to 20 videos and 20 CDs/cassettes at a time, for free!)
Some other differences I observed were: slang for friend in America is "buddy", but in Britain it is "mate". Another weird and inconvenient difference is that I am served tons of mushrooms wherever I eat in UK! I can only wish that the mushroom prices were crazily expensive like everything else and that the restaurants will stop serving them all together! I understood British have enormous self-respect when people referred to themselves as "MISTER" Joe Smiths! While the underground train system is referred as "subway" in America, it is called "tube" in UK.
But as you must be wondering, it can't be all bad, right? Yes, there are good things about living in United Kingdom too. For instance, the price tags generally include taxes, so you don't have to curse yourself at the checkout counter when you are paying 10.82 and not the advertised price of 9.99. Also, you can avoid the peak-time traffic (which is so very common in the American metros), because the public transportation is far better than in America. And, if you are a cricket fan (many Indians are), you can appreciate the game with Brits without inhibitions, as they too are great followers of the game. I should also acknowledge that Great Britain is a vegeterian's paradise. (For the benefit of those Americans who don't know who or what a vegeterian is, a vegeterian is a human being who eats only vegetables and associated extracts) There is always a clear demarcation between vegeterian and non-vegeterian food and for people from the Indian sub-continent who are connoisseurs of spicy hot curries, UK is the best place to be. But after you finish eating your savory food and are ready to pay, ask for a "bill" not a "check"!
When the night befalls you and when you start looking for a retreat from the day's work, there is no difference though, in the abundance of nightclubs and strip joints in every nook and corner of Britain, just like in the US. So, guys shouldn't have any problem spending their nightlife even in London... provided they disregard the fact that they are losing 1.5 USD for every GBP they spend!!!

British	American
hey ya(yeah?)	hi, hello
dd-mm-yy	mm-dd-yy
bucks	quids
freephone	toll-free
rugby	football
football	soccer
Mr. Dick	Joe
telly	TV
mate	buddy
tiny cars, no SUVs	large cars, huge SUVs
right-hand drive	left-hand drive
Shopping Cart fee=1 GBP	Shopping Cart fee=0 USD
drive right-side on road	drive left-side on road
lots of mushrooms in food	rarely any mushrooms in food
pint	beer
petrol	gas
1 GBP = 1.5 USD	1 USD = 1 USD
train calls	train stops
z pronounced 'zed'	z pronounced 'zee'
220V electricity	110V electricity
bill	check
lovely	excellent, wonderful
duvet	comforter
crisps	chips
chips	fries
mead/high street	mall