More Things They Dont Tell You About England

Per Reven's request, here are a few more. .

People generally don't show up for work until 8:30-9:00 am. I showed up at 7:30 my first day and the security guard laughed at me.

The beers are cold. Unless you order a cast ale. But those have like 3.5% alcohol, so you end up with a warm near-beer. The only cool thing about them is that the taps are hand pumps, so rather than pulling the tap and letting CO2 or N do the trick, the bartender has to pump it out.

Compared to the US, everyone smokes. I looked it up. As early as 16, 25% of people in the UK smoke, and it goes up from there. Most common amongst unmarried 20-somethings.

Women's fashion is very revealing, despite the weather. So you always find girls, wearing almost nothing, standing outside of a pub freezing so they can have a cigarette.

Most engineers in England aren't English. At work, I'd say its maybe 50-50 between people from England and other countries. I stick out as the lone American, but there are a lot of Swedish, French, German, Scottish, Irish, etc. It was a similar case in Columbus. Almost all of the engineers I worked with came from out of state, except for a small handful that had gone to Purdue or Rose Hullman.

Northern England has the same stigma as the southern US. Apparently once you get about 30 miles north of London it is considered "uncivilized." However, the southern US is looked upon worse than northern England thanks to the Top Gear episode when they drove from Miami to New Orleans.

You can watch Top Gear almost all day long if you have cable and get Dave. I lack cable, I have no Top Gear.

The toilets don't spin in a certain direction. It's a straight flush. You pretty much have one strong jet going down the back, and one strong jet going down the front.

Pedestrians do not have the right of way. When you want to cross the street, you wait for an opening and make a run for it. The only time you get help is at some crossings you can hit a button which will eventually activate a stop light for the traffic. However, I've found it faster to just wait for a break in traffic and then go for it.

Newspapers generally have nudity in them. Pages of it. The Sun is known for its "page 3 girls".