Thursday, August 09, 2007

Moving Home is Like Learning a New Language

Moving back to Britain after twenty years has required me to learn what is, in effect, a new social language.

For example, one pays for things in the oddes tways here. For electricity I have a meter into which I have to insert a payment card which I can 'top up' at any convenience store: for pay-as-you go cellphones (called mobile phones in the UK), I can pay at my bank's cash machines. If you one doesn't have a credit card one can pay by 'SMS', which means your cellphone is debited for certain payments.

No one here grasps how odd all this is.

And don't get me started on SCART cards or how plugs, sockets, and fuses work.

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