The UK: America with funny accents?

As far as I can tell, London is very similar to most large American cities and I think that at its core the statement "England is America with funny accents" is basically true. We're both advanced industrialized nations and share all the trappings that come with that, we both speak English of course, and (at least as far as London goes), we're both highly diverse multicultural societies whose citizens use a wide array of ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds to create a dynamic, heterogeneous national culture. More and more, however, I find myself obsessed with noticing the little details that do distinguish life in the UK from life in the US. I discussed the UK's lack of an ADA-equivalent in my last blog post...here are some others.

Money: Yes, obviously the US uses the dollar and the UK uses the pound, but that's not what I'm talking about here. First, the UK does not have (so far as I can tell) £1 notes. Instead, they have £1 and £2 pound coins, the former of which are for some reason smaller than the 50p coins (which, in another oddity, are septagonal). Also, the paper currency the UK does have is made of remarkably poor quality paper. In the US we're used to our greenbacks being printed on a heavy-duty paper that is actually something like 70% cotton...here, the pound notes are printed on some flimsy material that you might find making up the pages of a cheap magazine or newspaper. Very strange.

Water fountains: They're everywhere in the US but I still haven't seen one here. I'm not sure if this is merely cultural or if public buildings are mandated to have water fountains in the US but not in the UK. Upon reflection, it could be both.

Marketing: My first comment on this is that London must be heaven for environmentally-conscious US liberals. Everywhere you look, there is at least one business advertising how its been serving only organic food since the 1980s, or how their whole company is carbon-neutral or their building is solar powered...even the McDonald's near my tube stop brags about how all of its chicken is free-range. Next, its amusing how many products here are the same brands as you find in the US, but with different names. For example, Lay's chips are called "Walker's" here, Axe hygeine products are called "Lynx,"...there's lots of examples of this but they're skipping my mind right now

Keyboards: On the UK keyboard, the keystrokes for quotation marks and the @ sign are reversed from the way US keyboards have them. Also, the # sign and tilde are on a completely made up key that doesn't exist on US keyboards. I can't tell you how many times this has messed me up lol.

Gambling: If Las Vegas is the Mecca of gambling and Macau is Medina, London must be Jerusalem or something. In addition to being home to a number of enormous casinos, seemingly everywhere you turn in London there is a Betfair, Ladbrokes, or William Hill sports betting office, or else an "Amusement Hall" filled with various slot and video poker machines. It's really something else.

Note: No, I have not been inside any of these establishments yet. However, the World Series of Poker Europe is going on at the Empire casino right now and I may just swing by there tomorrow to watch/ogle some of my favorite players. No gambling for me though, def. can't afford to at the moment.

Foul Language: Literally everyone who has lectured us during orientation thus far has dropped at least one curse word, and none of them has had the slightest bit of hesitation or embarassment about it. This seems much healthier than the repressed American approach to such words.

That's all for now, I'll be sure to add more to this list (in separate posts obv) as I find them.

Cheers!
Tom