Changes are a-happenin’

So anyone who bothers to check nuggetoftruth on a semi-regular basis will assume that I seem to be suffering a form of writers’ block lately. The truth nugget this time is that actually I’ve been immensely busy – I’m moving to Los Angeles next week! So from now on, where before this website was a hodge-podge of articles, links, and opinions, it’s going to become more of a ‘British-girl-in-LA’ type thing. So keep checking back for my observations of life on the west coast, from the POV of a Britican.

Being a dual national, harf and haff, I don’t look at the States through the eyes of a foreigner. BUT, some things will take a bit of getting used to. Like the whole tipping culture – here in Britainland I like to tip if the service has been good and I think they deserve it. But in America you’d better tip, no matter what – or else! To me that’s illogical. A tip should be a reward for good service, not for any service; after all, isn’t that what the bill is for?

And the fact that in the US, what’s on the price sticker isn’t the actual price, but just the price before tax. Seeing as how we’re taxed through the nose here in England (in fact, noses themselves will soon be taxed. Bigger noses taxed more, for environmental reasons. They breathe in more clean air, you see?), I can actually appreciate seeing exactly what the government takes on every purchase. Not like here, where it’s quite easy to forget that we pay more for pretty much everything because of the greedy government – because what it says on the price sticker is what we pay in total. They take the taxing mental arithmatic out of the situation, to tax us more in pennies! Sneaky.

I rather lost my train of thought with that rant. I’m not a big fan of our Labour government, as you may be able to tell. In fact, I’ll be quite glad to be rid of them – by fleeing to America, of course. Now, you may be thinking that I’m viewing the States through rose coloured glasses (not rose colored – I’m going to keep my Englishness. Especially the accent – to entice the hunky hunky Cali men). But I’m sure that once I’m there and I encounter annoyances I’ve not yet dreamed of, I’ll realise that wherever you go there’ll be things that suck. I just can’t imagine it sucking worse than it sucks right now in England. True, I could be living in Zimbabwe, gazing on Mugabe’s gold palace while my stomach churns in hunger. True, I could be stuck in North Korea, with no access to the outside world. I could even be in one of the 100 tribes dotted through the Amazon and South America, never having had any contact with modern conveniences such as pennicillin, electricity, and Clinique.

But you can but work with the life you’ve been given, and I’ve been so blessed to have been born a Britican. And right now, choosing between the two, I’ve got to say that I think Britain is being destroyed from the inside by its greedy, corrupt ruling class, whereas America, while being very far from perfect, has a written constitution to protect the interests of its people, and that constitution is the most valued institution America has.

Viva America! Viva Jamba Juice, and ridiculous tipping, and confusing price stickers!

PS. Check out the new navigation bar at the top called ‘Nugget of Contents’, containing a list of all the posts on this blog.