Beautiful Beginnings

Today was a day of beautiful beginnings. I took the 25 minute beautiful walk to work and was welcomed with open arms at the office. Almost everything was setup and ready at the office today, quite impressive! Sure, there are a few lingering items, but overall, today had a long list of successes. Funny, the joke is always, 'success is finding the bathroom on the first day', which actually is one thing that i didnt do. So many English things happened for one day too... I'm not a big fan of tea at home, but I drank 3 cups today, and loved every sip. It really does taste a lot different here. In fact, I learned how to make tea for others (the way they each prefer it) and I'm pretty sure they even liked it. I was jokingly fussed at for saying "parking lot" and told that will be the first of many words we'll need to "fix". its a "car park". ok, no problem. I thought I had studied the list of English words, but apparently not enough. They say 'lovely' and 'brilliant', a lot. More than we say awesome or cool.

Let me take a moment here, I'm not intending to pit countries or cultures against each other, hopefully its not coming across that way. I'm merely trying to share my personal learning moments in a bit of a vulnerable way in the hopes of helping others. I believe there's some value in 'thinking out loud', or what I like to practice at work in a similar fashion called 'working out loud' (as opposed to inadvertently creating silos and keeping comms flowing in small circles of people). i find the subtle differences in perspective to be fascinating and i'm trying to not think about 'how we're different', but more 'what have i learned/experienced'.

Ok, right, so, another somewhat common English thing seems to be that conversation goes on for a bit, THEN introductions are made. It feels slightly strange at first, but it actually kind of makes sense. Go with the flow of the conversation, then a quick introduction actually makes for a nice 'ah, so you're jane doe and i'll look forward to talking to you again later, jane'

I find most people say 'morning' as opposed to 'good morning', I think that was mentioned in 'watching the english' just like introductions. Something about the subtle nature of the culture...

Did you know that British keyboards are different? shift+3 is the pound sign, but shift+4 is still the dollar sign. the double quote is shift+2, the @ symbol is on the same key as the comma. fun.

Then I picked up my car, oh boy! My palms were sweating as I got in the right side of the car and into the driver seat. I pulled out on to a main road and just went for it - on the left side of the road. I made it to my first left turn where I gently bumped the curb, because really, who knows how far a car extends to the left side. Then I came to a pretty serious roundabout and I needed the most simple first left and of course I learned quickly that you yield to anyone on the right... well it was a bit of a sudden stop, but we survived. I made it to the house and the parking spot was tiny and its harder than you think to park when sitting on the right side of the car. Again though, success, nice!!

Finally, to top it all off, I had the honor to drink a pint with David Gurteen. In my humble opinion, he's in the 'top tier' of global km experts, I've been a fan for many many years. He went out of his way to pick me up, drive me around several small towns, explain history, even walk around a town called Farnham! If you know him and think he's good online, you should meet him in person! We had a great meal and shared stories half the night, then we even did some real time km where he was showing me some apps and i couldnt find them on the app store. he remembered something about each country having their own app store, so we looked it up and sure enough you have to change countries, which isnt easy, and still doesnt quite work for me. but we learned together and we'll get it.

The learning has begun and its such a privilege. Hope I'm helping you too...