People are people, but norms and expectations sometimes vary

It's strange to hear names of people that everyone in a room except for you recognizes. I've noticed a few times where a name is used in conversation, everyone recognizes the name, but I've never heard of them and I feel a little embarassed. Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson are two names that I've had to learn quickly. I wonder what names we use in America that aren't known outside of America.

Work comment - its been a fairly heavy debate at every company I've worked for, "should we track informal learning"? My personal opinion is that informal learning should not be tracked, but that said, if it helps "put informal learning on the map", then I'm for it. I'd rather see broad awareness of the business value of informal learning. Given that awareness/acceptance/value, then informal learning strategies, projects and progress can get started...

I realized today that there's quite a bit of talk about the British school system. I need to research it. It's something like 'junior level', then 'senior level', then 'a level', then 'uni' (aka university). I think they somewhat align to elementary school, middle school, high school and college, but not quite the same. I do see a lot of children in school uniforms as I travel around and I hear the British schools tend to follow a pretty strict/traditional teaching approach. Wonder if thats true.

Interesting that England seems to really know popular tv from America, there's talk of Game of Thrones, 24, etc. They're also very into American music. We listened to MC Hammer, Ke$ha, Black Eyed Peas and several other groups today. I suppose we've been seeing/hearing more and more British tv/music in America too?

Word of the day is "stroke", which means slash. We might type something like "this/that", which means "this or that", and we would typically say out loud "this or that". I'm hearing "this stroke that" in conversation quite a bit here. Took me a minute to realize what it was.

I watched my first live English 'football' game today. It was a semi-final at a fairly low level, but I stood right on the sideline and enjoyed it. Pretty talented group of guys and the fans were certainly into it. I heard that the winner would be promoted up a division after winning, which is pretty cool.