Diversity Expounds

Well given the word that I just pulled out of my brain from somewhere – expounds –  definition:

• Present and explain (a theory or idea) systematically and in detail.
• Explain the meaning of (a literary or doctrinal work).

Seriously – I don’t even know where I come up with these words – but clearly I have read and understood them from somewhere and then captured them in my memory to be retrieved for uses arbitrarily.  I know where to use them instinctively but can not always tell you the definition if you were to ask me.  So I look that up – and always surprisingly, I have used it correctly.  Amazing the brain, is it not?

So back to my latest quest in life – settling in southern England.  One would think settling in a country that is essentially my heritage and from which I take my language would be simple as pie.  First of all though, how is pie simple?  But I digress (silly colloquialisms!).  But you would think it would be simple.

So I started setting things up back in August.  Opened a bank account.  Now which bank do you choose?  There is an interesting conundrum when you have not really had to think about it.  You would think banking across the world is the same beast.  But it is not.  So I had to research – Santander, HSBC, Barclays, etc..  Do you go international or national?  Do you take into consideration the 2008/09 debacle where many of them revealed their poor management policies?  You have to consider where your money essentially sits – in my case Canada.  How might you marry the two together?  What do you need when you don’t really know what the future looks like?  Lots of unknowns.  Essentially, I went international.  Seemed like a good decision.

Then they ask, when did you start living in the UK?  Well I know the date I landed in London but then I took off again and was mostly in Europe.  I was only back briefly in August to set things up and then off again.  You see none of these questions really consider someone in my circumstances.  Someone somewhat transient with moving goalposts and life.

Needless to say, I worked that out and decided that I would make the date later when I returned more in earnest.  Then you have to deal with getting your health insurance number – at least if you ever intend to need a doctor.  However different from Canada, once you get this number – you never need to present it, which is a weird thing to me.  But it took a couple of weeks to get that, to identify a doctor – or at least a business – and to get that first appointment.

Now different again from Canada, your doctor is one that is allowable within your postal code.  Move a couple of neighbourhoods away and you have to change doctors.  Again, an interesting diversion.  Luckily for the moment, I have stayed within one neighbourhood of allowable doctors – if that makes sense.  I guess the Brits don’t like to have to travel far to see their doctor – or maybe it is an issue of catchment area.

Now the dentist. In Canada this is just a private overly priced business/profession.  Want to marry a rich person?  Find a dentist.  But in Britain there is dentistry covered by the National Health and there is private dentistry.  The private dentistry is a money making business like Canada.  They don’t like the public dentistry much – as I found out.  And you can’t see a dentist for any problem – publicly – until you have your first appointment which usually can’t be booked any earlier until 6 weeks.  Of course you can go privately – which if the issue is bad enough – you will – as I did.

Unfortunately the public dentistry is not really up to par compared to private.  Teeth cleaning is rudimentary at best so ultimately I will likely go private anyway.  Funny how that happens no?

Then there is the National Insurance Number – NIN – similar to Canada’s Social Insurance Number – or SIN.  Hee hee – I like that SIN!  But again, I could not just get one sent to me, but had to go for an interview.  From my understanding as it was explained to me, when the EU opened up to Eastern Europe, some countries started coming into Britain illegally to work so they started interviewing those individuals from those countries to make sure they were not taking advantage of the system.  Of course that became discriminating so now they interview everyone regardless.

It was a bit of a “go through the moves” sort of thing but forced me to have to take a train to the nearest office that handled this.  But finally, a month or so after being more permanently settled, I received this NIN.  We will get into the hilarity of trying to change my address on file next time, as I have gone on too long.