My Experiments with UK

With the limited exposure that I have had with this country, there are few things that really make you think your taxes are not going to dogs.

The first visible thing you notice is there is clear and raised pedestrian area. There are proper places from where you can cross the road from. Now these like our Zebra crossing are not the directive principle which people follow if they like, nor is it that people here are extremely humanitarian and stop the car at sight of a walker. There are proper signal boxes fitted at crossing. You push the button and you would see the green light for crossing. The traffic has an obligation and not choice to stop.Importanty, they are there every 100m so you don’t have to walk lengths to get one.


Most of the time when you go around, you would have to take the baby along, if you don’t have a day care to drop him at. For some time before Aki went to day care and even now on times after office hours, I travel with Aki, alone or with Ashish for day to day stuff .Now here, due to unpredictable weather there is a concept of buggy or a stroller, as we know it. It usually comes with a foot rest , a comforter(like a seeping bag) which gets chained around the kid covering the toe to waist n hands if needed/There is a hood to avoid things falling on kid’s head and a mandatory wind sheet or rain/snow sheet. The buggy has usually very steardy handles as I pace almost all my shopping bags on them (learnt from mom’s around)

So, with this entire possible thing about the buggy, pushing it around the roads n shops is an event. Specially when you climb the road or in shop or in mall ,with all your shopping hanging on it, n god bless if you are without a partner, it could be freaking experience.Thoughfuly, the roads here at the crossing area have a yellow painted patch ,done with some different stone to avoid slipping, which merges into the road. So it gradually takes u in and out of the road. Similarly, every shop. Mall, nursery, hospital anything.. Has an entrance similar to this. You will not find a singe shop which has only stairs and no path for buggy transit.
In the trams, there are special places to stand with buggie.That has a cushion at level of your back and open area for buggy to be parked. And this place is there in every coach, so don’t have to rush to get into any specific one.

For those who travel by car, there is, like I mentioned parking on road itself. But nothing comes as free lunch. You need to take a parking ticket before you leave your vehicle on the road. Now you don’t have to run around to find where to get tickets. There are machine on the roads and directions provided on how to reach it. So pretty self managed, yet accountable. Imagine something like this happening in jayanagar nt sure if we would want to empty our pockets at one more place By the way there are road cameras to track the movement and fine receipt reaches directly to your address.

Transportation is made easy with both busses and trams running from almost every locality to the other. With a walking distance of 15 min (from my house to NHS) there are 2 tram stops. There are tram that stop rt in front of railways, so almost no walk to get into rail or tube, for those who have long journey’s to do.
At the railways or even in grocery malls, there is option to help yoursef.There are machines from which you can get you ticket, recharge your travel card or make your own billing and payment etc or if you are lazy enough, Ike me, there are traditional counters as well.


Kids are a valuable possession to this government. There are consultation charges and subsidized prescription changes for them. There are free government day cares(of course after age of 5 years).Although I have little faith in their diagnosis, more comfortable with my Indian pediatrician.Most of the times I see single moms here..And with 3-4 kids.Unlike India, where we are getting to max 2 kids, almost every 2nd person has 4 or more kids..

Almost all the services facilities are directed towards making you Zero dependency person.

But if there is some place where it hurts, specially for those who come from India or other Asian countries, is the fact the at the age of 60 ,with you barely skinned hands n legs, and in this extreme cold weather, you got to go out to get bread n butter for your daily chores. If any of our parents have to do this, we would die of shame n disgust. Am not saying they are compelled to do this or they detest this, not at all. This is how they saw their life n their parents n their expectations are set. This is where our culture sets in. With all possible shortcomings, it would never teach us to leave our parents like this to fend for themselves.