Britain, value your holiday!

I have been remiss and have failed to blog in the 7 days since I got back from home. But in my defence, I was floored by a combination of a nasty cold and particularly bad jetlag, so I've spent most of the last week either asleep or coughing up a lung. Anyway, as a result this is a long post, so I apologise in advance.


My ten days at home were awesome, although everything felt kind of like suspended reality. It's not like it didn't feel like home any more - when I walked past a pile of sick on my way to Passport Control in Heathrow, I knew I was back in England. I'm not sure it's that I felt I didn't belong there, either. It just didn't quite feel like it was really happening - and yet my new life in Orlando just felt like a dream as well. I felt a bit suspended between the two.

With my best friend Nic in the world's best chicken restaurant - Nandos!

Needless to say I basically ate and drank my way through the country. There was Nandos (and lots of it), there was curry, there was Pizza Express, there was roast lamb, and with it being St. Patricks Day while I was home, there was Guinness a-plenty. Free Guinness, actually - me and my best mate led the charge on collecting as many 'print this voucher, get a free Guinness at Pitcher & Piano' codes as possible and managed to get a 5-person round of the black stuff for nothing. 

Our free Guinness!

We would have got a second one too (we were literally setting up email addresses to get more codes), except we ran the Guinness taps dry!


I feel like I really made the most of my precious, precious ten days - shopping, eating, but most of all laughing hysterically with my family and friends. I could have stayed for another week had I had the funds.


Just when I thought I was going to experience an entire trip without travel drama, I had not reckoned with the supreme stupidity of American Airlines. It's not the fact that I had an allergic reaction to their in-flight food I have a problem with - hey, it happens - it's that, rather than offering me any assistance whatsoever, the cabin crew instead bollocked me for not ordering a special diet meal and then left me alone at 37,000ft to take an adrenaline shot and suffer a serious medical emergency. I was fine, but only after 4 hours of being unable to swallow, shakes, heart palpitations, stomach cramps and vomiting. Luckily the guy next to me was an understanding chap - and had been in the same nightclub as me the night before. Small world. And I'm fine now. It was just a bit bloody scary.


Since I got back to the States, I've had 3 job interviews and a major reality check. All the jobs are very low-paid, close to minimum wage, and yet for 2 of them I require multi-stage interviews - and for one, THREE interviews, including a panel with 3 directors. This is, by the way, for a job that involves standing in a hallway giving people directions. And they say the economy is recovering...


The biggest shock I have had is on benefits. The three-stage interview job has NO paid holiday at all for the first year - and then you earn one week. 


I would imagine most Americans reading this will probably be thinking, "Er, yeah, that's normal. So what?" I would also imagine that most Brits reading this are probably thinking, "What the [insert expletive here]?! That's completely insane!!" Which were exactly the words that came out of my mouth when I was out of the interview. Plus a few more that I can't really repeat.


I'm sure many people this side of the pond feel we're spoilt rotten, which in comparison we are. The statutory paid annual leave entitlement in the UK - that is, the amount of time off we are entitled to by law - is 28 days a year, so 5.6 weeks. A lot of people get more - civil servants get 6 weeks. Yes, we pay more tax, but believe me - right now I would happily pay 20% income tax to get those 28 days off. Whoever says Americans are lazy clearly doesn't know about vacation entitlements. And the reason there's a weight problem is probably cos everyone is so stressed out by working without a break that they either have no time to exercise or comfort eat. I've had a huge slap in the face from reality.


It may not seem like a big deal - but when your entire family lives in another country, it's a huge deal. Unless I get in to one of the major companies at a management level, I will not get a single day off outside of weekends for the next 12 months. No visiting my people. And days off take so to accrue that the adventures me and Jason were planning for the future may never happen. That hurts my heart, a lot. I knew I was going to get less - I just wasn't expecting none.


So the job hunt continues - cos a job with no holiday is still better than no job at all. I'm just feeling a lot less optimistic than I used to.