Apparently people experience something known as culture shock when they go to another country. I'm not really feeling it after a week in United Kingdom. On Sunday I sat in a train a few seats away from a youth and clearly heard the loud and obnoxious noise coming from her headphones. That has happened to me countless times in the United States. Nevertheless, subtle differences do exist that I hope to address in this miniseries on my blog inappropriately named "Culture Shock." My first query concerns the mundane sink.
Now, people probably don't think of the sink when visiting another country, but if you attempt to wash your hands on a cold winter's day, the problem becomes glaringly obvious. American sinks have a two taps, one for hot water and one for cold water, with water coming out of one faucet. Rather sensible in my opinion. In Britain though you have a faucet for each tap so the hot water and the cold water come out of different taps. The same stands for baths, but that's not such a problem since the tub can still be filled with water at a perfect temperature, and showers only have one place for the water to exit from. Having two faucets makes it nearly impossible to create that perfect temperature you can get from one faucet. You'd have to fill this sink with water and injure five environmentalists saying how unsustainable that your actions are in the process.
Quite an inconvenience, but don't a life changer. Well, unless you're washing your hands on a cold winter's day and you have to use the cold tap because the only settings on the other tap are "burning hot" and "off." Then you run the option of getting frostbite or burning your hand. Well, that's probably an exaggeration, but you get the point.
So Briton's, let the Americans make your sinks.
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