"The Sex Pistols are still alive?"-6/13/08

Fun British Word of the Day-Arseholed-referring to someone who is in an advanced state of drunkenness. When told about the island's festivals this weekend I was told to watch out for crowds of arseholed people as they seem to be more unpredictable than us sober dwellers.

Today began the exciting Isle of Wight festival. Famous for it's introduction in 1968 as the largest festival ever conceived at the time, it took a 30 year break before being revived the last few years. Jimi Hendrix performed for one of the last times here and the Rolling Stones put on a great show last year. This year it will last from Thursday until Sunday and The Sex Pistols, my mom’s favorite band, and The Police are the highlights. Nearly doubling the population of the island places significant stress on an already burdened hospital so the UK has developed a new specialty of medicine called festival medicine. Here a portion of the revenue from a concert, event, or attraction must be used to pay physicians, nurses, and ambulance services to set up a triage tent on the grounds. The swarms of alcohol and drug-related accidents would simply overwhelm any hospital here so instead the events pay for the consequences of their entertainment.

I’ve begun to notice, especially while watching the European League Soccer Tournament in the physician’s mess hall every night, that there are hardly, if any native Isle of Wight physicians. In fact, I haven’t met a single doctor who wasn’t trained in places like Nigeria, South Africa, the Philippines, or Morocco. When I asked Ode, a doctor from India, he said that it is a growing trend in England, but especially on the island because it is becoming harder to attract young people to the profession. It is worse here on the island because “this is not a place to go to make a name for yourself.” Like in the States, physicians educated abroad, even in one of the colonies, must take a residency-like training before they can practice. A few told me that they arrived only to find their degre was not recognized here in the UK and they had to take the same courses again. Many of them also have to travel around their region away from their families taking 3 month shifts at different hospitals. Ode’s family lives in London and he has to take the 3 hour journey home each weekend. Soon, he’ll move again to Southampton.

Like in the numerous places Shannon and I visited before I came here, there seems to be a real interest in American Politics-and by politics I mean Barack Obama. When I explain that I haven’t decided who to vote for they look at me in complete surprise. Many don't even recognize McCain's name so it's either too generic or their media is even more biased than our own.

In fact and not just related to politics, I’d say generally the English know much more about us than we do about them. I’ve never felt more ethnocentric as I struggled even to remember their prime minister, Gordan Brown’s, name. Similarly, the only knowledge I had of the NHS before my own research seems to have been packaged behind some propaganda at one point or another. On the other hand, they know surprisingly specific details about our system. All of the countless Kings and Queens I learned about in middle school have since been placed into the junk section of my brain but they can engage in an insightful conversation about Colin Powell or lecture me on the waste of money our current colorectal cancer screening policies are.