Oh the scary scary Socialist health care system

So before I get to the juicy bits, lets have a quick rundown of the first day in cheery England. I'd also like to apologize for the first blog post. There are two styles of adding new blog posts, a compose method and an HTML method. The compose method is WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get - for my non-tech friends). There is a spellchecker, you can drop pictures or links directly into the post, videos, etc.). Unfortunately, Microsoft and Google are still having hissyfits at each other. So IE8 doesn't work with the compose method and it never will (unsupported browser). Whatever. I downloaded Chrome.

I was awoken early in the morning by a hostelmate, a cute Asian gal apparently into shopping as judging by the designer shopping bags she left. Having no idea what time it was beyond that there was light in the sky, I showered and prepped for the new day. Only to find that it was prior to the hostel's free breakfast. So I hung out in back until 7am. Two eggs, some cereal, coffee, two toast with jam, and an OJ later - I was ready to face the world. I started off by walking down some of the more unused street to head over to the tower bridge. Along the way I noticed a neat dichotomy. The bulk of buildings were either aged brick buildings all in need of minor repairs, or they were modern glass and steel buildings of modern architecture.

Tucked into a little brick alcove next to a bridge beside a busy road, I found an old brick church.Beside the church a statute of Our Lady with a tiny pool/offering bowl in front. Its stark white beauty belied the weathered brick lining the archway to the bridge where traffic whizzed by overhead. Then around the corner an art installation of colored lights placed into the walls of the other side of the bridgeway. It was a refreshing walk down to the tower bridge, occasionally spotted by a giant "fuck you" of traditional brick buildings set amidst the towering steel monstrosities of our modern society.

The walk continued down to the waterfront for a cup of coffee at Starbucks (oddly enough, they didn't have a lot of options in that respect) at the base of the bridge. The tower bridge itself was quite interesting, you could pay to go in the towers themselves where they described the people that built them and had galleries of the famous bridges across the world. Afterwards you got to go down into the engine room to view the old steam workings of the draw bridge and the massive counterweights. All in all it was pretty cool. The only problem is that the only exit was back on the other side of the bridge, where I had originally come from. Meh. I figured I'd just hit the London Bridge area and see what's up.

I wandered down by the boulevard lining the Thames. There were small artsy shopping regions and one of the coolest steampunk/Baron Munchhousen style fountains I'd ever seen. Unfortunately, my right elbow was swelling up, turning red, and was hot to the touch. This had been going on since Thursday (3-4 days) and was getting progressively worse. Fuck. Not good and I realized I needed to see a doctor. And the only way to do that, I found after asking a pharmacist, was to go to the urgent care (our emergency room).

So I headed down to St. Guy's and checked into the urgent care. They asked my name, where I was staying, and a phone number. I offered to go back to the hostel and get my insurance card number but she told me to just relax and they would call me. They let you eat lunch in the waiting room so I had the salted beef with pickle deli sandwich, dandelion and burdock soda, and Greek salad. About 1/2 hour later I went in to see a nurse practitioner. She took one look at my elbow and said cellulitis. We then chatted a bit about my work and such. She wrote me out a prescription for antibiotics and told me to ask for a low grade steroid cream when I talked to the pharmacy. When I asked her how much the visit was going to cost me, she looked at me weird and said "nothing". Also the medicine cost 12 pounds for both. So an emergency room visit in London cost me a total of less than 20 bucks. When I told her how much it would have costed in the US, she said "Are you fucking serious? Sounds like your insurance companies have you lot by the balls."

Yah. They do. <insert sad panda face>

For all those folks bitching about socialized medicine, bite me. We're getting fucked hard and paying the bill for it through all sorts of ways. Establish a public option already and lets be done with all that bullshit.

Anyway, I headed back to the hostel after that and decided to have a nap and do some reading. Which ended up being a prolonged nap with a Kindle. Currently, I'm sitting alone in the back patio of the Rose and Crown having a pint of Bulmer's cider (cider rocks here - they have a huge variety and its very dry and tasty). Thinking of wandering around, possibly to the London Dungeon. a tourist attraction by the London Bridge.