Like every Saturday, I went to the gym today. The gym is in the basement of my old apartment building (Don’t ask why after moving out of the building I am still going to this gym. That’s another story.) so there are two elevators that take us to the basement. For the last couple of months, one of the elevator has been out of order so we can only use the other one.

So there I was with another guy and his female friend, and another lady waiting for the elevator to arrived. The door opened and in we went. The lone lady was the first one in and I was last. She pressed the button for the basement floor and the door closed. Nothing unusual there. Then elevator lunged upward a bit and stopped. A few seconds later, the door opened again to show us that we were still at the ground floor.

“What? It is not working?” exclaimed the lady.

“We’ll have to take the stair,” said the other guy.

“I don’t believe I’ll have to walk down the stairs!” the lady complained once more.

When we got to the gym’s reception the lone lady again complained to the manager that the only working elevator was not broken. By this time I was trying very hard to bite my tongue as not to make a sarcastic comment. Come on, if you make the effort to come to the gym to exercise, I don’t think walking down or up a few flights of stairs is going to kill you. No wonder why we have an obesity problem.

you were hit by a car when you are cycling in the city and you flew over the bonnet/hood of the say car, rolled over the windscreen and landed on the other side of the road? Your cycle helmet was split in two and you ended up with double visiontemporary lost of vision in one eye and hurt your leg.

Most people will call for an ambulance and be taken to the local A&E/ER, right? And possibly inform the police of the accident. Apparently not, said my brother-in-law. He was offered to be taken to the hospital by the driver himself but instead my brother-in-law called his mother and went to the hospital. After discovering that there was a 7 hours wait they went home. The preferred treatment for my brother-in-law was a hot bath and a cup of tea!

How British and incredulous! They have a national health service that they all paid for. The ambulance ride is free (compare to what we have to pay here in the States). Granted 7 hours is a very long wait but I would rather drop dead in the middle of a ER than in the comfort of my own bed. Doesn’t double vision spell of head injuries, however minor? Perhaps a concussion? And how would one know there are no internal injuries without X-ray, ultrasound, or MRI scans? That is with medically trained doctor performing a diagnosis, not a criminology graduate with a concussion whose declared, “I don’t feel any pain”.

And how would we ever knew if the driver was not DUI without police involvement?

And why would my mother-in-law, who is a very educated teacher allow her son not to go to the hospital? Apparently, she will be “keeping an eye on him”. Oh, of all the 9+ years I’ve known her I apparently missed the fact she was medically trained doctor specialised in trauma cases!

Bloody incredible.

Stupid, stupid, stupid British people.