Nearly half a year: what is life like in the UK?

In a week or so, I will have reached half a year of stay in the Kingdom. There will, of course, be the retrospection. However, if I were to sum up what I have done so far and where I am, I would say the following:

1. My financial position is worse off than when I was in the other Kingdom, namely the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Not only is my income reduced, a lot of my income gets cut in taxes. This was not the case with Saudi Arabia.
2. My professional knowledge is increasing by leaps and bounds. I am now getting more and more comfortable with handling complex patients, doing procedures, understanding how the world-famous NHS works, and so on.
3. I am still struggling with the finer nuances of the cultural gap between where I have been for the last 55+ years and where I am since the past five and a half months. While the people here are quite "advanced" and "liberated" in their thinking, there are serious issues of privacy and what may or may not be considered acceptable during social intercourse.
4. People are not what they always seem to be. You can have someone who shows you how nice they are on the outside but be very critical on the inside; conversely, you can have someone who looks unfriendly on the outside but is rooting for you on the inside.
5. There is no such thing as a British stiff upper lip. Every individual is different. There will be guys and gals who are open minded but close-hearted, and those who are open-hearted and welcoming. 
6. One can get genuinely hooked to British food, especially fish and chips.
7. The society here is highly multi-cultural. The Irish people head the non-UK pack, followed by Polish, other East-European countries, then Indians, Pakistanis, Nigerians, Sudanese, Iraqis, Egyptians, Malaysians, Chinese, etc. 
8. As good food is easily available in stores as well as ordered from restaurants, the incentive to cook food in one's home is indeed limited.
9. It is very difficult to find non-porcine items in the menus of smaller eating establishments.
10. My adventures and hobbies are simply going up. I have visited nearly 7-8 different towns and parks and have experienced so many delightful things wherever I have gone. This has included visits to cities, bird parks, countryside, etc.
11. It is an expensive way of life. Make no mistake. There is a premium on everything here. It is hard to believe that while developing countries like India have abolished the TV and radio licence, people still have to pay the licence annually to simply watch the television - even if they want to see just the free channels (known here as Freeview).
12. Working with people from different cultures continues to broaden my mind. In Saudi Arabia, I worked mostly with Asians and Middle-Eastern people, plus a few from Africa and nurses from the Philippines. Here, we see people from all these places PLUS a lot of European people - from Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Russia, etc. These are people who have the freedom to work in the UK without a visa or other strict requirements as the UK, like them, is part of the Eurozone. 
13. Having one's own passport with one's own self and being able to book a ticket and fly wherever you want after getting one's leave sanctioned from work is the kind of freedom that I sorely missed when I was in the earlier Kingdom. If you are travelling to your home country, all you have to do is buy your flight ticket and fly once you have the necessary leave.
14. I still miss my family.
15. Almost 50-60% of people here are fitness conscious and wear a fitness gadget such as a pedometer or a fitness wrist-watch when they work. In spite of this, it is a shame that obesity is on the rise here. This may have something to do with the very unhealthy diets that Britishers have out here. They are hooked on fried potato chips and on sweets of all kinds from cakes, shortbreads and cookies to sweet biscuits, complex desserts and sweet drinks and ice creams.

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