So since I took this new job in December of 2006, I’ve been in London in one shape or another for a little over a year (we moved into our new home in early March, so that will be the official one year anniversary). In the past I’ve talked about all of the benefits of moving to London, the commute, the lack of traffic stress, the lack of daycare stress, the benefits of having my mom and dad close by, friends less than a 10 minute drive away, the first Christmas where we awoke in our own bed and didn’t have to rush around…all of that is great. However there are definite disadvantages to living in London as well.
Podcasts
I used to listen to seven podcasts a week, and often by Friday I’d run out of content. Now I can barely keep up with two! My daily commute is less than 15 minutes each way, which means that in a week I spend around two hours on the road! It’s very hard to listen to a couple of one hour podcasts in a week.
Warm cars
The temperature in my car is always cold. Because the commute is so close, I just get to work (or home) when my car is starting to get toasty.
I rarely finish my coffee in the car
I usually have to bring my coffee in to work with me, which means that I leave my cup at work. A fifteen minute drive just isn’t long enough to drink my coffee because…
I have to shift ALL THE TIME!!!
I’m not doing any highway driving anymore, so I actually have to shift my car! It’s crazy, I can’t drink my coffee because I’m always stopping and starting for lights!
You quickly get spoiled
It doesn’t take long for that 15 minute commute to spoil you so that when it does take an hour to get to work because of snow, you start to get irritated. That happened last Tuesday until I realized that a year ago it was taking me an hour to get to the Go station where I’d have to get on a train for another hour to get downtown (or only to find out that the Go trains were frozen on the tracks).
There you go, it’s not all great in London, there are some definate downsides.