The great British Bathroom.

So, its house hunting time again having moved to Cambridge to take up employment at a place that is famous for thumbs, arms and mobile phones.

The key thing to look for in any house or apartment here is the bathroom and especially the shower. Remember that in the UK it's possibly a law that no 2 showers should look or work alike. Some places have an instant electric shower which has a very intuitive and effective interface to the user. Some others make it obscure with 3 moving dials , one for controlling water flow, a 2nd dial that can make things warmer or colder and then a third to set the temperature. The result is that dials 2 and 3 can get out of sync and you can actually get cold water when you want hot water and so on and so forth. So the first thing you do as soon as you get into the house is to make sure you look at the bathroom. The other funny thing about bathrooms is that somehow in the 80s folks got the idea that a bathroom was really cool with having a carpet inside it. So now that you have a carpet inside you have to be really careful about how to take bath etc. and make sure none of the water from the shower actually falls on the carpet. Contrast this with the Indian genes of associating foot marks on the floor to leave evidence of your bathing every day to concerned parents you actually have a big problem .

In the end I chose an apartment with a magnificent bathroom with a shower that I know how to operate and laminate flooring ! Yay !