Sunday, July 20, 2008

Life in the UK!

I had to appear for the Life in the UK exams and pass to move on to next stage of immigration upgrade. This is a 24 question exam with 18 to pass; Years back when i lived in US, i had to appear for a driving test which was of similar pass requirement and i failed in the first attempt due to my over-confident approach - i basically failed coz' of naivety on 'the drinks' %. I had quite a few questions testing on the knowledge of alcohol percentages such as how many of wine equals how many beers etc... I am still not up to date on that section...anyways in this exam i did not want to take any chances - so i quickly did some copy paste to highlight the important points into pdfs and left it for last minute prep. Banking on my general knowledge, i took some five-six tests on the net and i got couple of them passed and failed in a few! You should now know, how i would have felt about the exams.

Most of my friends around knew i was going to take the exams - so that added a bit of pressure as well. Aha what a man who claims to be an IT architect right there worrying about an exam. But the approach i took to the exams rightly asserted my approach to any problem and resolving them - an architect approach - did a quick summary of all facts into a let's call it a 'notebook' and from there took an aerial view to see what's the 80/20 rule and where to concentrate...

On the test day my GPS - SatNav very aptly conked off! so obstacle no 1 - how do i master the roads in UK to navigate into Hounslow east? more of a challenge i need to be mastering if i were to live in UK - so i took the choice of 'Phone - a - friend' - called my friend who was learning his drive in the UK; remembering that i switched off the call to him and rang his wife for the road name - i wasn't sure if it was Huxley road or Kingsley road; Anyways 'Phone-a-friend' worked out; Then somehow managed my life in the uk knowledge drove to Hounslow east. Given the traffic conditions on a Saturday morning the traffic was slow, with both me & my wife calming ourselves, suddenly spotted the Kingsley road! - there goes my right indicator, a quick view on right mirror and make a hasty turn to right. Racing against the time, i parked in a lot and ran to the test centre to confirm the venue, then back to the parking lot to tell my wife and took care of the little one. Now i was more nervous than her - not coz' of the test but how do i take care of this young man? Apart from a few nervy moments - he was okay, only thing he was adamant that i carried him all along!! Also he poo-ed (i did keep saying that he will do that right after my wife left for the test). She quickly answered, reviewed and passed it.

Now it was my turn. out of 7 attendees, 5 of us from India, 1 from japan, 1 from Malaysia. The Japanese girl had applied some great efforts in studying for the test - i looked over her shoulder to find the whole book marked with pens, stickers etc etc. I then realised how tough it could be for a lot of people. One thing what i noticed was all the Indians were chill-out and quite clearly coz' the constitution and political system such as speaker's role, whips's role, cabinet, Parliament elections all are very similar to India's one (actually the reverse). But for people who are not that close to these things might be finding the exam quite challenging. I whizzed through the test in less then 5 minutes and got the pass mark!

If you need the notes - let me know :)