Neenaw

 In Ireland and the UK, the sound made by emergency vehicles (police, fire, ambulance) is "Nee Naw", so that's the the generic term for vehicles that make this noise: neenaw.

Sirens in the US are quite different, so the word makes no sense at all. There don't really have one distinctive sound, so even the idea of having a soundy name for them doesn't translate. Such a shame.

When you call 999 in the UK, you have to choose between police, ambulance and fire brigade. In the US, when you call 911, the ambulance is usually part of the local fire department.

Also in the US, calling 911 "for" somebody can be quite a hostile act: you can end up bankrupting them by your "kindness". In the UK there is no concept of paying for it, so you needn't hesitate.

Power! Voltage! Plumbing!

 One of the things I dislike about the US is how slow our kettle is. A 120V kettle at 10A or so is just slow.

There are many good things about 120V AC: sockets in bathrooms! Sockets beside sinks!! Sockets outside the house, even in the rain!!!

Code in the UK and Ireland doesn't allow sockets in bathrooms, and even switches are often outside the room, or activated via a pull cord. Sockets outside are rare.

UK/IE wall plugs are serious things. I like them a lot. They're child safe. When they're in, they stay in. (It helps that the cable usually exits the plug down.). I've never seen one spark when I pull it out. (It's unthinkable, really.) US plugs spark when you pull them out sometime - shocking the first time I saw it (not literally), but now unremarkable.

Apart from the restrictions on where you can put sockets, there is one problem in practice with having 240V everywhere: some people are tempted to heat water on demand with it, for showers. For a while, in Ireland, it was somewhat common to install 8, 9 even up to 10kW electric showers. Now, you might think that you can do a lot with 10kW, but one thing you cannot do is have a decent shower. At best, in summer, you'll have a borderline awful shower. In winter, you won't even have that. Most US showers are a bit crap - the shower head is often annoying low - but they are miles ahead of heat-on-demand electric showers.

Electric heat-on-demand showers almost always have a pump in them. This makes sense when your water is coming from a  tank, like, three feet above your head: British & Irish plumbing, whereby water for toilets and sink and baths and showers - everything except the main kitchen tap - comes from a tank in the attic, often an open tank, occasionally used to catch pigeons (*) and rats. While it's nice that we all have a small reservoir of water, useful in emergencies, the American way is mostly better.

(*) When talking of pigeons in the water tank [in the attic], it is normal to pronounce it "pig-ee-on". In any other context, the word is pronounced normally, like "pidgin".  

It turns out you can buy three phase electric on-demand water heaters. That might be acceptable. My girlfriend (now wife) converted her house to gas once, and put in a "combi" - it heats water for radiators, and heats water on demand for baths and sinks and showers - and I worked out that it was the equivalent of a 27kW on-demand heater. That is a lot of electricity.

(Before she did that, she had an "immersion" tank: it heats water in a big copper cylinder. America has these too, but they are always on. Of course!! In Ireland, we turn them on when we want hot water, and then we turn them off. If you have never gone out and left the immersion on, you are lucky.)

PS. The british think of having separate taps ("faucets") for hot and cold is weird. Just weird. I will never understand it. Mixer taps are obviously superior.

Watching people from cars

 Back when I lived in Ireland, whenever I'd watch an American drama and see cops or spies staked out in a car watching somebody, it always struck me as ... odd. I just assumed it was a trope (I didn't know that word then) of American TV, something that happened only in TV, not in real life. It made no sense to me that two grown men could just sit in a car somewhere and not be noticed by everybody. walking. past. They would be so obvious, my inner logical voice would say. Still, I happily suspended disbelief for the sake of the show.

But then I moved to the US, and it turns out it wasn't fake, it wasn't unbelievable. In fact, it's totally believable that somebody could sit in a car and watch a building or whatever and not be noticed by anybody nearby. Totally plausible.

I think it's to do with the fact that cities in the US are for cars, not for people. Even the relatively car-hostile cities like Boston seem outrageously car-friendly to a European. And it's plausible that you could sit in your car and watch something here and not be noticed.