Licking Stamps and Other Weird Things

Today I made my first trip to the post office in order to buy some stamps and start sending out all the postcards I've been writing.  I was going to just buy stamps online, but the Royal Mail shop is a bit confusing and I gave up.  Anyway, after trying to peel off the stamps for about five minutes, I figured out that you have to lick them to put them on.  The Air Mail stamps, which must accompany the normal stamps, are peel & stick, however.

There are lots of little things like this that are not quite the same here as they are in the U.S.  Many of them, like the stamps, seem completely nonsensical to me.  Others make sense once I consider the context of the culture, and still others just seem like better ideas period.  Here are some of the ones that have struck me the most:

• Kit-Kats, Milky Ways, etc. are not the same here as they are in the U.S.  Some are vastly different, while others are just tweaked.  I have no idea why this was necessary.  Perhaps the candies evolved differently and were just attributed to familiar names?  Either way, it makes me suspicious every time I buy a chocolate bar.
• Eggs are not necessarily kept in the refrigerator.  I think this is because they're mostly free-range, and chickens raised on certain diets lay eggs with thicker shells and some other stuff, removing the need for refrigeration.  It took me a while to find eggs in the supermarket, but now I keep mine in the cabinet and they seem to be fine.
• Traffic crossings stop all directions.  This makes tons of sense to me.  If you stop all traffic, you remove the annoying action of having to cross, then wait, then cross again.  If traffic isn't moving, you can just cross diagonally and be done with it.  Not sure what the effects on heavy traffic would be though.
•   The pharmacy is known as a "chemist" here, which evokes images of mad scientists for me but doesn't seem to bother any of the locals.
• People don't wash their clothes often.  Now I have no proof on this, but judging from the fact that it is three pounds to wash and dry my clothes, I'm guessing people don't wash something after every wearing.  When it's cold though, and you're not worried about sweating I guess it's not as big of an issue.

That's all for now!  Maybe I'll add more as the year progresses.