Going to the Dentist in St. Johns Woods

As things turned out yesterday's trip to the dentist ended up being much more of an intercultural experience than I thought it would be.

First there was the walk through London's St. Johns Woods. That area really has turned into a super expatriate area. The houses are huge, the schools look well looked after, and the number of Chelsea tractors (this is what the English call big SUVs driven in town) were plentiful. In addition there were quite a few small delicatessen and boutiques.

If I was an expatriate family moving into London I would have a look at that area. As far as I am aware they even have a very busy expatriate organisation called St john's Woods Womens Club.

The other cultural thing that happened was at my dentist. The receptionist was a lovely Polish girl, the clinic assistant I believe was Israeli and the dentist was Spanish.

This meant that I had a five minutes informal chat with the receptionist about getting there, where I heard about them, and how I was feeling about going to a new dentist. I then had 30 seconds of instructional directions from the clinic assistant leading me to the chair, followed by a warm welcome from the dentist who promptly started talking about my family :o)

That was all good and well. However, what I did not get was an overview of what she intended to do to my teeth and how long it was going to take. This meant that I 30 min into the treatment still had no real idea about what was going on... Talk about a little mismatch of high and low context cultures.

Maybe the dentistry chattiness of the receptionist and the clear instructions from the clinic assistant made me assume that the dentist would have been more forthcoming with clinical information, or maybe I, coming from a low context culture, should simply have been more explicit telling the dentist that I wanted to know what was going on....

It was probably the latter, but with my mouth full of hardware it was difficult saying more than a muffled hmmmurph.

Laters!

morten