Long Beach and Soy Lattes...

So I'm here!

Currently staying in Long Beach, California, with Alyssa and Allison, who I met whilst in Europe in 2006. They have this cute little place, a one-bedroom apartment - they sleep in a bunk! - and I've got a 'cot' in there with them.

The flight over was fine, the usual amount of uncomfortable. I was at the back of the plane, where it starts to curve in, so where I was sitting there were 2 seats where there usually should have been 3, so I had a bit of extra room on the window side to stick my legs out. You don't realise how good it is to stretch your legs out fully until you can't do it for fourteen hours! I watched some movies - '27 Dresses' was pretty much the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life, as it involved no commitment on my behalf. I tried to watch a few others that were a little too cerebral and I just fell asleep. But then I watched 'Summer Heights High' and 'Frontline' and something with Jamie Oliver - that was all fine, really good short snippets, and when you watch 5 episodes, all of a sudden you've killed 2.5 hours!

The queue (they call it a 'line', here - I kept talking about queues and the girls had no idea what I was on about) at LAX to go through customs was crazy, probably about an hours wait just to get passports checked and be quizzed about your intentions. What do you do at home? How long are you staying? Who are you staying with? On and on and on. The only saving grace was that Delta - THE Delta Goodrem - was in line behind me. She was on the flight from Sydney that came in after ours, and she must have been first off, because I was last off my flight, so we connected in the queue/line. I looked up and saw this bitch in fancy clothes and kinda went "Whatever, who wears that on a plane?" I still had crumbs and omelette on me from breakfast, mind you. Then I did a double take and realised who it was. She was standing and talking in a very public way, her eyes not connecting with any of the plebs, but her head up and shoulders back so we could allll see who she was. Nice.

Speaking of nice. There was this American woman on the plane, sitting just across from me. Spent half the flight laughing out loud to what ever she was watching, about ten times louder than she needed to. Everyone's sleeping and she's cackling away like it's the last time she'll ever laugh again. The first time I heard it, it woke me with such ferocity that I thought the plane was going down. Her conversations were loud, too. Everyone's gotta hear.

Yesterday the girls took me to lunch (that's them over on the side - Allison with the lollypop, Stacey's blonde, and Alyssa just graduated from College last week). We went to this little mexican place, and we got tacos and Coronas and the service was amazing, people just DOTE on you. Then I sorted my phone situation out - I have a number, it's 562-279-4641 - and then we went out to San Pedro, which is kinda a poorer district where lots of Mexicans live, and we went to see the Korean Bell and sat on the hill, which has ocean views on three sides ... beautiful. Excecpt the smog kinda prevents you from seeing anything too far into the distance. It's so smoggy! The pollution here is terrible, and kinda sits on top of the city, trapping in the heat. So even if it's not sunny, you feel sticky. It seems to get better as the day progresses, though.





That's us at the Korean Bell.


Last night the girls made mushrooms and rice and asparagus for dinner (they're vegetarians) and their friend Kate came over to eat with us. We watched Planet Earth documentaries and freaked out at elephants being eaten by lions and had some sangria and talked about crocodiles. It was ace. Later on, their friends Bill and Lindsay came over.Today we're going to go hang out in LA, on the Walk of Fame with all the Hollywood stars and shit, and then we're going to see a baseball match, the Dodgers and some other team. That's really exciting me - chilli dogs and beers in cups and peanuts and nacho hats! Tomorrow I think we're going to Salvation Mountain in the afternoon, and then Thursday we might go to Disneyland or do some other stuff. I fly out for New York on Friday.

I'm writing this from a little coffee shop called Portfolio, and it's like an indie Starbucks. All the coffees are still at least a litre of milk, and the emphasis seems to be on milk rather than coffee itself. I just got a latte, and it's not bad. I got a small and it's still the size of my face. Everyone is pretty much here by themselves, on their laptops or cell phones, but in this incredible performative way - whilst they're all alone, no-one's really 'alone' in that they're in their own world. There's a lot of 'presenting' hapenning, loud conversations on phones or very grand sweeps of the hair as arty looking people try to express frustration at their writer's block without words. Everyone's writing a screenplay, probably.

I should go, but I'll finish just by saying that it really is like being in a film or something. All the cliche images of LA exist - the really wide roads running along the water, the streetlights that hang over in the middle of the lanes, the hanging street signs, the palm trees, the muted pastel colours ... it's bizarre. The supermarket next to the girls' apartment is like Officeworks or something, warehouse-sized with enormous displays for odd things. Like, a sausage meat aisle. A whole freakin aisle for sausage meat. And cheese! I pointed at it and laughed and the girls said "Haven't you ever had cheddar before?" and I insisted that I had, but it was just a nice normal colour, not fluro fuckin orange.

Nothing too outrageous has hapenned yet, but I live in hope. Text me, ya bums!

xd